But Enough About Me: A Memoir

by Burt Reynolds

  Johnny was an entrepreneur and an investor who amassed a huge estate. He had his own apparel company and a large real estate portfolio, and at one time owned several TV stations. His company, Carson Productions, owned not only The Tonight Show but also The Late Show with David Letterman.

  He left most of his money to charity. A lot of people were surprised by that, but I wasn’t. All his adult life he had committed quiet acts of philanthropy. He’d see an item in the newspaper about someone in need and would anonymously send a check. And he never forgot where he came from: He made a series of gifts to his hometown of Norfolk, including a library, a museum, a football field, a gymnasium, a theater, a senior center, and a zoo. And he gave millions to the University of Nebraska.

  Before Johnny died, he created a $200 million charitable foundation that makes large contributions to a variety of causes. And, in case you’re wondering, he left multimillion-dollar trusts to his widow and two surviving sons.

  —

  JOHNNY ALWAYS HAD a lit cigarette within reach, even during the show. He puffed openly until the 1964 surgeon general’s report on the harmful effects of smoking; then he started hiding it. He had the habit of nervously drumming his cigarette, but replaced it with a pencil with erasers on both ends. He moved the ashtray to a shelf under the desk and had an exhaust fan installed. He’d wait to inhale until the camera was on the guest, but sometimes, coming back from a commercial, he’d get caught sneaking one last drag. He didn’t seem to worry about the hazards of smoking. Whenever the subject came up, he’d say, “Maybe I should check in to one of those places where they shock you or show you reruns of Gilligan’s Island to make you quit smoking.” I guess he was in denial. Maybe he thought that his genes would protect him—both his parents had lived well into their nineties. And he rationalized: “I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food,” Johnny said. “He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.”

  Johnny died from emphysema at seventy-nine. According to his wishes, there was no memorial service. Years before, when someone asked what he wanted for his epitaph, he said, “I’d prefer not to have one at all, but okay, something like, ‘I’ll be right back.’”

  Since his death, things have been written portraying Johnny as a monster. That’s not the man I knew. I think he was a national treasure, and his contribution wasn’t fully appreciated until after he was gone. Only then did we begin to realize that he was a bigger part of our lives than we’d thought. Off-camera he may have been difficult at times, but I didn’t see that side of him. I saw only a generous, loyal friend.

  Destaphanado

  Clint Eastwood and I both went to Italy to make spaghetti Westerns during the 1960s. He got Sergio Leone and a trilogy of pictures that made him an international star. I got Sergio Corbucci and Navajo Joe (1966).

  Dino De Laurentiis was the producer. He was an old-school movie mogul with eyes like a cobra. Crystal green. The most dangerous eyes I ever saw. He was very smart and very persuasive. He could charm you into doing anything, and if that didn’t work he’d break your legs. But we got along fine. I think he liked me because I didn’t act like I was afraid of him.

  I’d never heard of the director, Sergio Corbucci. He gave a cocktail party at his house the night before we started shooting and all the top actors in Italy were there. He held court and was very funny. I decided I liked him.

  I spent years playing the third Indian from the left. I never got a funny line. I just took my shirt off as I got shot. I’ve played every Native American but Pocahontas, and I hated Navajo Joe because he was such a stereotype. Corbucci’s idea of the way he would talk was, “You come. Follow.”

  My dad had Native American blood. By the time it got down to me there wasn’t much left, but I was proud of what there was. I had the writers change the dialogue in Sam Whiskey because I found it insulting. I’ve had to do that in several Westerns over the years, and Native Americans have thanked me for playing them with dignity.

  The first day on the set the costume guy chopped up a ratty old wig and glued it on my head. It was the worst wig I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something. It made me look like Natalie Wood. My grandmother was Cherokee and my mother was Italian, which is probably why half of me wants to grow hair and the other half doesn’t.

