college football player in Over the Goal (1939); and reporters in Knute Rockne, All American (1940), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Hopper became an actor because his mother expected it of him. "When I worked at Warner Bros.," Hopper said, "I was so scared I stuttered all the time." Military service and postwar career Hopper served with the United States Navy during World War II, as a volunteer with the Office of Strategic Services and as a member of the newly created Underwater Demolition Team. He received a Bronze Star and several other medals during operations in the Pacific. For eight years after the war, Hopper became involved in business and sold cars in Hollywood. He combined car sales and acting when opportunities came up during the advent of television. "I didn't even think about acting much until a friend, director Bill Wellman, asked me to do a part in The High and the Mighty," Hopper recalled. 1950s–1970s In 1953, director William Wellman persuaded Hopper to resume his movie career with his 1954 film, The High and the Mighty, opposite Jan Sterling. Before filming began, Hopper challenged Wellman because he suspected his mother had arranged the offer. "When it appeared Wellman was serious, I asked him if he knew whose son I was. He ignored me," Hopper recalled. "I was so lousy, so nervous, I didn't even know where the camera was. But somehow Billy got me through. Afterward, I thanked him. He said, 'Thank me, my foot. After this, you're going to be in every picture I make.' I didn't believe him." Hopper subsequently appeared in two of Wellman's films, Track of the Cat (1954) and Good-bye, My Lady (1956). Hopper was cast to star opposite Claire Trevor in the live television drama, "No Sad Songs for Me", broadcast April 14, 1955, on NBC's Lux Video Theatre. He had such stage fright, he initially cancelled: "I swore I'd never act again as long as I lived," Hopper recalled. "Then I thought, what the heck, they can't shoot me, and walked on the set. Something happened then. It was as if someone had surgically removed the nerves." At last comfortable on screen, Hopper played the stern and emotionally distant father of Natalie Wood in the James Dean classic, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and the absentee father in The Bad Seed (1956). He starred in the