Combat!

For other uses, see combat (disambiguation).

Combat!
1966-67 season color title card (With Rick Jason)
Format	War Drama
Starring	Rick Jason Vic Morrow
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	152 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	46 to 52 minutes per episode
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	October 2, 1962 – March 14, 1967

Combat! is an American television program that originally aired on ABC from 1962 until 1967. (The exclamation point in Combat! was a stylized bayonet.) The show covered the grim lives of a squad of American soldiers fighting the Germans in France during World War II, and starred Rick Jason as platoon leader Second Lieutenant Gil Hanley and Vic Morrow as Sergeant "Chip" Saunders.

Broadcast history

Combat! premiered on ABC on October 2, 1962 and was broadcast for five seasons. TV's longest-running World War II drama (through May 2013), Combat! aired 152 hour-long episodes. The first four seasons, spanning 127 episodes, were produced in black and white, with the final season, 25 episodes long, filmed in color. The show was developed by Robert Pirosh, who wrote the pilot episode.

Although the series ran for five seasons, King Company, 361st Infantry Regiment (the Army unit around whose fictional experiences the program was centered) never fought its way out of France, despite the fact that the real U.S. Army fought there in World War II for less than a year.

Cast

• Rick Jason as 2nd Lt. Gil Hanley
• Vic Morrow as Sgt. "Chip" Saunders
• Pierre Jalbert as PFC Paul "Caje" LeMay
• Jack Hogan as PFC William G. Kirby
• Dick Peabody as PFC "Littlejohn"
• Conlan Carter as "Doc" (seasons 2–5); nominated for Emmy Award, 1964
• Tom Lowell as Pvt. Billy Nelson (first and second season)
• Shecky Greene as Pvt. Braddock (first season)
• Steven Rogers as "Doc Walton" (first season)
• William Bryant as Pvt. McCall (fifth season; other characters in first season)
• Paul Busch, frequently played different parts, mostly Germans

Sal Mineo and Vic Morrow in a 1965 episode

Guest cast

Guest stars appeared as additional squad members, French citizens or German soldiers. In the first season, the then little-known Ted Knight and Frank Gorshin made appearances. Other notable guest stars included Lee Marvin, Robert Duvall, James Coburn, Dwayne Hickman, Telly Savalas, Luise Rainer, Charles Bronson, Richard Basehart, Eddie Albert, James Caan, Jeffrey Hunter, Leonard Nimoy, Frankie Avalon, Sal Mineo, Brandon De Wilde, Tab Hunter, Beau Bridges, John Cassavetes, Roddy McDowell, Mickey Rooney, James Whitmore, Dennis Hopper, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton, Keenan Wynn, Richard Jaeckel, Fernando Lamas, Ricardo Montalban, Claude Akins, Warren Oates, Nick Adams, Joan Hackett and Dean Stockwell.

Producers

Producers for the series were:

• Series pilot: Robert Pirosh
• Season one: Robert Altman, Robert Blees, Burt Kennedy, Gene Levitt, Richard Maibaum, Paul Stanley
• Seasons two through four: Gene Levitt
• Season five: Richard Caffey
• The executive producer for all five seasons was Selig J. Seligman, head of Selmur Productions.

Directors

Directors for the series were:

• Jus Addiss (1 episode)
• Robert Altman (10 episodes)
• Laslo Benedek (2 episodes)
• Richard Benedict (2 episode)
• Michael Caffey (11 episodes)
• Alan Crosland, Jr. (6 episodes)           
• Richard Donner (1 episode)
• Tom Gries (3 episodes)
• Georg J. Fenady (6 episodes)

• Herman Hoffman (1 episode)
• Burt Kennedy (6 episodes)
• Bernard McEveety (31 episodes)
• Byron Paul (1 episode)
• John Peyser (27 episodes)
• Vic Morrow (7 episodes)
• Ted Post (6 episodes)
• Sutton Roley (15 episodes)

Military connection

Most of the cast members were veterans of the armed services, with several having served during World War II. Jack Hogan, Dick Peabody and Shecky Greene all served in the U.S. Navy, while Rick Jason served in the Army Air Corps. Vic Morrow served in the U.S. Navy in 1947. Conlan Carter served in the U.S. Air Force during the post-Korean War era. Pierre Jalbert was a drill sergeant in the University Air Training Corps at Laval University in Canada during World War II.

Syndication

Combat! has been aired on and off since the 1970s in Greece, Iran, Mexico, Philippines, Brazil, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, South Korea, Venezuela, Australia, Malaysia, Peru, Pakistan, and Taiwan. Combat! is currently run on MeTV.

Media

Video game

Super Famicom game box art.

The Super Famicom game, Sgt. Saunders' Combat!, was based on the television show and only released in Japan. It allowed players to re-enact crucial World War II battles in Western Europe and North Africa. The names of fictional officers in addition to real-world officers (i.e., Karl Bülowius, Joachim Peiper, and Anthony McAuliffe) are used in order to maintain a sense of historical accuracy.

DVD releases

Image Entertainment has released the entire series on DVD (Region 1). They released each season in two-volume sets in 2004 and 2005. On December 6, 2005, Image Entertainment released a 40-disc boxed set featuring all 152 episodes. Each season set, as well as the complete series set, features various extras including commentaries, oddities, bloopers, and photo galleries.

However, all episodes are the time-compressed versions that were distributed by WorldVision for syndication; each comes in at 46 to 47 minutes, instead of the original runtime, which was 50 to 51 minutes. The frequently asked questions for the shows' mailing list also confirms exactly that.

On October 9, 2012 Image Entertainment will release a five-DVD collection of 20 episodes called Combat! - 50th Anniversary Fan Favorites.

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Davidsmeyer, J. (1996, 2008) Combat! A Viewer's Companion to the Classic WWII TV Series. Strange New Worlds: Sarasota, Florida. (ISBN 978-0970162434)

External links

• Combat! at the Internet Movie Database
• Combat! at TV.com