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later years he underplayed the incident, likely because of its decidedly unheroic backstory, he did occasionally talk about this early adventure but always matter-of-factly. Still, the momentary drama would later be useful for publicity purposes when he became an action star.
    The crash also introduced him to a bit of momentary fame. Although he didn’t feel especially heroic, just Clint-lucky to be alive, the local press lauded him as a hero for surviving the crash and, in accounts, helping to rescue pilot Lieutenant F. C. Anderson (who was actually rescued separately). Clint was portrayed heroically, photographed on the scene bare-chested and dripping wet, looking for all the world like a hero. But the episode also introduced him to the very real notion of mortality. Defiantly looking into the face of death would have a powerful and lasting effect on him.
         A lthough Clint never left the States while in the service, several of the fellow recruits who did basic training with him were sent overseas and saw action in the war. One was Don Kincade, whom he had known since high school. Immediately after being discharged in January 1953, Kincade enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley on the GI Bill. That spring Clint hitched a ride to Berkeley to visit him.
    Kincade, who was by now dating a sorority girl, offered to set Clint up on a blind date with her best friend. He assured Clint he wouldn’t be disappointed; Maggie Johnson was a beauty—tall, good face, terrific body. And, he added, she was dating someone else, so this would be a guaranteed one-shot affair.
    As it turned out, Clint and Maggie hit it off, and when the weekend came to an end, they promised to try to get together in the fall, when Clint’s active service time was up and Maggie had graduated and returned to live with her parents in Alhambra, a suburb of Los Angeles.
    She quickly got rid of the other guy.
         A s his tour of duty wound down, Clint gradually reverted to the easy syncopations of pre-army days. After two years of his laid-backconscription, he had little “military” to get rid of. He had long ago let his hair grow out, rarely wore a uniform, and more or less came and went as he pleased. By the time of his summer 1953 discharge, he had already made plans to return to Seattle, where a cushy civilian job as a lifeguard was waiting for him. Only he didn’t go, at least not for long. Staying for just a few days to visit his parents, he quickly took off for Los Angeles to be with Maggie Johnson. *
    Down in L.A. Clint trudged through a series of day-to-day jobs until he landed a full-time one managing a building on Oakhurst Drive, several miles south of Beverly Hills, which he supplemented by working at a Signal Oil gas station. Hoping college credits would help him get a better job, he started taking classes in business administration at City College in downtown L.A., on the GI Bill. School still bored him, and just to break things up he sat in on a few acting seminars with Chuck Hill, one of many noncom show-business dreamers he had met at Fort Ord.
    Hill was a gay man who had slipped through the screening processes of the wartime military. What would, years later, be known as the “don’t ask, don’t tell” philosophy was actually in full, if unofficial, effect in the 1950s. Even if homosexuals wanted to enter the military, the military wanted nothing to do with them, partly, as the bizarre thinking of the day went, because they wouldn’t be able to fight as well among other males or control themselves in the communal shower rooms. Hill, who wanted a show-business career working behind the scenes, had spotted Clint and was struck by his good looks, and told him to look him up after his discharge, which Clint did while he was pumping gas.
    Because this was Los Angeles, essentially a one-industry town, every college and university had drama and film departments superior to those of any other institution outside of L.A.