Modern Screen (Feb-Dec 1957)

the story of clint walker (Continued from page 70) hundred pounds. If he looked idle the mate sent him over the side to paint. Once, teetering on a roped plank, the boss told him, "I don't care what happens to you, but if you slip, don't come back aboard without that paintbrush!" Just then the ship rolled and the plank turned over. "I locked my legs around it and swung back and forth for a spell bumping my nose on the water," grins Clint. "But when I climbed up again I had that paintbrush!" He earned his papers after a few months and when he quit the mate told him, "You're a good man. You can work for me any time." But Clint wanted to work for Uncle Sam now that he had something to offer. So he hitched out to Seattle and signed on with the Army Transport Service. First trip he went North, up around Alaska and the frigid Aleutians, and for the next two years he sailed almost everywhere you can name hauling troops, war gear, oil, wheat and what have you on about every kind of tub. He hit North Africa and South Africa, South Europe and North Europe; he saw icebergs and tropical palms — and girls. Cave-man style "But I kept out of mischief," Clint grins. There was a reason, that pretty ice cream parlor girl in Alton. They'd had some dates before he left town and he wrote Verna love letters wherever he went. Not too many came back, and you couldn't blame Verna. A guy with an itch in his foot isn't what you'd normally tag husband material. But poor Clint — "I suffered," he says. By the war's end, he couldn't stand the suspense, so he hitch-hiked to Verna to settle things. They got settled, all right. Verna said, "No, you're not ready to marry— and I'm not sure I am either." But a man like Clint Walker doesn't fold up from one punch like that. He trailed Verna, and the misery got critical. "I was working sheet metal sixty feet above a concrete floor," recollects Clint. "I got to thinking about Verna and walked straight off a beam right out into the air. I grabbed a pipe in time, but it gave me the shakes. I figured that girl had to marry me right away to save my life!" He tried to explain this to Verna but she wouldn't listen. "We're gonna take a walk and talk this over," said the desperate lover, "if I have to drag you." Which is just what he had to do. A little girl spied the cave-man stuff and screamed, "Mama — look at that mean man!" That made Clint and Verna howl. They were married September 5, 1948, although Clint was an hour late at the church trying to get his Model-A revved up for a honeymoon. Then he put his trip money in an envelope and got so flustered he gave it all to the preacher and didn't dare ask for it back. On the way, the jalopy lost both bumpers, the generator burned out, three tires blew and they had to borrow $100 for the wedding trip. But the Walkers have no kicks about the honeymoon. The traveling Walkers Afterwards, with a baby on the way, Clint tried to settle down in Alton, selling insurance. But it didn't work. "You see," drawls Clint, "back home people like us live out a pretty dull pattern. They get a job, get married, raise a family and hope in maybe twenty years to own a little house. I was only twentyone but I figured on faster action." This time Verna figured with him, although from a strictly feminine slant. "When you love a man," she says, "you'll go anywhere with him — and it's home." Next home for the Walkers was Texas, where a sailor buddy of Clint's offered to cut him in on a ranch his dad owned. They rolled in the Model-A to Brownswood, with the motor warming milk for their six-month-old daughter, Valerie. But a drought promptly wrecked the ranch dream. Clint hammered houses together for a while, and prospected for silver until he went broke. That's when the Model-A paused briefly at that fateful fork in the road — then rattled off toward California. When you start toting up the jobs Clint Walker's had in his short life you need an adding machine. The guy's still got enough union cards — carpenter's, painter's, metal worker's, seaman's, laborer's, steeplejack's — and of course now a tv actor's — to fill out a deck. Ask him how many different things he's done and he can't tell you — "Maybe a hundred or more," is his best guess. But the one he found in Long Beach, California, you'd say, was the least likely of all to make him the idol of millions or land him on easy street. He became a cop. Pretty soon he heard about Las Vegas, the fabulous gambling town where, people told him, anything could happen and pay-checks were high. He put a down payment on a housetrailer and took off. The Walkers parked their trailer on three acres of homestead land in the desert and Clint barely had time to swear in as a deputy sheriff before they had him patrolling the casino at the famous Sands Leigh Snowden, who walked across the stage on a Jack Benny TV show and got famous (and a movie