Lee Marvin, Capt Kangaroo & Mister Rogers

[Walt's Daughter]

Here's the truth. Easier to put it here than to have everyone try and read all the links posted.

 

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Despite sundry grains of truth sprinkled throughout — including the fact that both actor Lee Marvin and Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan were Marines during World War II (Keeshan a reservist), and that Marvin really was wounded in the buttocks while storming a beachhead (though in Saipan, not Iwo Jima) — the story is fundamentally false. According to their respective biographies, Marvin had already been injured and shipped back to the United States with a Purple Heart by the time Keeshan entered basic training. They could not have encountered one another in combat. Neither was awarded the Navy Cross.

 

At the age of 20, Lee Marvin was a private in the U.S. Marines 4th Division, part of the Allied landing force that invaded the Japanese-held Pacific island of Saipan on July 15, 1944. He was wounded three days later on July 18, spent the next 13 months in Navy hospitals recovering from a severed sciatic nerve, and was discharged in 1945.

 

Bob Keeshan signed up for the Marine Corps Reserve shortly before his 18th birthday in 1945. Since the war was all but over by the time he finished basic training, it's unlikely Keeshan ever saw combat before completing his service a year later, let alone attained the rank of sergeant.

 

Those old enough to remember Lee Marvin's occasional appearances on TV talk shows up until his death in 1987 will find the manner and spirit of the storytelling reminiscent of the man himself, but it seems unlikely he would have trumpeted such blatant lies about another man's service record over national television, nor have I been able to find any evidence in the form of tapes or transcripts that prove he did so.

 

Update: A version of this message circulating since March 2003 includes an addendum claiming that Fred Rogers, host of public television's "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood," was an ex-Marine sniper (or, in another version, a Navy Seal) with dozens of wartime kills to his credit. This, too, is false.