Joseph

He landed on Omaha Beach in the first wave and walked off as the only man left standing from his unit. Charles Durning was born February 28, 1923, in Highland Falls, New York - the ninth of ten children. Five of his siblings died young from scarlet fever and smallpox. A teacher told him he had no talent for anything academic and should aim for office work. At twenty, Durning was drafted. On June 6, 1944, he hit the sand at Omaha Beach with the first assault wave of the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. Every man in his unit was killed. Durning fought through it. He killed seven German machine gunners before taking bullets to his leg and shrapnel across his body. The U.S. Army awarded him his first Purple Heart. He spent six months recovering in England. Then they sent him back. In December 1944, Durning was fighting in the Ardennes forest during the Battle of the Bulge. In close-quarters combat, a German soldier stabbed him eight times with a bayonet. Durning killed that man with a rock. Second Purple Heart. Not long after, Durning's company was captured. On December 17, 1944, near Malmedy, Belgium, Waffen-SS troops opened fire on approximately 84 disarmed American prisoners of war. The event is now known as the Malmedy Massacre. Durning was one of the few to survive it. In March 1945, still fighting through Germany with the 398th Infantry Regiment, Durning was shot in the chest. Third Purple Heart. He was evacuated to the United States and discharged from the Army in January 1946. Three Purple Hearts. Three near-deaths. One man. Almost no one around him knew any of it for decades. Durning suppressed his D-Day memories so completely that he returned to Normandy only once in his entire life - during a Memorial Day ceremony in May 1994, marking the 50th anniversary of the invasion. "I don't know what they went through," he said of other veterans. "They don't know what I went through." He left it there. He never made it a performance. Finding acting was an accident. After leaving the Army, Durning spent five years drifting before taking a job as an usher at a burlesque theater in New York. One night a comedian showed up drunk and couldn't go on. Durning was handed the slot. He took it. Something clicked. By 1972, Durning was on Broadway in That Championship Season, a play that won the Tony Award for Best Play. Director George Roy Hill saw him there and cast him in The Sting in 1973 alongside Paul Newman and Robert Redford. From that moment, Durning became one of the most reliable character actors in American film and television. Dog Day Afternoon. Tootsie. O Brother, Where Art Thou? Over a career spanning five decades, Durning earned two Academy Award nominations, nine Emmy nominations, and a Tony Award in 1990 for playing Big Daddy in a Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Audiences laughed with him. Cried with him. Rooted for him. Almost none of them knew what was underneath. Charles Durning died on December 24, 2012, at his home in New York City. He was 89 years old. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Three Purple Hearts. Two Oscar nominations. A Tony. Nine Emmys.