Something did happen during the time we were filming Twins that dampened my sunny mood, although it had nothing to do with either the movie or US politics. In February the News of the World, a London tabloid, ran a front-page story about me headlined “Hollywood Star’s Nazi Secret.”
The story attacked me, but the focus was my father. It claimed that he’d been a Nazi and a member of the SS, and that he’d rounded up homosexuals and Jews for the concentration camps. It called me “a secret admirer” of Hitler and claimed that I took part in the neo-Nazi movement and held “fervent Nazi and anti-Semitic views.”
Normally I would just blow off criticisms, but I’d never been libeled about something so serious. I knew I would have to respond. My first move after talking to lawyers and publicists was to call the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, whom I’d met before in Aspen. He listened as I explained that the story was false. “I would appreciate it if you don’t print it in America,” I said. “And I would appreciate it if the paper would publish an apology and say that it was a mistake, they got the wrong information. That’ll be the end of it. Mistakes can be made.”
“Well,” said Murdoch, “my guys over there tell me that they did a very thorough investigation. And if it is true, then I don’t think anyone should apologize. But in the meantime, I can promise you that I won’t print it here.”
“I’m not blaming you for every story in all your papers and outlets,” I emphasized. “But I want to bring to your attention that this is an injustice. Please look into it.” Rupert was as good as his word; he never did publish the story in his US publications or report it on his new Fox TV network. But nothing else happened. And while my lawyers sent a formal letter demanding a retraction and prepared to sue, other journalists started asking for my response.
I was in a very uncomfortable position. I knew that what the story said about me was false, but what about the accusations against my father? I thought they must be wrong, but what did I really know? There had been so little conversation at home about the Second World War. I truly had no idea.
So I decided to call my friend Rabbi Marvin Hier at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “I need your help,” I told him. “I know you have a system for tracking down war crimes. Could you check out my father’s war record? I want to know, Was he a Nazi? And second, did he belong to the SS? What was he in charge of during the war? Did he commit any war crimes—actively or passively? Did he do any of those things?”
“Arnold,” the rabbi said, “within a week or two I’ll have everything, because we have access to all the papers.” He called his people in Germany and maybe even the great Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal himself in Vienna, whom I met later. After three or four weeks, he came back with the information. He said, “Your father had the Nazi party membership card, but there is no evidence of any killing or war crimes on your father’s part, against homosexuals or Jews or anyone else.
“He was a sergeant, not in a position to order such acts without the authority of an officer. There is no indication that there was such an order given.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent that information officially so that it could be used in court.
As for the News of the World’s allegations against me, Simon Wiesenthal himself wrote a letter to the court stating that there was no evidence whatsoever to back them up. Having those statements, together with the tabloid’s inability to produce facts to support its story, made it clear that its sources were unreliable. It took many months in court, but the tabloid eventually published a total retraction and paid substantial damages in an out-of-court settlement. The money went to the Special Olympics in Great Britain.
The Twins shoot wrapped just before Easter 1988, in the middle of the presidential primary season. Vice President Bush had been fighting hard battles. Even though he had Reagan’s endorsement, he lost some of the early primaries to Bob Dole. That’s because many people regarded Bush as Reagan’s shadow: what Austrians would call his Waschlappen, or dishrag. I knew the vice president from my visits to the White House. He was always very gracious, a real mensch, and he had his act together because of the important positions he had held previously, such as UN ambassador and director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Contrary to the Democrats’ spin on him, he had tremendous strength of character and will. But of course political campaigns are unfair. You look for vulnerability in your opponent; some flaw that you can make stick. The Democrats knew very well that Bush was fulfilling his office just as the Constitution meant the vice president to do: by supporting the president and standing ready to step in and lead if necessary. But they gained ground at the start by calling him weak. Bush battled back, and by the time we finished shooting, he’d dominated the primaries on Super Tuesday and had the nomination sewed up.
I followed the presidential campaigns that year with great interest and accepted happily when I was invited to take part in the Republican National Convention in New Orleans in August. My assignment was to add celebrity power to one of the “caucus teams” of Reagan administration officials and Bush supporters whose job it was to glad-hand the state delegations and chat them up on key issues.
