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base. They were privy to and took full advantage of the pleasures of the young, single women at the nearby nightclubs, soldier-lovers who were sweet, plentiful, willing, and available. Another noncom who became a friend of Clint was Irving Lasper, a photographer who told him he had the kind of face the movies—or more accurately, the men who made them—would love. Clint shrugged off the suggestion, having no interest in that business.
    Clint also got close to many of the musicians assigned to the unit, including Lennie Niehaus, an alto sax player who had worked with Stan Kenton and now played at the base’s junior NCO (noncommissioned officers) mess hall four nights a week. Clint managed to talk his way into the hall’s bartending job so that after lounging by the pool all day he could hang back, drink for free, and listen to Niehaus blow his horn. He became so close with these members of the Special Services that he became an unofficial member by association, which meant the officers in charge either didn’t know or didn’t care that he slept past reveille. He didn’t do much KP or much of anything except sit by the pool, and work at the club at night, and come and go from the base at will.
    He often took overnight excursions by himself to explore the gorgeous coastal scenery that he had loved since childhood. In the emerald expanse of Carmel, a sleepy enclave 120 miles south of San Francisco, he enjoyed hearing jazz played in the local clubs that alsoattracted some of the best-looking women north of L.A. They always took to the surf wearing as little as possible to allow themselves to soak up the famous California sun. So for Clint, it was women during the day, jazz at night.
    Another job assigned to Clint—after all, he wasn’t exactly overloaded—was base projectionist for the Division Faculty classrooms. “One of my auxiliary jobs, besides swimming instructor, was to project training films for the soldiers. I kept showing [John Huston’s 1945]
The Battle of San Pietro
, one of my favorites, which I must have seen around fifty times during my two years in the service.” Watching it over and over again, Clint could not help but break down the mechanics of the movie, how it was put together, the rhythm of the shots, the camera angles, Huston’s off-screen narration.
         O ut of this fascination with movies came a new friendship with Norman Bartold, another noncom actor, who had a small part in one of the new pictures Clint was assigned to screen, H. Bruce Humber-stone’s
She’s Working Her Way Through College
(1952), a Ronald Reagan vehicle costarring Virginia Mayo in one of her leggy imitation–Betty Grable roles. Clint enjoyed hanging out with Bartold, to talk about how the movie was made as well as what it was like to work with the luscious Mayo.
    The few times Clint voluntarily wore his uniform off the base was to gain free passage on a military aircraft, which came in handy whenever he wanted to visit his parents in Seattle, and a girl he had met off base who also happened to live there. One day in the fall of 1951, he hooked up with a twin-engine Beechcraft. At the last minute he changed plans and chose instead a Douglas AD naval attack bomber because its return flight schedule would give him a little extra time in Seattle. But on its way back to the base the plane developed engine trouble and ran out of gas, forcing it to belly-flop into the ocean along Point Reyes, just off the coast of Marin County. Here Clint’s swimming abilities kicked in—he was able to dislodge himself from the flooded fuselage and make it to the surface. Not too far away he saw the pilot bobbing in the water. Both then swam to shore, which was four, seven, or more miles away (depending upon the several and highly varied published accounts of this incident).
    By overstaying his time in Seattle—spending it not with his parents but with the girl—Clint had technically violated his leave and nearly drowned. Although in