The New York "method" actor was 23 when he was signed by MGM to play the toughest of the hoods in the high school drama "The Blackboard Jungle". His menacing performance led to a role in "Tribute to a Bad Man" (also 1955), but Morrow--at the tail-end of the studio system--had to settle for freelancing thereafter. He made only seven films in the next six years, including "Hell's Five Hours" (1957), the Elvis Presley musical "King Creole" and "God's Little Acre" (both 1958), the remake of "Cimarron" (1960) and his first starring role, as Dutch Schultz in "Portrait of a Mobster" (1961).
Morrow opted for the relative security of TV, taking a co-starring role (as Sgt. Chip Saunders, the hard-boiled leader of a WWII US Army platoon) in "Combat". Morrow directed a few episodes, and after the show went off the air also helmed a few off-Broadway shows, eventually adapting, co-producing and directing a film version of Genet's prison psychodrama "Deathwatch" (1966). Morrow concentrated on acting thereafter, though his occasional directing duties included the western "A Man Called Sledge" (also screenplay, 1970) and the pilot for the medical drama "Quincy, M.E." (NBC, 1976).
In front of the camera, Morrow appeared in 22 TV-movies and miniseries, generally in gruff supporting roles (often as either a criminal or a cop). These included the crime drama "A Step Out of Line" (his first TV-movie, CBS, 1971), as Injun Joe in "Tom Sawyer" (CBS, 1973), the Orson Welles biopic "The Night That Panicked America" (ABC, 1975), the miniseries "Captains and the Kings" (NBC, 1976), "Roots" (ABC, 1977), "The Last Convertible" (NBC, 1979), and the failed police pilot "B.A.D. Cats" (ABC, 1980), which also featured a young Michelle Pfeiffer.
On the big screen, Morrow's roles were mostly in low budget and/or foreign features, many of them crime dramas, horror films, or Westerns, including "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" (1974), "Message from Space" (1978), "Humanoids from the Deep" (1980) and "L'Ultimo Squalo" (1981). One of his few big-budget film appearances was as a bad-sport dad in "The Bad News Bears" (1976).
Morrow was cast as a bigot who finds himself in war-torn Vietnam in the John Landis-directed segment of "Twilight Zone-The Movie". On July 23, 1982, Morrow was running through a swamp set, carrying two illegally-hired child extras, when a stunt helicopter crashed. All three performers died instantly; Morrow was decapitated. The actor, who was divorced from screenwriter Barbara Turner, was survived by two daughters, including the actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. Director Landis was tried for involuntary manslaughter; after a very public five-year trial, he was acquitted in 1987.