Also, I think more and more people are yearning to get out of the big cities, have a garden, and maybe go hunting or fishing.
Another thing I recall was falling in love with Shirley Temple when I was nine or ten.
As a youngster I worked the river boats going down the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, pushing barges to Chicago, then all the way down to New Orleans.
Because I had worked the river boats some summers, pushing as far as New Orleans, I joined the Merchant Marine.
But as luck would have it, Warner Bros. saw my screen test, put me under contract, and I wound up making Cheyenne.
Cecil B. DeMille was a very demanding man. But he was demanding on himself as well.
Cooper would always kid me about my hats. He'd tell me I should get a bigger hat.
Funny thing, but when I first got to England, I felt very much at home there.
Heck, at times I was off two weeks at a crack. I was able to get around London and visit those fantastic museums.
I always liked going to the movies, but my big problem was that I didn't have much time to see that many movies.
I began having problems with Warner Bros. They were letting other people do films, and I wasn't doing many, so I walked out for a while.
I did a thing called Cry of the Wolf where I got very good reviews.
I didn't finish high school. I wound up working for a big paper mill. Then I went to work loading box cars and glass ware.
I really didn't study much formally. I studied some at Paramount, even less at Universal.
I seldom ever missed a Gary Cooper picture if I could manage to see it.
I started to figure out what was the best thing I had to offer. I decided on my size.
I started working when I was nine.
I think you always have regrets.
I was actually born in Hartford, a little Mississippi River town and raised in nearby Alton.
I was going to take my scooter, pack a few clothes and food, and scooter all the way down to California.
I'd get out of school at three o'clock, and at four o'clock I would go to work in a steel foundry for an eight hour shift.
I'd go to the carnivals and circuses and get various jobs. I'd either carry water, set up milk bottles, or bring back the baseballs.
I've always had the greatest respect for Chuck Heston. He's not only a very fine actor, he's a very good human being.
It's a funny thing about westerns. For a while nobody would do a western.
It's an end of an era, and now you have guys who don't know who Clint Walker and lots of others are. And many don't even know about the business of making pictures.
Of course, DeMille never did anything on a small scale.
On occasion anyone who does any amount of this is going to get hit, or you are going to hit somebody.
On the same show I cut my foot with an ax, but I had to go through with the scene, because in this business you have to move on. You can watch the scene, and you will never know anything happened.
People are surprised when I tell them that I didn't play football in high school with my size and strength.
Shane was a classic, and you can't find a better bad guy than Jack Palance.
Sinatra is kind of an enigma. If he's your friend, he's your friend.
Supposedly they say that the R-rating makes money. But they are still making good movies without having to resort to that.
That tv box has a tremendous capacity to reach people.
That's when I came to realize how many people knew me, and I didn't know them from Adam.
Then later on there was Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper whom I met many times.
There are certain things you have to know about acting.
There is a lot of stuff now that is in bad taste, and I don't see the necessity for it all. We didn't have to do it in our time, and they don't have to do it now.
They became tv oriented, and tv became a medium where you did a whole lot more with a whole lot less, and you did it faster.
Those fellows who ran the studios had a commitment to making good films.
Those of us who portrayed cowboys I would imagine had heroes of our own as kids.
Usually when somebody gets hit, it is because somebody missed his mark and stepped too close to me, and I actually hit him.
Well, The Dirty Dozen was like a vacation.
What happened was that Hal Wallis put me under contract for six months but didn't do anything with me. Then Warners saw the screen test and went to Hal Wallis and bought my contract.
When the War ended in 1945, I started selling vacuum cleaners door to door. Then I sold insurance door to door. I even tried selling cars.
While I was working in Las Vegas, there was a lot of picture people who approached me and said I should try the movies. At first I thought it was a pretty silly way to make a living.
You can always think of a scene you could have done a little better, or perhaps something you might have tried differently.
You can't put people who did tv in the same category, however, because they didn't get the chance to do the same things as those who did feature films.
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