Читать книгу Clint Eastwood - The Biography of Cinema's Greatest Ever Star - Douglas Thompson - Страница 14

‘I’ve even learned from my screenwriters. When I produced Heartbreak Ridge and starred as Marine Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway, I say: “You improvise! You adapt! You overcome!” Helpful words to remember.’

CLINT EASTWOOD, 2003

THE way forward suddenly became very clear.

Clint had just turned 20 when the Korean War began on 25 June 1950. He knew he would be drafted but later said: ‘I guess I was interested in living a little first.’

And that meant San Francisco. He teamed up with several other footloose friends waiting to go into the army and they hit town. He’s proud of the time they had: ‘We enjoyed ourselves so much that by the time we reported for our physicals we were so exhausted and partied out that we thought we might fail our examinations. But we all made it.’

His love affair with Carmel was about to begin. And his infatuation with a girl that nearly cost him his life. Fort Ord is just another army camp – duty, discipline and dishwashing. Basic training was six weeks with no time off. But it was on the Monterey Peninsula and for that Eastwood will always be grateful. As he is that his father taught him to swim.

‘I had an idea I might learn something while I was in the army and they had what were called Division Faculty Classes. I went to see the captain in charge and told him about the different jobs I had had since I left school. He asked me if I could swim. “Sure,” I answered. He told me: “From this moment, Eastwood, you’re assigned to the swimming pool. As an instructor.”

‘There was already a lieutenant and four sergeants running the pool, so I can’t say the work was too tough. Suddenly everybody got shipped out to the front line – except me. I suppose my name just didn’t come out of the hat. So there I was, a 20-year-old private earning $76 a month in charge of an Olympic-size pool and organising all the classes. It was a great opportunity. I moved out of the barracks and bedded down in one of the small dormitories attached to the pool.

‘So long as I kept my nose clean and ran the place efficiently I was on my own. It was a real sweet set-up.

‘Come 6pm I’d knock off and go into Carmel and meet some girl. The money wasn’t much, so I decided to take a job at nights. Sure, buck privates weren’t supposed to take civilian jobs in their spare time – but there wasn’t anything in army regulations that said you couldn’t. I signed up to work a swing shift with the Spreckles Sugar Company in the Saunas Valley. For four months, when I’d finished my work at the pool I’d shoot across to the Spreckles place and load sugar sacks or do maintenance work or anything they wanted. What I hadn’t reckoned on was I’d need a little sleep now and then.

‘After four months I was the weariest swimming instructor in the army. I found myself falling asleep in the pool and drinking more water than was good for me. I figured I needed a change, so I found a job in the junior non-commissioned officers’ club. There were two other guys working there permanently, one behind the bar and the other on the floor to keep order, a bouncer. I quit the sugar factory and worked the NCO club, which was only a minute’s walk from the pool. It could be fairly wild in there. Maybe six or seven girls and 150 guys!

‘The men weren’t supposed to drink anything but beer, which was free, but a few of the smart guys would smuggle in some hard liquor and mix it in the beer. And that caused trouble. I had to bounce quite a few of them. Being big was a help.’

Eastwood never did get to Korea. But he nearly got killed anyway. For this time his size worked against him. He tells the story as though he were pitching a movie script: ‘It wasn’t the girl’s fault – she was real nice. I’d met her while visiting my folks in Seattle. I felt like seeing her again and mentioned it to a buddy who happened to be from Seattle. The problem was: how to get there and back on a weekend pass. Besides, there was the money involved.

‘He said he could fix it. He explained that if you were in the service and in uniform, the naval air station at Monterey would fly you wherever you were going, if they had an extra seat on the aircraft. So I got a pass and headed out to Monterey. Sure enough, I found a little reconnaissance plane – going up to Seattle. Yes, there was room for me. So I flew up in style. I saw my mother and father and Jeanne. Then I went out with this very nice girl. I felt like I’d had a great weekend when I took off for the air base to hitch a ride back.

‘There was nothing leaving for the south. I sat there, feeling dismal, trying to figure out what to do. The problem was: I had to fly back to get to camp in time – or I’d be AWOL. Dilemma: no money but a commercial air ticket. So I hung around asking every pilot in sight. Finally, I heard there was a naval torpedo bomber going to San Francisco. They didn’t have any seats, of course.

‘“Isn’t there anywhere I could hang on?” I demanded desperately.

‘“You could try the wings,” said one of the pilots.

‘He sized me up. “There’s just one chance,” he said. “But you’re too big to squeeze into the radar compartment.”

‘I’d have turned myself into a midget at that moment, if necessary. But my legs alone looked as if they would fill the radar compartment. This was a little cubbyhole in the tail, with a tiny door, a little porthole and a big panel of instruments. Nobody was actually supposed to fly in there; the door was just for maintenance men to service the plane. But with a little shoving and pushing, they got me wedged in.

‘Funny? Maybe. But it wasn’t funny a little later. Everything that could go wrong with that trip went wrong. First of all, the compartment door sprang open and I nearly fell out – I guess my bulk was putting a little strain on it. So there I was, a mile or so up and no parachute and holding on for dear life.

‘There was a little button you pushed to talk to the pilot, but the intercom wasn’t working right and although I could hear him, he couldn’t hear me. The pilot spotted the sprung door and warned me. He began shouting at me: “The door’s open, soldier! Shut the door if you don’t want to fall into the drink!” I kept yelling back at him, but he couldn’t hear me. I can’t say I was enjoying any of this – and even now, the thought is pretty grisly.