contract), did it all over again for Keenan Wynn's USO show at Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma. "Ten of the fliers took off immediately," Keenan told me, "without their planes." Sidney Skolsky in the New York Post Hotel. That was the beginning of the road to Hollywood. Van Johnson forced his hand. Headlining at the Sands for two weeks, Van, a friendly sort, got to admire Clint. One night he introduced him to an agent named Henry Willson. Henry's specialty is digging for diamonds in the rough for the movies — Rock Hudson, for instance, Rory Calhoun, Tab Hunter, Bob Wagner. He gave Clint a sales talk on Hollywood. That night Clint told Verna, "Maybe we ought to go down there and try our luck." Verna had been Mrs. Walker long enough to know that when her man got an idea, it was moving time. She packed the trailer and they took off. She found a car-hop job at a drive-in, and Clint prospected Hollywood. A whole show or nothing When you've never acted in your life, you've got to start somewhere. And pay to learn. Clint slaved with some drama coaches Henry Willson suggested. The going was expensive — $15 a lesson. Also mortifying: "I felt silly," confesses Clint. "It took a spell before I was sure I wasn't making a dam' fool of myself." After he got the hang of it a little he hit the studios, trying to break in on bits. "Bits?" they all laughed. "You really think any star's going to let you in a scene? Why, you'd crowd them out of the picture! A moose like you has to be the whole show or nothing!" They were dead right. When Clint finally connected as Cheyenne he was the whole show. But for a long time he was nothing. Ir fact, the only movie on Clint Walker', record is in DeMille's Ten Commandments. His muscles got him a job as Pharaoh Yul Brynner's bodyguard, $500 fo: two weeks work — and some acting lesson sneaked in on the side at Paramount. But that doesn't keep a family fed. Ii the Valley, where the Walkers had moved Verna took a waitress' job at the Rai Doll nightclub and Clint signed on a Warners as a gate cop. Then Henry Willson got him a trainee' contract and a few weeks later Clin shuffled over to Stage 5 to test, along wit! half the cowboy actors in Hollywood, fo a tv western. The western was Cheyenne Next day in a projection room, Jacl Warner stopped the reel when Clint' massive hulk loomed up. "Who's that? he asked, and they told him. "That's ou boy," he said. That was three years ago come nex May, and by now Clint Walker has mor or less settled into the unbelievable worl where his luck led him. "Longest job I ever had" It hasn't been all apple pie for Clin of course. When you shoot tv full-hou features, crammed with stunts and bon bruising battles, you're earning you dough. Clint has often worked from eigh o'clock one morning until 1: 30 the nex "Longest job I ever had in my life so far allows Clint. "And the hardest." He's settled in a little pink ranch house on an acre of land in the San Fei nando Valley. After he finished the panjob with Verna, he set up a workshop i the garage and started making his ow furniture. The first item was a king sized bed, no luxury with Clint! So far he hasn't seen the inside of Hollywood night club and isn't aiming t look — Clint doesn't smoke or drink an he'd just collect doctors' bills dancing o Verna's feet. His hobby is polishing stone that he picks up in the desert. When b gets a chance to relax it's by piling Vern and six-year-old Valerie, along with h Geiger counter, into his Chewy and tak ing off prospecting. They've got stuck i the sand a few times miles from nowher and Verna had visions of winding up pile of bleached bones. But each tinClint simply lifted the heap and tossed up on solid ground! Samson and the health food How Clint can work such Samsons — < keep alive, for that matter — on the foddi he eats is the biggest mystery. Verr shops in a Foods-For-Health market ar stacks her cupboards with jars of nul raisins and dried fruits. The whole Walk' family fives on a natural-food diet. Somi times Clint works all day on a bunch bananas and a sack . full of raisins, the rough days we had a pretty punk die\ he explains. "We figured now's the tin to catch up on the right vitamins." Ai other way he catches up is studying pow« of mind, positive thinking and faith boo —including the Bible. Why? "A lot of people in this world wa something better'n what they've go' drawls Clint Walker. "But they havei faith enough in themselves to go hunt f it. I try to live by the Ten Commam ments. But at the same time, if I' learned anything bumming around tl world, it's that life's a gamble. "The only thing," he adds reflective; "is that when you gamble you've got know when to stop." Which is CI Walker's way of saying that there is ■ end to that rainbow he's chased — and J figures at last he's found it. E Clint is in the Cheyenne series, pr sented by Warner Bros, for ABC-TV. ,