I’d been to Republican conventions before, but this was the first since I’d married a Shriver. Maria and I believed that we should continue as we always had: she would go to the Democratic convention and to gatherings for all the things she believed in, and she would cover Republicans as a journalist, and I would keep going to the Republican convention. But we needed to be careful to avoid unnecessary controversy. Everything went well in New Orleans until my friend and trapshooting buddy Tony Makris, the PR guru of the National Rifle Association, mentioned that the NRA was holding a brunch in honor of Texas Senator Phil Gramm—would I like to stop by? I’d gotten to know Gramm well by then. When I showed up the next morning, other celebrities were there also, but the reporters converged on me. The Kennedys, having endured two tragic political assassinations, were very antigun, so what was I doing at an NRA reception? I hadn’t even thought about it. If I had, I would have been sensitive enough not to attend this NRA event. They also asked, as a Kennedy by marriage, was I supporting the NRA? What was my position on automatic weapons? Saturday night specials? Sniper rifles? Cop-killing bullets? I didn’t know how to respond. I belonged to the NRA because I believed in the constitutional right to bear arms, but I hadn’t thought through all those issues and details. There was even a question about my very presence at the 1988 Republican National Convention: was it some kind of statement in defiance of the Kennedy family? The truth was that none of the Kennedys cared, particularly not Sargent or Eunice, who depended on support from both parties for their programs and had Republican lawmakers over to their house. But I realized that the NRA was a bigger issue, and I left the brunch before the speakers even began. I was just dropping by, and I didn’t want my presence there to become the story. I’d come to the convention to support George Bush, and I wanted them to write about that rather than guns.
I needed to regroup. The swarm of attention and publicity surrounding Maria’s family was something I was still getting used to. This was the first time I’d really felt its sting. It was a blessing and a distraction, much more intense than what usually comes with stardom. I attended the rest of the Republican convention but skipped the meetings of my caucus group with the individual state delegations.
The contest that autumn between George Bush and the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, boiled down to the whether or not Americans approved of the course that Reagan had set. Just before the election, the vice president himself invited me to campaign with him and introduce him at some rallies. By now Bush had a decisive lead over Dukakis in the polls—something like 55 percent to 38 percent, with 4 percent undecided—so my job was just to help attract crowds and maintain the momentum. But I leaped at the chance; I wasn’t going to turn down a trip in Air Force Two!
We hit Ohio, Illinois, and New Jersey a few days before the election. Peggy Noonan was o
n the plane to help out during the closing days of the campaign. She was the brilliant speechwriter who’d written many of Reagan’s great speeches. She’d also written the powerful acceptance speech Bush delivered in New Orleans. I loved the passage where Bush talked about who should succeed President Reagan: “In 1940, when I was barely more than a boy, Franklin Roosevelt said we shouldn’t change horses in midstream. My friends, these days the world moves even more quickly, and now, after two great terms, a switch will be made. But when you have to change horses in midstream, doesn’t it make sense to switch to one who’s going the same way?” That was also the speech where Bush told voters, “Read my lips. No new taxes”—a promise that hurt him later, but still a very powerful line. The day after that speech, he shot up in the polls. He’d shown leadership. He appeared determined. It was clear in America that this was our next president.
Our starting point was Columbus, where my friend and business partner Jim Lorimer organized a rally of five thousand people in the big plaza next to the headquarters of his company, Nationwide Insurance. It was a perfect day for speeches, sunny and cool, and the company let out its employees to help make sure that the plaza was full. Peggy Noonan had scripted me, as well as the vice president. You could tell she had fun playing off my action-hero persona. I introduced him as “the real American hero.” I told the crowd, “I am a patriotic American. I saw Ronald Reagan and George Bush take an economy that looked like Pee-wee Herman and make it look like Superman.” And I dissed Governor Dukakis with a line that got picked up in all the media: “I only play the Terminator in my movies. But let me tell you, when it comes to the American future, Michael Dukakis will be the real terminator.” Bush loved my speech and christened me Conan the Republican.
Aboard Air Force Two, we relaxed and kicked back as we flew from stop to stop. We talked about the campaign, about his speeches, about whether he ever lost track of what city he was going to, and how he liked campaigning. Bush had a very casual approach to the campaign trail; not everything had to be set up perfectly.
Our conversation also came around to a specific interest of mine. Back in 1980, at the start of the Reagan administration, I’d turned down an offer to join the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. This was a twenty-four-member advisory panel that, in spite of its imposing title, was no longer part of the White House at all. It dated back to a fitness initiative by President Eisenhower, which, at the height of the Cold War, had been a really big deal—both he and his successor, John F. Kennedy, championed fitness as a way for America to stand strong against the Soviet threat. I especially loved the stories about what Kennedy did to promote fitness and sports. He started out as president-elect by publishing an essay in Sports Illustrated magazine called “The Soft American,” which got a lot of attention. Once he was in the White House, he dug up an executive order from Teddy Roosevelt challenging the US Marines to complete a fifty-mile hike in twenty hours. JFK turned around and issued that same challenge to his White House staff. Being a typically competitive Kennedy brother, Bobby took him up on it and received national attention by hiking fifty miles in his leather oxford shoes. That stunt touched off a national fad of fifty-mile hikes and helped launch many fitness programs on the state and local levels—often promoted and coordinated through the President’s Council.
During Vietnam, however, physical fitness fell out of the spotlight. The President’s Council became an appendage of the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare bureaucracy and stayed that way for twenty years. The Council was still prestigious enough: astronaut Jim Lovell chaired it for a long time, and so did George Allen, the legendary NFL coach. But it never got much done. For instance, when the president would invite the US Olympic team or the World Series champs to the White House, the President’s Council was no longer even in the loop. That was why I turned down the invitation in 1980: I didn’t want to be part of a moribund organization. Now, almost ten years later, I felt it could be turned around.
