Medal of honor winner Audie Murphy circa 1945-2015 Canvas Print

"I can't ever remember being young in my life."

"I never liked being called the 'most decorated' soldier. There were so many guys who should have gotten medals and never did--guys who were killed."

[fellow US Army officer about Murphy] "Don't let that baby face fool you, that's the toughest soldier in the Third Division."

[on his acting career] "I'm working under a great handicap . . . no talent."
[of his role as himself in To Hell and Back (1955)] "I don't think I'm the type. Maybe Tony Curtis would do."

[Bill Mauldin about Murphy] "In him, we all recognized the straight, raw stuff, uncut and fiery as the day it left the still. Nobody wanted to be in his shoes, but nobody wanted to be unlike him, either."

[on turning 40] "I guess my face is still the same, and so is the dialogue. Only the horses were changed."

"I'm too tough for this town [Hollywood]. I won't let it break my heart. I won't let it break me. I'll fight it to th...

I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...