In the meantime, the North Koreans charged across the 38th Parallel and the U.S. forces were getting crunched at Taejon. I wasn't doing anything other than taking acting lessons a couple times each week.
I called Washington direct. They gave me a lieutenant colonel's rank and flew me out on a special plane.
Metro thought it was a great publicity stunt.
I was given a special helicopter, one of those early Bells, with a pilot from the swamps of Louisiana who exhibited a decided death wish. There was a cartoon of me on the side panels, with one knee up and one arm up high, like I was Superman flying.
I'd get taken behind North Korean lines and then I'd kick ass. It was very simple.
I'd demolish entire tank columns. Any artillery that got spotted by our side were turned into pretzels. I made four North Korean generals prisoner and rescued General Dean from the Koreans that had captured him. I pushed entire supply convoys off the sides of mountains. I was grim and determined and angry, and I was saving American lives, and I was very good at it.
There is a picture of me that got on the cover of Life. It shows me with this tight Clint Eastwood smile, holding a T-34 over my head. There is a very surprised North Korean in the turret. I'm glowing like a meteor. The picture was titled Superstar of Pusan, "superstar" being a new word back then.
I was very proud of what I was doing.
Back in the States, Rickenbacker was a hit. Not as big a hit as everyone expected, but it was spectacular and it made quite a bit of money. Audiences seemed to be a bit ambivalent in their reactions to the star. Even with me on the cover of Life, there were some people who couldn't quite see me as a hero. Metro re-released Golden Boy. It flopped again.
I didn't much care. I was holding the Pusan Perimeter. I was right there with the GIs, under fire half the time, sleeping in a tent, eating out of cans and looking like someone out of a Bill Mauldin cartoon. I think it was fairly unique behavior for a light colonel. The other officers hated it, but General Dean supported me-at one point he was shooting at tanks with a bazooka himself-and I was a hit with the soldiers.
They flew me to Wake Island so that Truman could give me the Medal of Honor, and MacArthur flew out on the same plane. He seemed preoccupied the whole time, didn't waste any time in conversation with me. He looked incredibly old, on his last legs. I don't think he liked me.
A week later, we broke out of Pusan and MacArthur landed X Corps at Inchon. The North Koreans ran for it. Five days later, I was back in California. The Army told me, quite curtly, that my services were no longer necessary. I'm fairly certain it was MacArthur's doing. He wanted to be the superstar of Korea, and he didn't want to share any of the honors. And there were probably other aces-nice, quiet, anonymous aces-working for the U.S. by then.
I didn't want to leave. For a while, particularly after MacArthur got crushed by the Chinese, I kept phoning Washington with new ideas about how to be useful. I could raid the airfields in Manchuria that were giving us such trouble. Or I could be the point man for a breakthrough. The authorities were very polite, but it was clear they didn't want me.
I did hear from the CIA, though. After Dien Bien Phu, they wanted to send me into Indochina to get rid of Bao Dai. The plan seemed half-assed-they had no idea who or what they wanted to put in Bao Dai's place, for one thing; they just expected "native anticommunist liberal forces" to rise and take command-and the guy in charge of the operation kept using Madison Avenue jargon to disguise the fact he knew nothing about Vietnam or any of the people he was supposed to be dealing with.
I turned them down. After that, my sole involvement with the federal government was to pay my taxes every April.
While I was in Korea, the Hollywood Ten appeals ran out. David and Mr. Holmes went to prison. David served three years. Mr. Holmes served only six months and then was released on account of his health. Everyone knows what happened to Blythe.
Earl flew to Europe and appeared in Switzerland, where he renounced his U.S. citizenship and became a citizen of the world. A month later, he was living with Orlena Goldoni in her Paris apartment. She'd become a big star by then. I suppose he decided that since there was no point in concealing their relationship anymore, he'd flaunt it.
Lillian stayed in New York. Maybe Earl sent her money. I don't know.
Peron came back to Argentina in the mid-1950s, along with his peroxide chippie. The Fear moving south.
I made pictures, but somehow none of them was the success that was expected. Metro kept muttering about my image problem.
People couldn't believe I was a hero. I couldn't believe it either, and it affected my acting. In Rickenbacker, I'd had conviction. After that, nothing.
Kim had her career going by now. I didn't see her much. Eventually her detective got a picture of me in bed with the girl dermatologist who came over lo apply her makeup every morning, and Kim got the house on Summit Drive, with the maids and gardener and chauffeurs and most of my money, and I ended up in a small beach house in Malibu with the Jaguar in the garage. Sometimes my parties would last weeks.
There were two marriages after that, and the longest lasted only eight months. They cost me the rest of the money I'd made. Metro let me go, and I worked for Warner. The pictures got worse and worse. I made the same western about six times over.
Eventually I bit the bullet. My picture career had died years ago and I was broke. I went to NBC with an idea for a television series.
Tarzan of the Apes ran for four years. I was executive producer, and on the screen I played second banana to a chimp. I was the first and only blond Tarzan. I had a lot of points and the series set me up for life.
After that I did what every ex-Hollywood actor does. I went into real estate. I sold actors' homes in California for a while, and then I put a company together and started building apartments and shopping centers. I always used other people's money-I wasn't taking a chance on going broke again. I put up shopping centers in half the small towns in the Midwest.
I made a fortune. Even after I didn't need the money any more, I kept at it. I didn't have much else to do.
When Nixon got elected I felt ill. I couldn't understand how people could believe that man.
After Mr. Holmes got out of prison he went to work as editor of the New Republic. He died in 1955, lung cancer. His daughter inherited the family money. I suppose my clothes were still in his closets.
Two weeks after Earl flew the country, Paul Robeson and W E. B. Du Bois joined the CPUSA, receiving their party cards in a public ceremony in Herald Square. They announced they were joining the protest of Earl's treatment before HUAC.
HUAC called a lot of blacks into their committee room. Even Jackie Robinson was summoned and appeared as a friendly witness. Unlike the white witnesses, the blacks were never asked to name names. HUAC didn't want to create any more black martyrs. Instead the witnesses were asked to denounce the views of Sanderson, Robeson, and Du Bois. Most of them obliged.
Through the 1950s and most of the 1960s, it was difficult to get a grasp on what Earl was doing. He lived quietly with Lena Goldoni in Paris and Rome. She was a big star, active politically, but Earl wasn't seen much.
He wasn't hiding, I think. Just keeping out of sight. There's a difference.
There were rumors, though. That he was seen in Africa during various wars for independence. That he fought in Algeria against the French and the Secret Army. When asked,
Earl refused to confirm or deny his activities. He was courted by left-wing individuals and causes, but rarely committed himself publicly. I think, like me, he didn't want to be used again. But I also think he was afraid that he'd do damage to a cause by associating himself with it.
Eventually the reign of terror ended, just as Earl said it would. While I was swinging on jungle vines as Tarzan, John and Robert Kennedy killed the blacklist by marching past an American Legion picket line to see Spartacus, a film written by one of the Hollywood Ten.