#Charles durning military history tv#

Another Joseph Papp production, the play transferred from Off-Broadway to Broadway's Booth Theatre in 1972, winning the Tony for Best Play to go with the Pulitzer. It was in That Championship Season, Jason Miller's Pulitzer Prize winner, that Durning really began to break out. The Happy Time with Robert Goulet was more successful, although Durning's role wasn't one of the ones that got a lot of notice.

He also began to get roles on Broadway, like the musicals Drat! The Cat! and Pousse-Café, two shows that played for 11 performances combined. By the early 60s, Durning was appearing regularly in Shakespeare productions with Joseph Papp's Public Theater. He supposedly said that dancing was easy, but acting was hard. You can hear what he had to say in the clip linked here.Īfter that, he returned to New York, taking a job as a dance instructor. He didn't talk much about those days until an appearance on PBS's Memorial Day television celebration in 2007. For his military service, Durning received three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. With wounds in his legs, hands and head, he was patched up and sent back, just in time for the Battle of the Bulge. All around him, his fellow soldiers were going down, but somehow Durning survived, the only member of his unit to make it. Army, serving among the troops rushing Omaha Beach on D-Day. When one of the comedians showed up soused to the gills, Durning supposedly went on in his place, basking in the laughter and finding his place in the world.īut then he was drafted into the U.S. According to the New York Post, his first experience with theater came when he worked as an usher at a burlesque show in Buffalo, New York. Durning's family was large, but poor, and five of his nine siblings died in childhood.

#Charles durning military history tv#

He won a Golden Globe for his appearance as John Fitzgerald (AKA Honey Fitz) in 1990's TV miniseries The Kennedys of Massachusetts, a Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.ĭurning was born in Highland Falls, New York, a small town whose only other claim to fame was that Billy Joel lived there for awhile in the 70s.

Larger than life in all his roles, Durning made it through childhood poverty, incredible war service, Shakespeare with Joseph Papp, a stint as a dance teacher, and then more television and film roles than you could throw a stick at, including nominations for Tony, Oscar and Emmy Awards. He had one heck of a journey, that's for sure. When Charles Durning died last week at the age of 89, the stories of his life sounded like something Dickens would've written.