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Battlefield to the Big Screen: The Real Stories of Hollywood's Heroes

By Lauren Giella Newsweek
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Hollywood has a type. A man alone against impossible odds, a single decision, made in seconds, that changes the outcome of a battle and then a war and a body that should not have survived and refused to quit. It’s the shape nearly every war movie follows.

You're probably familiar with it. But no screenwriter had to invent this archetype. It's the kind of story that recurs, over and over, in Medal of Honor citations. And so, it should come as no surprise that Medal of Honor stories sit at the center of Hollywood's best-known war sagas.

L-R Mike Minkler, Myron Nettinga and Chris Munro pose with their Oscars for best sound for the movie “Black Hawk Down” 24 March, 2002 at the 74th Academy Awards in Hollywood, CA. AFP PHOTO LEE CELANO (Photo by LEE CELANO / AFP)
L-R Mike Minkler, Myron Nettinga and Chris Munro pose with their Oscars for best sound for the movie “Black Hawk Down” 24 March, 2002 at the 74th Academy Awards in Hollywood, CA. AFP PHOTO LEE CELANO (Photo by LEE CELANO / AFP) LEE CELANO AFP via Getty Images

The first medal recipients, the Andrews' Raiders, had their dramatic Confederate train heist immortalized in 1956's The Great Locomotive Chase. Medal of Honor recipient Audie Murphy played himself in To Hell and Back (1955), reenacting his single-handed defense against German forces in France in 1945, then went on to star in 40 more films.

More recently, Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down(2001) depicts the single, brutal day in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993 when Delta Force snipers Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart held a position they knew couldn't be held in order to defend a downed helicopter pilot.

Audie Murphy, the most decorated war hero in the history of the United States reenacts some of his experiences in the European Theater of WWII in this scene from the upcoming movie To Hell And Back, an adaptation of his autobiography of the same name. Audie served 390 days in the front lines in Anzio, Sicily, France, the Rhine, the Colmar pocket, Nuremberg and Salzberg. He received 24 decorations in all including the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Audie Murphy, the most decorated war hero in the history of the United States reenacts some of his experiences in the European Theater of WWII in this scene from the upcoming movie To Hell And Back, an adaptation of his autobiography of the same name. Audie served 390 days in the front lines in Anzio, Sicily, France, the Rhine, the Colmar pocket, Nuremberg and Salzberg. He received 24 decorations in all including the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Not every one of these stories sticks to the Hollywood template. Desmond Doss, the medic who refused to carry a weapon and saved 75 soldiers under fire on Okinawa, is the hero of 2016's Hacksaw Ridge, starring Andrew Garfield, which inverts almost everything the genre is built on and went on to win two Academy Awards.

Hollywood didn't fall in love with the Medal of Honor because the stories are action-adventure (though they are that, too). It fell in love with them because they're true, and the men who lived them are real.

Medal of Honor Stories in Cinema

Through archival footage, reenactments, first-person interviews and star-studded performances, the courageous actions of these recipients have been illustrated in countless movies and TV series.

These are some of the places where audiences have seen Medal of Honor recipients on screen:

The General (1926)

The Fighting 69th (1940)

Sergeant York (1941)

Buffalo Bill (1944)

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

Captain Eddie (1945)

The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)

To Hell and Back (1955)

The Great Locomotive Chase (1956)

‘We Were Soldiers’ or ‘Nous étions soldats’ 2002 directed by Randall Wallace.
‘We Were Soldiers’ or ‘Nous étions soldats’ 2002 directed by Randall Wallace. Sunset Boulevard Sunset Boulevard

The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)

The Longest Day (1962)

The November Plan (1976)

MacArthur (1977)

In Love and War (1987)

Glory (1989)

Gettysburg (1993)

Rough Riders (1997)

Black Hawk Down (2001)

The Lost Battalion (2001)

Pearl Harbor (2001)

We Were Soldiers (2002)

Medal of Honor, documentary (2008)

The Pacific (2010)

Lone Survivor (2013)

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Medal of Honor, Netflix documentary (2018)

The Last Full Measure (2019)

Midway (2019)

Devotion (2022)

WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 13: (L-R) Producer Adam Del Deo, Rep. Gus Michael Bilirakis (R-FL), Medal of Honor Recipient Staff Sgt. Ty Carter, Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL), Medal of Honor Recipient Staff Sgt. Ron Shurer, and Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN) at the Netflix ‘Medal of Honor’ screening and panel discussion moderated by Meghan McCain at the US Navy Memorial Burke Theater on November 13, 2018 in Washington, DC.
WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 13: (L-R) Producer Adam Del Deo, Rep. Gus Michael Bilirakis (R-FL), Medal of Honor Recipient Staff Sgt. Ty Carter, Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL), Medal of Honor Recipient Staff Sgt. Ron Shurer, and Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN) at the Netflix ‘Medal of Honor’ screening and panel discussion moderated by Meghan McCain at the US Navy Memorial Burke Theater on November 13, 2018 in Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis Getty Images for Netflix

Read more in ourcover story about the Medal of Honor, our stories on theliving Medal of Honor recipients and the history of discrimination that delayed Medal of Honor recognition; and see our gallery of 250 recipients

2026 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.

This story was originally published July 1, 2026 at 2:00 AM.

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