Charles Fernley Fawcett Charles Fernley Fawcett ( 2 December 1915 – 3 February 2008 ) was a wrestler , resistance worker , soldier , airman , film star , film maker , and co - founder of the International Medical Corps . He was a recipient of the French Croix de Guerre and the American Eisenhower medal . Early life . Charles Fernley Fawcett was born in Waleska , Georgia , where his mother had been caught in a snow storm and died when he was six . His family was of old Virginian stock , whose family tree included Thomas Jefferson and James Madison . Having been orphaned at an early age , Fawcett and his younger brother and two sisters grew up in Greenville , South Carolina , in the care of their aunt . Here he attended Greenville high school for three years where he learned to wrestle and play American football . Aged 15 , Fawcett became involved in an affair with his best friend ' s mother . He remarked " If that ' s child molestation , I would wish this curse on every young boy . " The end of the affair made Fawcett contemplate suicide , and he left the United States to travel to the far East , working his passage on a number of steamships . By 1937 he had returned to America , and Fawcett stayed for a time in New York , before making his way to Washington D . C . , where he was taken in by his cousin , who happened to be an assistant United States Postmaster General . Here he ended up wrestling to make a living . Then in 1937 he boarded a ship outside Montreal bound for France , where he worked as an artist ’ s model and again as a wrestler . World War II . After the outbreak of World War II he tried to join US Intelligence but his services were declined , so he briefly joined the Section Volontaire des Américains - the ambulance corps . He was on his way to North Africa to join the Free French when he heard about Varian Fry , who would go on to rescue over 2 , 000 Jews from Vichy France with the help of a handful of people , Fawcett among them . Among the most famous people they rescued were Franz Werfel , Marc Chagall , Heinrich Mann and Hannah Arendt . “ I went to see him and he wasn ’ t very interested until I told him I ’ d been a professional wrestler . He said , ‘ Maybe we could use you to sort of keep order . Anybody who ’ s not supposed to be there , you can get rid of them ’ , ” Fawcett recalled in an interview with Dr Stephen D Smith in 1998 . “ Fry was perhaps one of the most idealistic men I had ever known and certainly the most unassuming . We got rid in a hurry of his little bow - tie and striped suit . Out of place completely in Marseilles . Maybe one of the reasons he got away with a lot was because he looked so innocent . ” Towards the end of the war , Fawcett married six Jewish women in three months . This enabled the women , who had formerly been imprisoned in concentration camps , to leave France with an American visa . Eventually , he had to flee France at several hours ’ notice after a tip - off that the Gestapo was coming to arrest him . Having left France , he flew in the RAF and later fought with the French Foreign Legion . Post - war . After the war , he pursued a cinematic career , in which he performed in over 100 films , working with such stars as Errol Flynn , Alan Ladd , and Robert Taylor . He combined this with smuggling refugees to safety from civil conflict , organizing earthquake relief teams , fighting in several wars , and co - founding the International Medical Corps . Fawcett ' s first wife , with whom he had a daughter , died in 1956 . In 1991 , he married again , when after a 30 year engagement he married April Ducksbury , a British model agency executive , and settled in London . In 1979 he went to assist in training the Mujahideen in Afghanistan , who were fighting the Soviet Union . Film footage he shot whilst in Afghanistan was critical in securing American aid to the Mujahideen . He spent the rest of his life in Chelsea , London with his wife April Ducksbury . Here he acquired a taste for music , and wrote songs . In 2006 , Fawcett was nominated for recognition as Righteous Among the Nations at the annual British Holocaust commemoration . Charles Fawcett died on February 3 , 2008 in London , England at the age of 92 .