Frank Sutton, remembered by millions as the explosive Gunnery Sergeant Vince Carter on the hit CBS comedy *Gomer Pyle, USMC*, died far too young in 1974. The actor suffered a fatal heart attack backstage while preparing for a performance at the Beverly Barn Dinner Playhouse in Shreveport, Louisiana. He was just 50 years old. Born in Clarksville, Tennessee, on October 23, 1923, Sutton grew up in Nashville, where he discovered acting through school plays.
After graduating in 1941, he returned to Clarksville and worked as a radio announcer before his military service called. During World War II, Sutton was rejected by the Marines due to his color blindness, so he enlisted in the US Army instead. Serving as a sergeant with the 293rd Joint Assault Signal Company in the South Pacific from 1943 to 1946, he earned both the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. He also held a black belt in judo.
After the war, Sutton pursued drama seriously, studying at Columbia University and graduating with a degree in 1952. He worked steadily through the 1950s on soap operas like *The Secret Storm* and *The Edge of Night*, and appeared in shows such as *Maverick*, *The Twilight Zone*, *Gunsmoke*, and *The Untouchables*. His big break came in 1964 when he was cast as the perpetually exasperated Sergeant Carter opposite Jim Nabors’ bumbling Private Gomer Pyle. The series ran for five seasons and made Sutton a household name.
In real life, the two actors were reportedly close friends, and Sutton later appeared on Nabors’ variety show. Sutton married soap opera writer Toni M. Igler in 1946, and the couple had two children. He was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in his hometown of Clarksville.
In May 2017, the city honored the native son with a statue dedicated on Franklin Street. The transcript also covers the story of Rod Serling, the legendary creator of *The Twilight Zone*, born December 25, 1924, in Syracuse, New York. After serving with the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the Pacific during World War II, where he earned the Purple Heart and Bronze Star, Serling used the GI Bill to study literature at Antioch College. Serling’s breakthrough came with the 1955 teleplay *Patterns*, which won him his first Emmy.
He earned a second Emmy for *Requiem for a Heavyweight* and won a total of six over his career. His most famous creation, *The Twilight Zone*, premiered on CBS in October 1959 and ran for five seasons, even though its ratings never matched its critical acclaim. After *The Twilight Zone* ended, Serling created the short-lived Western *The Loner* and later hosted *Night Gallery*. He was also a frequent college lecturer and an outspoken critic of racial injustice and the Vietnam War.
A heavy smoker, Serling suffered a heart attack in May 1975. He was hospitalized, released after two weeks, and then suffered a second heart attack that led doctors to perform risky bypass surgery. During the operation, he suffered a third heart attack and died two days later on June 28, 1975, in Rochester, New York. He was also just 50 years old.
The video also remembers the troubled life of Veronica Lake, born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in Brooklyn in 1922. She was discovered at a young age, given the screen name Lake, and became a star with her unforgettable “peekaboo” hairstyle, which developed accidentally during the filming of *I Wanted Wings*. Though she made major films alongside Alan Ladd, including *This Gun for Hire* and *The Blue Dahlia*, Lake was considered difficult to work with, and her career declined after losing her Paramount contract. Her personal life was marked by three failed marriages, bankruptcy, and legal troubles.
She was later found working as a cocktail lounge waitress under the name Connie de Toth. Lake struggled with alcohol abuse for years. In 1973, while traveling in Vermont, she was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. She died on July 7 of that year at the University of Vermont Medical Center from acute hepatitis and acute kidney injury.
She was 50 years old. Her ashes were scattered off the coast of the Virgin Islands. Jim Varney, best known as Ernest P. Worrell, was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1949.
With a talent for memorizing poetry and mimicking cartoons, he started acting in children’s theater at age eight and was performing professionally as a teenager. Varney’s breakout character Ernest began in advertising and eventually starred in a series of films including *Ernest Goes to Camp* and *Ernest Saves Christmas*. He also played Jed Clampett in the 1993 *The Beverly Hillbillies* film and voiced Slinky Dog in *Toy Story* and *Toy Story 2*. Varney developed a persistent cough while filming *Treehouse Hostage* in August 1998 and was soon diagnosed with lung cancer.
Despite treatment and quitting smoking, he lost his battle on February 10, 2000, at his home in White House, Tennessee. He was 50 years old. Finally, the transcript covers the life of Steve McQueen, the “King of Cool,” born in 1930 in Beech Grove, Indiana. His early life was unstable, marked by his father’s abandonment, his mother’s alcoholism, time on a farm with a great-granduncle, and teen years in reform school after being arrested for stealing hubcaps.
McQueen joined the Marines in 1947 but struggled with discipline, spending 41 days in the brig. After his discharge, he studied acting in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg. His early success included the cult classic *The Blob* and the TV Western *Wanted Dead or Alive*. In the early 1960s, McQueen became a major movie star with roles in *The Magnificent Seven* and *The Great Escape*.
He earned an Academy Award nomination for *The Sand Pebbles* and starred in iconic films like *The Thomas Crown Affair*, *Bullitt*, and *The Getaway*, the latter sparking a romance with co-star Ali MacGraw. Throughout his career, McQueen struggled with drug and alcohol abuse. He developed a persistent cough in 1978, and an x-ray in late 1979 revealed a tumor in his right lung, believed to be caused by asbestos exposure. The cancer was described as aggressive and terminal.
McQueen spent his final months in Mexico seeking alternative therapies. He died on November 7, 1980, in Juarez, Mexico, at the age of 50. His ashes were spread into the Pacific Ocean.
His last two films, *Tom Horn* and *The Hunter*, were both released in 1980.