Television and Movie Star Brian Keith Was Also a Marine

Actor Brian Keith has been the judge on the television series “Hardcastle and McCormick,” the uncle in “Family Affair,” Teddy Roosevelt in the movie “The Wind and the Lion,” and the father in “The Parent Trap.” 

He also starred in movies including “Death Before Dishonor,” “Young Guns,” “Sharky’s Machine,” and many others. 

Keith was also in the Marine Corps during World War II and saw plenty of action in the South Pacific. 

Keith was the sort of kid recruiters dream about enlisting. He simply walked in and signed up without requiring the usual sales pitch. Unlike most World War II Marines, he joined the Corps before Pearl Harbor and unlike many Marines, he wasn’t influenced to join by a recruiter, friend or family member with a seabag full of tales. 

“When I was nine or 10, during the early Great Depression years, I sold ‘Liberty’magazines,” he said. “I used to enjoy reading the ‘War Dog’ section of the paper, featuring stories of Marines at Belleau Wood, in China and other places. I also read John W. Thomason books like ‘Fix Bayonets!’I longed to play a part in those exotic adventures.” 

In the summer of 1941, Keith enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve and went to work in the Grumman Aircraft factory near his hometown of East Rockaway, Long Island, New York. 

Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 1941. 

“Within a month of Pearl Harbor, I was on a train to Parris Island for eight weeks of boot camp,” he said, referring to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in South Carolina. 

“I can still remember the names of my three drill instructors. They were actually pretty nice guys — really. Well, one of them wasn’t too friendly,” he remembered. 

“I fired expert on the rifle and pistol ranges and was selected to become a marksmanship instructor at Officers Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia. I recall my rifle range staff noncommissioned officer at Quantico, an old gunnery sergeant with a wooden hand. He’d lost it fighting in Nicaragua, but still fired the rifle and pistol with it. He always wore a black glove over that hand.” 

As the summer of 1942 approached, Marines took the offensive and landed on Guadalcanal. That summer, he was ordered to San Diego, arriving by train. From there, he boarded a ship to Hawaii, then to Midway — where the decisive battle had been fought June 4, 1942 — then back to Hawaii and then to Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. 

“Talk about a roundabout way to go to war,” he said. 

“I was assigned to VMSB-244, where I became a gunner on the SBD Douglas Dauntless dive bomber, flying bombing missions to Rabaul through the ‘Valley of Death,'” he said. VMSB-244 is a Marine scout bombing squadron. 

“A gunner’s job is straightforward, or in my case ‘straight backward’,” he noted. “While the pilot released his bombs looking forward, I sat behind him looking backward, firing twin .30-caliber guns at Zeroes — also known as Zekes — which were tailgating us. 

“The pilot doesn’t merely drop his I00- and 500-pound bombs while flying leisurely over targets. He dives. These dives are vertical and sometimes our angle of dive is steeper than 90 degrees,” he said. “We start at I0,000 to 15,000 feet and level out near the ground. The pilot fires twin .50-caliber tracers to vector his bombs on target, firing at Zeroes behind us and to the side. The enemy on the ground is firing up at us. What a ride! 

“We were lucky,” he continued. “Our airplane took a lot of hits, including a three-foot-long hole in the wing. One time my earphones were shot off. Many of my buddies weren’t so lucky.” 

Keith recalled a close call when two Zeroes were tailing them. “My gun overheated from firing, and they were still coming. In desperation, I shot double red flares at them. Help arrived just in time when a Navy pilot shot one of them down.” 

It required a team effort for Keith’s pilots, two of whom were sergeants, to drop their bombs on target, he said. Army Air Corps P38 Lockheed Lightnings and PS I Mustangs provided three layers of air cover from 20,000 to 30,000 feet. 

Flying at about 15,000 feet were the Marine F4U Corsairs, including Marine Corps Maj. Gregory “Pappy” Boyington’s Black Sheep Squadron. 

Low cover — I0,000 feet and below — was provided by New Zealanders flying P40 Kittyhawks, called Curtiss Warhawks, by the U.S. Army Air Corps. 

