Very much so. Also another one was Richard Boone. He was Have Gun Will Travel and the bad guy in Big Jake and several other westerns.
He dropped out of Stanford prior to graduation and then worked as an oil rigger, bartender, painter, and writer. In 1941, Boone joined the United States Navy and served on three ships in the Pacific during World War II, seeing combat as an aviation ordnanceman, aircrewman, and tail gunner on Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, and ended his service with the rank of petty officer first class.
Lots of the good actors in those days had histories of being men. That is why the movies were so good.
That's a very good point.
Jimmy Stewart, too.
I just watched a 1950s western movie with Audie Murphy. He was an amazing guy...
Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971) was an American soldier, actor, and songwriter. He was one of the most decorated American combat soldiers of World War II. He received every military combat award for valor available from the United States Army, as well as French and Belgian awards for heroism. Murphy received the Medal of Honor for valor that he demonstrated at the age of 19 for single-handedly holding off a company of German soldiers for an hour at the Colmar Pocket in France in January 1945, before leading a successful counterattack while wounded and out of ammunition.When I was a kid in the 50s and 60s, everybody knew Audie Murphy. These days nobody knows about him.