“There’s a huge opportunity there,” I told Bush. I described how great it would be for the White House to reassert leadership on health and fitness—especially by shifting the focus back to the idea that fitness is important for all Americans, not just athletes. “What about the other 99.9 percent of the people who never go out for sports?” I pointed out. “Who is paying attention to the overweight kid? He will never be drafted for a football game or a tennis team or a swimming team or a volleyball team or a water polo team. And what about the scrawny kid with the Coke-bottle glasses? Who is paying attention to that kid?
“A lot of schools have great athletic programs but not great fitness programs,” I continued. “What can we do for the majority of kids who didn’t go out for sports? And what about all the adults who have gotten out of shape or maybe never been in shape? It was good for JFK to highlight competitive sports to inspire people. It was good that Lyndon Johnson had made it the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. But now we should shift the emphasis from competitive athletics to fitness for all, and make sure that everyone participates.”
I knew that George Bush liked sports and kept himself in very good shape. “That’s a brilliant idea if you want to put the time aside,” he said. “It would take some time. If you do something, you want to do it well.”
From Columbus we traveled on to Chicago, where we held a rally at a high school. On the way back to the airport, the vice president noticed this place called the Three Brothers Coffee Shop and said, “Hey, there’s a Greek diner. Let’s stop.” So the cars all pulled over, and we went in. He did it so casually, the way he went into that restaurant and tried all the food and schmoozed with the customers, the waiters, and the kitchen help, I thought it was wonderful. Then as I thought about it afterward, I realized, “Arnold, you schmuck, he’s campaigning against a guy named Dukakis. Of course he’s going to stop at a Greek diner!”
It was a privilege to get such an inside view of a presidential campaign, especially just two weeks before the election. I’d never been involved in even a mayoral election, but now here I was seeing what the candidate does on the plane, how long he sleeps, how he preps for the next speech, how he studies the issues, how he communicates, and how relaxed he makes it all look. I was impressed with how easy Bush was with the people, how he posed for photos and talked to everybody and always knew the right thing to say. And how he kept his energy level up. He took a forty-five-minute nap on the plane. As Jimmy Carter once said, politicians are experts at naps. Then you have to wake up and absorb your briefing quickly. His staff would prep him so that he knew a little bit about the area. His daughter Doro was always along with him to lend moral support.
It was a whole different level of intensity from a movie set because everywhere you go, the media are there. You have no room for mistakes. Every wrong word, every gesture you make that’s a little odd, they will pick up and amplify into some huge thing. Bush dealt with it casually.
By Thanksgiving, as the Republicans were savoring Bush’s victory, we were getting ready to launch Twins. I’d never seen a director fine-tune a movie as methodically as Ivan Reitman. He’d sit in a test screening, talk to the audience, and then go back and change the music or shorten a certain scene and test the movie again. And the crucial “want to see” statistic would now be two points higher. Then he’d make another change, and it would go up another point. We literally drove Twins from 88 to 93, which Ivan said was even higher than Ghostbusters.
The premiere of the movie was a much happier combination of my worlds than the Republican convention had been. Eunice and Sarge engineered a huge benefit event at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where the showing of Twins capped a daylong festival of entertainment in Washington, DC, promoting the Special Olympics. President-elect Bush came with his wife, Barbara, and Teddy Kennedy, Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy II, and other members of the Kennedy and Shriver clans all came. Barbara Walters and TV news anchorwoman Connie Chung were there, and ev
en business tycoons Armand Hammer and Donald Trump. Out front there was a traffic jam of stretch limos, along with dozens of cameras crews and hundreds of fans.
A demo of gymnastics and weight lifting by Special Olympics athletes opened the show. Then the president elect got up onstage and praised the athletes for their courage before turning to me. “There are all kinds of courage,” he joked. “There is the courage of my friend Arnold Schwarzenegger, who more than once campaigned with me across this country—then returned home each time to take the heat from his own in-laws.” That got a laugh.
In fact, Eunice and Sarge always went to see my movies, and they would call me the next day to tell me what they thought. But not everyone in the Kennedy family was as enthusiastic about my films, because of the weapons and violence. So Eunice was only half joking when she said, “At last, the family can go see one of your movies.” Twins was the comedy hit of the season, which of course I loved because this was my first Christmastime movie, and it went over the top. The movie had a big opening weekend in mid-December and just kept going and going. Every day between Christmas and New Year’s, our US box office receipts topped $3 million—or more than a half million tickets sold per day. It was a happy ending for everybody who had taken a chance. Ivan went on producing and directing hit comedies, including Kindergarten Cop and Junior with me. Danny kept expanding his amazing talent into directing films like The War of the Roses and producing films like Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty. For Universal, Twins capped a year of five or six successes with a huge hit—and after Tom Pollock retired, he became chief executive of Ivan Reitman’s production company.
Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story Page 40