  When I was working at Universal, I went into makeup one day and there was Ray Milland having a hairpiece fitted. He was walking around in the hallway being funny and charming . . . with no hair. I thought, My God, that’s brave. I’d been a big fan ever since The Lost Weekend (1945), and watching him joke about his baldness gave me a whole new respect for him and a sense of how to handle myself in a similar situation.

  I started wearing a hairpiece in the middle of Hawk, and it was just awful. I was asked to do a test for a movie and the assistant director who was interviewing me said, “Why do you wear that awful rug?”

  “Because I had a good one and nobody asked me any stupid questions,” I said.

  One night I went on the Carson show and Johnny said, “Oh, you’re going gray,” and I grabbed it and said, “You want it?”

  I’ve always been frank about my hair because if you deny it, you’re fooling yourself. Everybody else will do jokes about it. It’s better if you do the jokes first. When somebody asks me if I wear a hairpiece I say, “Of course! Do you think I’m crazy? But I take it off at night to let my head breathe.”

  Women have been great about it, and if they compliment me on it, I say, “Sure, you’re just trying to get me to take the damn thing off.”

  But the reaction from men hasn’t always been positive. One night in a bar in New York some idiot came over and made a crack about a “pelt” on my head and I said, “If you can get it off before I beat the shit out of you, you can have it.”

  The mustache is a different story. I had to grow it for 100 Rifles in 1968. That was fine, because I was tired of hearing that I looked like Brando. It got lots of compliments, so I decided to keep it.

  I shaved it off one night on The Tonight Show when Steve Martin was the guest host. Steve is multitalented, of course. And of course he’s funny and of course he’s bright. Since his start doing magic tricks at Disneyland when he was in high school, he’s been a juggler, a comedy writer, a stand-up comic, a film and stage actor, a screenwriter, a producer, a novelist, a playwright, a musician, an art collector, and a tweeter (whatever that is).

  But before I went on that night, I wasn’t sure about Steve. I knew Johnny would always hit the ball back over the net, but I’d never met Steve, so I thought about being a little more outrageous with him.

  “I’ve been thinking about shaving off the mustache,” I said.

  “You don’t have the guts!” he said.

  I called for a razor and they brought out an electric. Shaving off a mustache with an electric razor is like pulling the hairs out with tweezers. (Not that I know what that feels like.) I shaved half of it off and put the mirror in the middle and asked the audience to vote. They liked the mustache better. Of course I had to shave the other half off in that moment, and then couldn’t wait for it to grow back. I’ve kept it ever since, and it’s so much a part of me now, if I shave it off, I feel like I’ve lost my nose.

  Steve and I got to be pretty good friends after that. When I won a Photoplay Award in 1978, I asked him to present it, and he was so funny and charming, it couldn’t have been better.

  —

  ON THE FIRST DAY shooting Navajo Joe, I had to choose a mount from a corral full of horses. The wrangler was a Spanish Gypsy named Mahan. He rode up on an old, swaybacked thing that looked like Don Quixote’s horse. His ears were bent down and he didn’t have a mane or a tail. But he had a kind of pride about him.

  “Which horse do you like?” Mahan said.

  “I’ll take the one you’re on,” I said.

  “Ah, but he is my horse.”

  “I know,
but he’s the one I want.”

  “As you wish,” he said. “His name is Destaphanado.”

  My dad put me on a horse when I was eight and I’d been riding ever since. In those days I could scissor a horse—just step up and pfffft, I was on his back. So I jumped on Destaphanado, whipped him around, and rode off. He didn’t need a saddle or reins, I steered him with my knees. You always know right away when you get on a horse. He felt like Powerglide.

  I thought an Indian should have a pinto, so I told the makeup man to get some water-based paint and put spots on Destaphanado, and give him a thick mane and a tail down to the ground. When I came to work the next morning, he looked like Ricardo Montalbán.

