“Hard to the End…!” (1939)

Josh Morgan had no sentimental weakness, nothing could stomp him. Up-beat to the end; ambivalent, to his comrades: He had stopped filming the script “The Battle Fields of Spain,” went to his Madrid Hotel, to play five tennis matches, he was thirty-four years old. He got a pain in his side—he reclined by the pool and realized within a short period of time, he was having a heart attack. The production was shut down during his recuperation period. His doctor informed him he’d have to avoid exertion, stress for the rest of his life. He was at the top of his field, played the hard core rolls because he had lived them, he was what he played.
One of the scenes involved Mr. Morgan to run out into a mass of humanity, surrounded by gunfire, and overhead blasting, it was a high spirited scene for the movie, and a much needed one to make if the film was to be a success. Thus, the cameras rolled. Everyone had felt this scene could, most likely would undo Mr. Morgan, but it didn’t.
Josh had informed the director, explained it away that: “I watched twenty-war movies, over and over and over while in my recuperation period (he had taken the time to bust up his shock endurance, to where he’d be near sedate to the disruption and seemingly fictional disaster surrounding him within the scene, once the cameras started rolling again. All within disregard for the doctor’s orders, in consequence, Josh Morgan finished the film…

Said Mr. Morgan to the entertainment world and its media at large, and in particular to the producer of the studio, and director of the script, “I’m not going to be an infinite patient, if I’m going to die, let it come while I’m climbing a mountain, or filming a rough scene! —it’s all the same to me!”
At the age of thirty-seven, in May of 1941, he died doing just that. He burnt himself out, but finished the last film he was staring in, called “Hard to the End…!”

No: 514 (11-10-2009)