Vic Morrow played characters on both sides of the law, one as a sleazy casino owner and the other as an undercover cop in episodes of “Charlie’s Angels.” Though the roles were quite different from one another, both accentuated Morrow’s tough guy image, one that he cultivated ever since his first stint as a wiseguy teen in the 1955 movie, “Blackboard Jungle.”
Best known as battle-hardened Sgt. Saunders in the ’60s platoon outing “Combat!,” he rarely showed his warm and fuzzy side, even during his guest spots on “Mission: Impossible,” “The F.B.I.,” and the ’70s anthology cop series, “Police Story.” While he made a name for himself with his tough guy persona, the actor was actually quite the opposite behind the scenes. According to his “Combat!” co-star, Rick Jason, per CBS News, “Vic hated guns. I asked him to go skeet shooting with me one day, and he said he couldn’t stand to kill clay.”
In 1982, Morrow was working on the final scene of the anthology horror movie, “Twilight Zone: The Movie,” when tragedy struck. During a pursuit scene, a helicopter crashed on the set, decapitating Morrow and killing two child actors. Four people involved in making the movie, including director Jon Landis and director Steven Spielberg, were charged with involuntary manslaughter, but were eventually acquitted, in what was one of the most heavily covered trials at the time. Lawsuits from the families of the deceased were also settled out of court. Morrow was 53.
