Stuart Whitman

Stuart Whitman
Stuart Whitman in The Longest Day (1962)
Born	Stuart Maxwell Whitman (1928-02-01) February 1, 1928 (age 89) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1951–2000
Spouse(s)	Julia Vadimovna Paradiz (1993–present) Caroline Boubis (1966–74; divorced) Patricia LaLonde (1952–66; divorced)
Children	5

Stuart Maxwell Whitman (born February 1, 1928) is an American actor. He is known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the Western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967. Whitman also starred with John Wayne in the Western film, The Comancheros, in 1961, and received top billing as the romantic lead in the extravagant aerial epic Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines in 1965.

Whitman was born in San Francisco, California, the elder of two sons, the son of Cecilia (née Gold) and Joseph Whitman. His family was Jewish and Whitman describes himself as "a real American - have a little bit of English, Irish, Scotch and Russian - so I get along with everyone."

His parents had married in their teens and traveled frequently during his childhood - his father was a lawyer who moved into property development. Whitman started his education in New York, in Manhattan and Poughkeepsie. "I went to so many schools—26 in all!—that I was always an outsider," he later recalled. "It wasn’t until high school that I could REALLY read . . . I always sat in the back of the room."

He was interested in acting since he was five and did three plays in New York when he was twelve but "nobody took that seriously," he said. His uncle Ben thought he had potential as a boxer and secretly trained him for that. When World War Two broke out, Joseph Whitman moved to Los Angeles to run oil cracking plants for the government. His family settled in Los Angeles and Whitman graduated from Hollywood High in 1945.

After school he enlisted in the US Army and served in the Corps of Engineers for three years at Fort Lewis, Washington. During this time he occasionally boxed, winning 31 of his 32 bouts. Whitman had a difficult time with US Army fighter "Denny Dennison" (né Archibald Dennison Scott III) with whom he had had bouts at Hollywood High School. Denny, who had gone into active duty in January 1944 after five months of the delayed entry program, had won against his third opponent who was considered his toughest match up. Whitman was honorably discharged in 1948 while his close friend Scott went on the following year to OCS ending his service with the rank of Colonel.