A star runner, war hero, and survivor of 47 days at sea in a rubber raft and two years of torture in Japanese prison camps, Louis Zamperini, who has died aged 97, experienced the sort of life that was the stuff of Hollywood movies. And 71 years after he was declared killed in action in the Pacific, four years after Laura Hillenbrand's biography of him became a bestseller, Hollywood got the message. Angelina Jolie's film Unbroken, with Jack O'Connell playing Zamperini and a screenplay by Joel and Ethan Coen, will be released in December.
Zamperini was born in Olean, New York, to Italian immigrants who moved to Torrance, California, when he was three. He still had not learned English, and was bullied. His father, a labourer, taught him boxing, and Zamperini so enjoyed defeating his bullies that he became a young terror, in and out of trouble. Not until his older brother Pete talked him into joining the track team at Torrance high school were his energies directed into more constructive channels.
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