Morgan was very severely injured and nearly died while performing a
stunt during the shooting of
How the West Was Won (1962). During the filming of a gunfight
that takes place on a moving railroad flatcar loaded with logs, one of
the chains that held the logs snapped, and Morgan was crushed by the
falling timber and lost a leg. It took him five years to recover from his injuries.
His wife, actress
Yvonne De Carlo, put her career on hold in order to nurse him
back to health.