“Pappy’s squadron flew cover for us every other day,” he said. “His squadron was different from other Corsair squadrons in the novel way they flew.” 

Once Keith made it safely back to the Bougainville airfield, there was very little rest and respite. 

Japanese guerrillas intermittently attacked them from jungle hide-outs. “We got peppered with mortars and machine-gun fire,” he said. “The Japanese mortarmen got to be quite proficient at dropping them in at the right place. 

“A 16-year-old mechanic once spent 24 hours working on a plane. No sooner had he finished the job, then a mortar landed squarely on it, blowing it to smithereens,” Keith said. 

“The lad, who had until then been admiring his work from a distance, became so infuriated that he grabbed a Browning Automatic Rifle, an E-tool shovel and a bag of grenades and singlehandedly stomped off into the jungle in pursuit of the Japanese who had destroyed his work,” Keith related. 

“He found them in a pillbox, where he jumped in and clobbered them with his E-tool,” he said. 

“Once when I was playing cards with my buddies in our tent, I stepped outside to get a breath of air. I saw some Japanese approaching and ran back inside the tent to warn the others. ‘Nah, you’re seeing things,’ they said. ‘The Japanese couldn’t possibly have infiltrated this far inside the wire.’ 

“Just then a row of neatly spaced bullet holes appeared through the tent. I was the first one into the fighting hole, with the others diving in on top of me. 

“The Japanese were fanatical,” said Keith. “I’ve seen them charge at us — outgunned and wearing only baseball caps — across the wide-open fields of our perimeter.” 

Keith spent the next two years as a gunner flying missions to Rabaul from Bougainville and several other small islands nearby. Marines from other units bypassed Rabaul, sailing westward to Guam, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and other islands. 

Rabaul, however, was never taken by the Americans. It wasn’t of vital strategic importance and many Americans would have been needlessly killed. The island was neutralized with the help of men like Keith and Boyington so that the Japanese were never able to mount a major rear area offensive from it. 

The Navy awarded Keith the coveted Air Medal for his efforts.  

Keith’s medal was signed by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and Navy Vice Adm. William “Bull” Halsey, commander, South Pacific.  

Boyington was awarded a Medal of Honor and a Navy Cross. 

Finally, Keith was given a 30-day pass to go home to New York for Christmas in I944. After taking leave, Keith was ordered to Oak Grove, North Carolina, to fly as a gunner for new pilots, training on SB2C Curtiss-Wright Helldivers. 

“I was more scared of those pilots than I was of the Japanese,” he admitted. “My buddy crashed and wound up with a permanently wrecked back. I longed to return to my unit, which was now fighting in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.” 

Unfortunately, Keith’s glorious career ended on an ignominious note. “The day after V-J Day, we were celebrating in a Miami club. I didn’t see it coming,” he said, referring to a punch he received, “but I then got in a good one.” 

Keith’s punch sent an unfortunate sailor flying across the room, right past a group of Navy officers. Keith was offered a choice of 90 days in the brig or a reduction from sergeant to corporal. 

He chose the latter because “I was getting out of the Corps anyway.” Keith said he has no regrets about joining the Corps and is proud to claim the title of Marine. The success he earned in Hollywood is legendary. However, the greatest chronicles of this famous star are found in the jungles and skies of the Solomon Islands. It was men like him who carried America to victory. 

At curtain call after Keith’s second week of filming on the “Major Dad” show in September 1992, actor Gerald McRaney, who played Marine Corps Major John D. MacGillis, told the studio audience that ever since he got into acting, one of the people that he had an admiration for and wanted to work with was Brian Keith. 

“We play Marines, but you’re the real thing,” said McRaney, who continued, “It was our privilege to work with you.” 

I interviewed Keith between takes in late September 1992 at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, where he was making a guest appearance on a “Major Dad” TV episode. I was a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant at the time. 

Keith died June 24, 1997, in Malibu, California. He was 75.