  I think he somehow knew that I was responsible for his makeover, because he walked a little taller and he let me do anything with him. There was a stunt where I had to ride next to a moving train and step onto it. Most horses will not run against a train, but old Destaphanado took me right up to it and the transfer was smooth as silk. I could see him looking backward to see what happened to me.

  Sergio Corbucci was all about body count. He thought that making a great Western involved killing a lot of people. He figured that if I killed more people than Clint Eastwood, Navajo Joe would make more money than A Fistful of Dollars. By the end of the first week I’d done so many stunts and killed so many people, I asked Corbucci to put in a love scene just so I could have a rest. He laughed and said, “We make American Western-a better. We take out love scenes and-a talk.”

  Before I left for Italy I’d done the pilot for Hawk. The producer, Renée Valente, called and said, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is the pilot sold. The bad news is, you’ve got to be back here in a week.” I had three weeks left on Navajo Joe, but they had to release me under the contract.

  Sergio was a good sport. “Okay,” he said, “We kill-a people faster.”

  I shot everybody in sight. I shot fourteen people in one scene. We got down to twelve guys and I had one day left on the picture. We were stumped on how to kill them in a different way until Sergio’s eyes lit up and he said, “Dy-no-mite-a!”

  The next day, as I was leaving to go back to the States, I asked the driver to stop the car. I rolled down the window and whistled, and Destaphanado trotted over. With tears in my eyes, I got out of the car and kissed him on the forehead.

  Clint Eastwood

  Clint Eastwood is one of the great filmmakers of all time. In the last fifty years, as an actor-producer-director, Clint has created a staggering body of work, in both quantity and quality. The Dirty Harry pictures of the 1970s and ’80s made him a top box-office draw. He single-handedly revived the Western with Hang ’Em High (1968), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Pale Rider (1985), and Unforgiven (1992), one of the greatest Westerns ever made. And just to show he could handle any genre, he threw in a psychological thriller, Play Misty for Me (1971); action comedies like Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980); a prison film, Escape from Alcatraz (1979); a suspense thriller, Tightrope (1984); an action thriller, In the Line of Fire (1993); a romantic drama, The Bridges of Madison County (1995); the sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004); and war films like Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) and American Sniper (2014).

  And he makes it look easy. He’s so relaxed on the set that people think he’s about to doze off, but that’s just a game he plays. What he really does is go into his bus and do his homework. He knows what he wants and how to get it. He also saves the studio more money than any ten directors because he’s good with actors.

  Clint and I have been friends since the 1950s, when we were both under contract at Universal. One day an executive called us in and released us both. The guy said Clint’s Adam’s apple stuck out too far.

  “What about me?” I said.

  “You can’t act,” he said.

  We were walking through the studio gate when I told Clint, “You’re in a lot of trouble.”

  “Why?” he said.

  “Because,” I said, “I can learn to act.”

  —

  CLINT LIVES QUIETLY, and he’s very private. It was a long time before he even invited me to his house for dinner. There was another guest there who asked me how long I knew Clint.

  “You first,” I said.

  “I went to high school with him,” he said.

  “I’ve known him for fifteen years,” I said.

  “Fifteen years?” he said. “Nobody’s ever been invited after only fifteen years.”

  One Christmas I gave Clint a basset hound because I thought it would be a perfect dog for him. He fell in love with it and named it Grunk. I have no idea what that means. They were perfect together. When Clint went to work, he’d throw Grunk in the car and take him along. Nobody ever worried about him screwing up the take by barking or whatever. He’d just flop down and watch Clint with adoring eyes.

  I won’t say Clint was shy, but in those days he only said about nine words a year. And he did have a bit of a temper. When it came out, you had to give him a wide berth. Like the time we were sitting at a bar and a woman came over and said something to him that he didn’t like. I don’t know what it was because I was talking to somebody else and Clint and I were back to back. I turned around just in time to see her pour a beer over his head.