‘Anyhow, I yanked out a cable, and got it looped round the handle of the sprung door; that kept it mostly shut. It still left a gap, however – and if you want to feel really miserable, I suggest you spend a couple of hours contemplating a nice long drop the way I did.

‘Things got worse – fast! Before taking off, the pilot had warned me that he’d have to fly pretty high and I’d have to use the oxygen mask. As we climbed steadily, I put the mask to my face, only to discover it wasn’t working. I fiddled desperately with it and tried to tell the pilot – but he still couldn’t hear me. Last thing I remember before blacking out was him sending a message saying that although he could transmit, he couldn’t pick up anything, but giving his position, estimated height and flying speed and adding that he had about two and a half hours’ fuel left – plenty to reach California.

‘I remember nothing after that, except a kind of woozy, twilight feeling. Fortunately for me, the pilot’s oxygen supply started going out, too, so he had to lose altitude. It must have been an hour later when I became aware of what was going on again and I realised that we’d hit California. It was easy to recognise, because the whole place was socked in by fog. I could hear the pilot talking again. He was telling the base he couldn’t see anything, so he was going to hang out to sea a bit and see if he could get in under the clouds.

‘Our danger now was that if we stayed over land, we might crash into a mountain; the pilot had to stay low because of his oxygen. I wasn’t really worried yet; I had this feeling that if I’d got this far, I was going to survive. Then as we began circling round I remembered the fuel. I checked my watch and found it was about two and a half hours since the pilot had radioed that he had that much supply.

‘I think I felt a little panic right then. I had no way of communicating with the pilot. I didn’t know what kind of guy he was. Would he eject and save himself by parachute and leave me and the plane to go down together? I knew he had the canopy above his head open, because the cable controlling it ran back through my compartment. But I couldn’t figure I had much alternative except to hold on for dear life.

‘The pilot must have spotted a hole in the clouds, because we dipped suddenly and went down fast. Next moment, through the porthole, I saw we were over the sea. I could see the whole coast of California now – beaches, cliffs and mountains, the tops of the latter invisible because of the fog. What I couldn’t understand was why the pilot was flying over the water; why didn’t he make straight for the city airport? Only later – much later – did I learn that the guy knew he was out of fuel and might crash on the city before making the airport. It was our lives against those of several hundred citizens. So there we wallowed, a few hundred feet above the sea, about a mile off the coast.

‘And then the engine went – and it was a very deadening feeling indeed. You could hear the air whistling – and I was watching the water and the beaches and cliffs and particularly the cables leading to the pilot’s canopy; I sure wanted to know when he was going to leave the ship. I noticed he had the flaps down and realised he was going to come down in the water. I started wondering if the plane would float and began preparing for the moment we hit water, wedging myself in so that I would ride the shock.

‘I saw the water was rough – it was going to be no easy landing. And then we were bouncing and bouncing – like a pebble skimming over water, and the ocean was just shooting in all over the place. You had the feeling that one moment you were in the air and next in a submarine. And then we stopped. We stopped with our nose down and our tail in the air. I found myself standing on the instrument board. I whipped off the cable holding the door and stepped out on to the back of the wings. The pilot was climbing out of his canopy and he leaped and landed beside me. He looked at me.

‘Well, I hit the water and started to get out of there fast; I had an idea that if the plane started to sink, it would suck me down with it. So I just didn’t hang around. It was sunset when we’d come down – and now the twilight was settling and it was getting dark. There was a big swell and very soon we were separated. We shouted a couple of times – but we were a long way from the beach and we needed every ounce of breath we had; so it became every man for himself.

‘At certain times of the year, the Pacific gets full of phosphorus and you could tell where the beaches were because of the glow as the waves crashed on them. And then – almost the worst ordeal of all – I found myself in the middle of jellyfish! It was a creepy feeling. They were so close you could almost touch them, even see them in the phosphorous water. After all I’d been through, I didn’t feel like being stung to death by jellyfish. I just clawed my way through.

‘I don’t know how long it took me to hit the beach, finally. But it was an ordeal I never want to go through again. When I was close to shore, I had to struggle desperately, because of the fierce undertow. Even when I was no more than 20 feet from the beach, I wasn’t safe. I’d swim forward two feet and be carried back six. But, inch by inch, I made it, until finally I felt bottom under my feet.

‘I don’t know how long I lay unconscious on the beach, but when I came to I was probably a little delirious. I vaguely remember running up and down the beach looking for the lieutenant, shouting his name until I was hoarse. I started imagining that every rock uncovered by the sea seemed to be his body – and I kept dashing back and forth into the surf like a madman. For a time I consoled myself with the thought that he’d probably come in a little distance away. Then, as I went several hundred yards in each direction, looking for him, I felt certain he had drowned, poor guy.

‘I remember it was a peculiar contradictory feeling. I felt terribly depressed at this idea; yet strangely elated because it wasn’t me. Anyhow, in the end, a little crazy by now, I guess, I began wandering off. I was barefoot – so I stayed at the water’s edge rather than go inland. I went round some cliffs and there, about eight miles in the distance, I saw the lights of the radio communications relay station.

‘I don’t remember anything, except that I looked at that light and kept walking towards it. Later the guys at the RC station told me: “When you came through that door, buddy, you looked like a survivor of the Titanic.”’