"[13] While stationed at Quantico, George was a passenger in an aircraft flown by one of AES-12's officers[13] The weather was clear and sunny that day when both of the engines failed at approximately 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above the Carolinas.

[14] During the Korean War, George commanded a Marine Corps crash boat,[15] and served as gunner aboard the type of rescue aircraft used to fly wounded out of Korea.

[16][17] He completed a three-year enlistment with the Marines and stayed for an additional year, before requesting an honorable discharge and returning home to Miami.

[23] George held down a variety of jobs before he began acting for a living, including working as a private investigator and as a bartender in a Miami bar.

[22] The inn in Stockton where he worked for five months during a break from college had been owned by his late uncle for seven years and was off-limits to Marines.

[22] Before graduating from the University of Miami, he had a job lined up with a big investment company; however he instead turned to acting after completing a vocational test battery that indicated that he should work in drama.

His big break came when he was working as a bouncer at a New York waterfront bar and producer Robert Rafelson convinced him to begin an acting career.

[1] Small theater productions in which he appeared while he was studying drama included All My Sons, The Moon Is Blue, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Stalag 17 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

[26] Under drama coach Wynn Handman, he landed a sixteen-week engagement in the play Mr. Roberts with actor Hugh O'Brian; parts in Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams works followed.

George and Wayne became friends while shooting the film and would co-star in additional Westerns, including Chisum (1970) and The Train Robbers (1973).

From 1966 to 1968 over the course of two seasons and 58 episodes, George played the lead role of Sergeant Sam Troy on The Rat Patrol.

The television series followed the exploits of four Allied soldiers who were part of a long range desert patrol group in the North African campaign during World War II.

[35] Doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in California were able to determine that his back had been badly sprained, not fractured, as they had initially feared.

[36] George also joined actor Lawrence P. Casey on a USO tour of Vietnam, Japan and Thailand, which lasted for almost a month and which started on November 12, 1967, and went into December 1967.

[40] While in Vietnam, he did not confine himself to the rear echelon, but instead pressed his escorts to allow him to go as far out into the field as they would permit; at one time, they were even pinned down by the Viet Cong.

[41] The visit, to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, was arranged by Johnny Grant, a Hollywood radio personality who had taken troupes of performers to Vietnam; during the visit George and some of the actresses, including his future wife Lynda Day, spent over an hour with a wounded veteran who had been previously uncommunicative and got him to talk.

[42] Following the cancellation of The Rat Patrol, George played the lead role in several genre films of the 1960s, including Tiger by the Tail (1968, released in 1970) co-starring Tippi Hedren.

The Devil's 8 (1969) co-starring Fabian and Mickey Spillane's The Delta Factor (1970), directed by Tay Garnett who co-wrote the film with Raoul Walsh.

In addition, he starred in an unsold series pilot, Escape with Avery Schreiber and Huntz Hall, which ABC released in 1971 as a television movie.

[45] He continued his television work throughout the 1970s with guest roles on many popular series, including Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, Police Story, S.W.A.T., Charlie's Angels, and Fantasy Island.

[46] In 1976, he played a supporting role as Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky in the all-star World War II epic Midway.

[52] George first met actress Lynda Day in New York where they were doing a fashion layout; prophetically, she was modeling the bride's outfit and he was the groom.

[58] According to White, although George was not a biological relation of hers, her mother grew up with his family and, years later in Los Angeles, he and his wife took her under their wing.

[59] George died of a heart attack at age 52 in the late evening of November 28, 1983, at Westside Hospital in Los Angeles.