This Military Service Page was created/owned by
Steven Loomis, IC3
to remember
Madison, Guy (born Robert Ozell Moseley), S1c.
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Contact Info
Home Town Bakersfield
Last Address Palm Springs, California February 6, 1996, aged 74
Date of Passing Feb 06, 1996
Location of Interment Forest Lawn Memorial Park - Cathedral City, California
Wall/Plot Coordinates Sanctuary of the Good Shepherd North, crypt 7C
Robert Ozell Moseley, Sn1
U.S. Navy 1942 - 1945
(aka Guy Madison, actor)
Robert Moseley enlisted in the Naval Reserve on 23 October 1942 at Los Angeles as an apprentice seaman.
During his three-year stint, he was assigned to the U.S. Naval Reserve Station in Los Angeles and then to Roosevelt Base, Terminal Island, before moving on to Transition Training Squadron, Pacific Air Wing 14, located on North Island. The wing was tasked with over-water patrol, convoy coverage, and special missions. Flying PB4Y Privateer and PBM Mariner patrol bombers, Fleet Air Wing 14 trained pilots and crews, and equipped new squadrons, at the same time serving as the San Diego control station for flights to Hawaii.
Moseley was later assigned to Carrier Aviation Support unit 5, also based on North Island. It may have been while he was serving with CASU 5 that he somehow injured his back and had to be transferred to the Navy hospital in San Diego and then the U.S. Naval Special Hospital at Banning, California, from which he was discharged in October 1945.
Other Comments:
The handsome American leading man, Guy Madison, stumbled into a film career and became a television star and hero to the Baby Boom generation. As a young man he worked as a telephone lineman, but entered the Navy at the beginning of the Second World War. While on liberty one weekend in Hollywood, he attended a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast and was spotted in the audience by an assistant to Henry Willson, an executive for David O. Selznick. Selznick wanted an unknown sailor to play a small but prominent part in Since You Went Away (1944), and promptly signed Robert Moseley to a contract. Selznick and Willson concocted the screen name Guy Madison (the "guy" girls would like to meet, and Madison from a passing Dolly Madison cake wagon). Madison filmed his one scene on a weekend pass and returned to duty. The film's release brought thousands of fan letters for Madison's lonely, strikingly handsome young sailor, and at war's end he returned to find himself a star-in-the-making. Despite an initial amateurishness to his acting, Madison grew as a performer, studying and working in theatre. He played leads in a series of programmers before being cast as legendary lawman Wild Bill Hickok in the TV series Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1951). He played Hickok on TV and radio for much of the 1950s, and many of the TV episodes were strung together and released as feature films. Madison managed to squeeze in some more adult-oriented roles during his off-time from the series, but much of this work was also in westerns. After the Hickok series ended Madison found work scarce in the U.S. and traveled to Europe, where he became a popular star of Italian westerns and German adventure films. In the 1970s he returned to the U.S., but appeared mainly in cameo roles. Physical ailments limited his work in later years, and he died from emphysema in 1996. His first wife was actress Gail Russell.
