World War II brought these top actors and spotlight of Hollywood to Fort Worth

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17-05-2025

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Hollywood was in Fort Worth news earlier this year with the nomination of Fort Worth's Abraham Alexander for an Academy Award for Best Song of the Year (from the 2024 movie 'Sing Sing'). The Nigerian-born Alexander attended Texas Wesleyan University before launching a musical career.
Filmmakers' interest in Fort Worth might have originated in 1920 when the fledgling Lone Star Pictures announced plans to film its first motion picture here, 'a romance of the Texas oil fields.' It never happened, but in the years to come, some well-known Hollywood actors had a soft spot in their hearts for Cowtown.
Gene Autry visited Fort Worth in 1936 and asked the manager of the New Liberty theater, 'Do they like my pictures here?' The manager assured him, 'Next to Buck Jones, you're tops!' Twenty years later, Fort Worth made Jimmy Stewart an honorary citizen and deputy sheriff.
Fort Worth was also home to some top Hollywood talent during World War II. They were here because of Tarrant Field — renamed Carswell Air Force Base in 1948 — as part of the Army Air Forces Training Command. In the summer of 1942, the the command opened a combat training school at Tarrant Field for pilots on the heavy bombers being produced next door at the Consolidated Vultee plant (now Lockheed Martin).
George Gobel was one of the Hollywood types who answered his country's call in 1942. At the time, he was a little-known singer-turned-comedian who had been performing since the age of 11. The military sent him to Fort Worth to teach men to fly the B-24 Liberator.
When off duty, Gobel entertained the men on his guitar, weaving humor into his act. He got the nickname 'Lonesome George' for his low-key, self-deprecating humor. He also coined a catch phrase that would follow him the rest of his life: 'Well, I'll be a dirty bird.'
After the war, Gobel performed in night clubs until in 1954 he got his own TV show. When that ended in 1957, he moved on to Broadway and the movies. In 1972, he became a regular on Hollywood Squares.
Gobel attributed his success to compensating for what nature didn't give him and to luck. He told an interviewer years later, 'When I went into the Air Force, I was 5 feet 4½ inches. The limit was 5 feet 5. Life has always been like that.'
Burgess Meredith may have been Fort Worth's favorite actor-turned-soldier and was certainly the biggest stage and screen star to come to town in uniform. Star-Telegram readers learned about him in 1937 when he was proclaimed 'the brightest young star on Broadway.'
Five years later, he came through Fort Worth as a buck private on a troop train. In August 1942, he came back to Fort Worth, disembarking at the Texas & Pacific station as Lt. Burgess Meredith of the Army Air Forces. He was assistant public relations officer at Tarrant Field. He had spent the previous month making the training film 'Rear Gunner' with co-star Ronald Reagan. It was so good, the government released it in theaters.
Lt. Meredith's work with the Air Training Command wasn't what intrigued readers after Fort Worth Press columnist Jack Gordon informed his female readers that the twice-divorced Meredith was available. In short order he was romantically linked with a Fort Worth woman, Mary Parker, though Meredith dismissed the rumors, saying, 'We're just good friends.'
After the war, Meredith did not miss a beat resuming his film career. Eventually, he created the acclaimed roles of 'The Penguin' on the 'Batman' TV series (1966-68) and Mickey, Rocky Balboa's crusty trainer, in three Sylvester Stallone movies.
William Holden was the third Hollywood star to 'play' Fort Worth during World War II. Born William Franklin Beedle, he took the stage name he is known by when he first began acting. In August 1942, he left behind a budding acting career to enter the Army, showing up in Fort Worth that fall as a private working behind a desk at Tarrant Field. He was soon off to Air Force Officer Candidate School in Miami.
When Holden came back to Fort Worth he was wearing the gold bars of a second lieutenant. No flier, Holden was assigned to the public relations office, serving as liaison with the city of Fort Worth while doing weekly radio broadcasts of 'The Army Air Force Show' over the Mutual Broadcasting network, which included KFJZ.
Rather than tell his listeners about the war in the abstract, he told human-interest stories about servicemen who had performed heroically. The broadcasts from (Will Rogers) Municipal Auditorium proved hugely popular with the local audience. And as an officer Holden got to move out of the barracks, initially into the Worth Hotel, then into an apartment near TCU.
In January 1943, Holden was joined by his wife, actress Brenda Marshall, who had North Texas roots, having been a student in 1936 at Texas Women's College (Denton). Her latest movie, 'Life Begins at 8:30,' was playing at the Hollywood theater when she got to town. In May 1944, she was back in Fort Worth visiting her husband and appearing with him on his radio show.
Holden's official duties took him out into the community doing public relations for the Army Air Forces. He was elected executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce and coached third base for a Fort Worth Cats exhibition game. When not doing his military duties, Holden could be seen playing the drums, jamming with fellow musicians in the Den Room of the Hotel Texas.
In 1959, while promoting his latest movie, 'The Horse Soldiers,' Holden cane through Fort Worth for the first time since the war. He reminisced with reporters about his two-year stay in Fort Worth during the war, mentioning sharing an apartment with big-league baseball player Hank Greenberg, another enlistee with the Air Training Command. Holden recalled how they hung out their wash on the railing of their second-floor apartment, much to the dismay of the owner.
When the Army sent Holden back to California to work with the Motion Picture Unit making training films, he was replaced on the Army Air Forces radio show by another actor-turned-soldier, George Montgomery. Often compared to Clark Gable, Montgomery had worked steadily in Hollywood right up until 1943, when he joined the Army Air Forces' First Motion Picture Unit, a U.S. Army unit made up entirely of film professionals. Cpl. Montgomery came to Fort Worth for a month in January 1944 to be 'guest host' for the radio show while Holden was away.
After the war, Hollywood seemed to have fallen completely in love with Fort Worth. In 1951, the major studios had three movies in production about our city: Warner Brothers' 'Fort Worth' with Randolph Scott, RKO's 'High Frontier' with Anne Baxter, and Twentieth Century Fox's 'Follow the Sun' with Glenn Ford. Only the Warner Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox films reached the screen, but Hollywood was not done with Fort Worth, nor Fort Worth with Hollywood.
Author-historian Richard Selcer is a Fort Worth native and proud graduate of Paschal High and TCU.