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overlappingly repetitious) accounts of the actual events. Clint himself has remained vague even about the details of what attracted him to the movie business. One reason is his natural reticence to talk about his personal life, but perhaps he also wishes, maybe needs, to take the focus off the overly eager women, the gay men, and the singularly opportunistic “suits” who helped launch his career.
    What is certain is that, as 1954 began, Clint was attending classes at LACC while working at the gas station, and Maggie was continuing at her full-time job and earning additional income doing part-timemodeling work. Also that Arthur Lubin, a short, stubby, hustling contract director at Universal—best known at the time for his insanely popular Abbott and Costello films and the
Francis the Talking Mule
series—was looking for someone to help boost his standing at the studio. He needed a project or a star that would help him up the prestige-and-profit ladder. According to Lubin, “Someone took me to meet Clint at the gas station.” Very likely it was Chuck Hill, looking to secure a position at Universal as well and figuring that Lubin might be interested in Clint and return the favor.
    Under the shrewd machinations of Lew Wasserman, Universal had moved into TV production earlier than most of the other major studios. They were still trying to compete with television, an increasingly losing proposition, rather than become a profitable partner in it. In the early 1950s Wasserman had created a self-contained TV unit, called Revue, to produce shows exclusively for the small screen. To find, train, and develop new young talent to appear on television (something most major motion picture stars were still reluctant to do), Wasserman approved the creation of the Universal Talent School (UTS), offering in-house “acting” classes run by coach Sophie Rosenstein. The school’s mandate was to discover new talent, to bring young actors up to professional speed, and when they were ready, to sign them to the studio at relatively cheap and long-term contracts and use them either in movies (part of the lure) or, more likely, in TV.
    UTS was not all that easy to get into. Admission was determined by a complex multiaudition process. Only two applicants were allowed to audition every day, and only the best were even awarded a screen test. A handful were picked to attend the school and of those about one in sixty were actually given a Universal contract for up to $150 a week, for which they were to appear in whatever productions they were assigned.
    Lubin insisted that the school give Clint an immediate audition, even though he was not exactly the next Brando the studio was looking for; an intense actor who gave off a lot of heat fueled by his repressive darkness. Clint had none of it. Nor was he the usual beautiful, romantic type that the studio could always use as screen filler and never seemed to find enough of who had some actual talent, like Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis.
    Moreover, Clint had no real experience as an actor. He didn’t know how to move like a movie performer, how to react, how to talk, how to “think” for the camera, or how to smile for a close-up. The smile thing was a special problem; Clint’s teeth were yellow, too small, and curved inward, which caused him to smile with his lips closed—something the movie camera did not show well. Too good-looking to be a character actor but not good-looking enough to be a traditional leading man (according to the conventional studio wisdom), he was the least likely prospect for a screen test.
    But somehow Lubin made it happen. When Clint saw his audition film, he knew immediately how badly he had come off. “I thought I was an absolute clod. It looked pretty good, it was photographed well, but I thought, ‘If that’s acting, I’m in trouble.’” Nonetheless, seventeen days later Universal signed him to a provisional seven-year learning contract starting at $75 a week.
    He quit