No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy - Hardcover

The most highly decorated GI of World War II, Audie Murphy went on to become a Hollywood star who appeared in more than 40 movies. He died in a private-plane crash in 1970. Graham ( Cowboys and Cadillacs ) describes Murphy's wartime exploits and film career in engrossing detail and keeps a probing eye on his subject's character, personality and behavior, building a convincing case that Murphy was a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. In his postwar years, the actor was a twice-married womanizer who gambled away an estimated $3 million, served as an auxiliary crime-fighter for various police departments while consorting with gangsters, devoted himself to concocting crude practical jokes and regularly threatened to kill anyone who crossed him. (Two years before his death he was tried and acquitted of attempted murder.) Aside from his awesome war record and struggle to improve his shaky acting skills, there seems little about Murphy to admire, but Graham, history professor at the Univ. of Texas, paints a portrait of a man more to be pitied than scorned. The book is the well-told tale of a lost soul who lived an extraordinary life.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Graham brings two advantages to his biography of war hero/movie star Murphy: like Murphy he was raised in rural Texas; and as a professor of English, Graham is capable of composing a literate sentence. Murphy, America's most decorated soldier in World War II, went on to become a top movie draw in the 1950s via a series of low-budget Westerns. As Graham shows, Murphy suffered acutely from post-combat stress syndrome, and until his death in a plane crash in 1971, Murphy's life was an unhappy one. No Name on the Bullet does a good job of covering both Murphy's military and film careers, and it is a biography well above the average.
- John Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.