  He didn’t say anything. He just stood up, picked up a beer, and poured it over her head. And then he picked up another one, and another, and another. He poured four or five beers all over her. Then he said, “I’ll see you later,” and walked out.

  Nobody in the place said a word.

  By this time the woman was crying and she said, “Doesn’t anybody here have any balls?”

  “Apparently not,” I said.

  —

  WHEN I WAS a teenager in Riviera Beach, we used to go to Palm Beach in the summer, when all the rich Yankees were gone. Their winter homes were boarded up, and we’d sneak into them. We didn’t steal or destroy anything, we just brought our Pepsi and portable radios and danced. We were intimate with the homes of Doris Duke, Porfirio Rubirosa, and with Mar-A-Lago, the palace on Palm Beach Island owned by Marjorie Merriweather Post. Years later, Mrs. Post asked me to a party there, and when I arrived she said, “Let me show you around,” and I said, “No, let me show you around.”

  One thing I noticed about wealthy people’s homes was that they had lots of paintings on the walls. Paintings came to represent success to me. There was a Western artist named Olaf Wieghorst, who’s mentioned along with Frederic Remington and Charles Russell as one of the great painters of the American West. He was a wonderful colorist and had a great eye for composition. Wieghorst was both a man of action and an artist. At age nine he’d been a circus rider in his native Denmark, and when he came to America he joined the U.S. Cavalry and rode against Pancho Villa. After a stint as a mounted policeman in New York, he settled in Southern California to paint full-time.

  I’ve always loved Western art, and when I first came to Hollywood, I went to his studio and said, “Mr. Wieghorst, I’d love to have one of your paintings, but I’m just starting out and I don’t think I can afford one. I was wondering if you could paint something for me. Maybe a tiny little Indian? And don’t charge me for the clouds?”

  He laughed and said, “Well, son, how much do you think that would be worth?”

  And I said the most money I could think of. “A thousand dollars?”

  “Done!” he said.

  I scraped up the thousand bucks and he sent me a small painting of a tiny Indian standing under fluffy white clouds floating in a pale blue sky, with a plaque on the bottom that read: Olaf Wieghorst. No Charge for the Clouds.

  About five years later, after I’d made a bunch of movies and my career was going strong, I learned that Clint owned a Russell and I was jealous. I decided I’d get a Remington, who was famous for his dynamic horses and vivid colors. I was doing pretty
well in the picture business and had a few bucks, so I went into a gallery and asked if they had a Remington.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said. “We have one Remington.”

  It was magnificent.

  “How much is it?” I asked.

  “A million two,” he said.

  “I don’t like it!” I said.

  He called around and located a Remington for sale for $80,000 and I bought it sight unseen while I was away on location. After the picture wrapped, I flew back to L.A. and raced home from the airport to see my new painting. I dropped my bags in the hallway and ran into the living room. The picture was so dark I could barely see it on the wall. It was the only picture Remington ever did in black and white. No cowboys, no horses, just a couple of mangy goats and a skinny little Indian in the background who looked like Gandhi.

  The next time Clint came to the house, he squinted at it and said, “Who the hell did that?”

  —

  TWENTY YEARS LATER and thirty years after we met, Clint and I still hadn’t worked together, and I was looking forward to making City Heat (1984). It was Clint’s project all the way. Blake Edwards was set to direct, but for some reason Clint didn’t feel he was right. I thought Blake would have been good, but Clint was adamant. Dick Benjamin took over, but I don’t think Clint spoke to him the whole time. I thought Dick was a good guy, and he’d just directed a wonderful picture called My Favorite Year. But he wasn’t somebody who was going to direct Clint Eastwood because he was scared to death of him.

  The first night of shooting was magical. The timing was perfect, the jokes were working, and everyone was having fun. The last shot of the night was a fight scene. I was supposed to get hit in the head with a breakaway chair, but the guy grabbed a metal chair by mistake and caught me flush on the jaw. I went down, but my first impulse was to shake it off, so I got up and finished the scene.