Early Life
Drake was born in a small town outside of Richmond, Virginia. He traced his family's roots in Virginia back to 1638. When he was 10-years-old, he moved with his family to California, after his father had developed an incurable skin condition. They settled in Manhattan Beach. Eleven years later, he found himself working as a contract player for RKO.
During World War II Drake joined the United States Marine Corps. He was one of Carlson's Raiders at Guadalcanal who were surrounded by the Japanese. Drake was wounded and was sent home for an operation on his knee at the Naval Hospital in San Diego, California. At the end of 1943, he was transferred to the Long Beach Naval Hospital.
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Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Young, and so thin, and so straight.
So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
But poor men would bend her, and doing things with poor men,
Being much in bed, and babies would bend her over,
And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)