He made his motion picture debut and had his most significant role, that of Ensign Willie Keith, in The Caine Mutiny (1954), alongside Humphrey Bogart, Fred MacMurray, Van Johnson, and José Ferrer.
He was then loaned to MGM in order to appear in Tribute to a Bad Man and was scheduled to travel to the film location in Wyoming to begin filming, a journey he would sadly never make.