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Walker Ends Tall Stories1 By JOAN HANAL’ER' NEW YORK 'INS* - Clint Walker, 6'6 of TV cowboy star, wants to make it clear he never j water skiied on his hands, bent an iron horseshoe with his bare grip or sprained a horse's back. , “We might as well come to a , little understandir® right here and ( now. said the star of ABC-TV's Cheyenne series on Warner Brothers Presents.”“I don't see how this phony ? publicity is necessary, Walker I drawled, and proceeded to give some examples of the tall tales being circulated about him. j Somebody said I could bend a , horseshoe like an ordinary man ' could bend a hairpin 1 hid for two weeks in case somebody asked me I to do it.TAKES FALL“They said I was learning to ; water ski on my hands. These idiots don't realize someone's going to ask you to do it. Last time I went skiing I skiied on my hands for ten minutes—on my head, too —because I took a fall“Another time they said I jumped off a boulder onto a horse's back. I got a lot of indignant letters about that. the 235-pound star said sadly . He also wants to add that, contrary to the publicity boys, he owns neither a swimming pool nor a $1,000 suit.The dark haired, blue-eyed big man on a small screen has the kind of real-life history, however, that doesn t need imaginative touches.He grew up in the Mississippi river towns of Hartford. Wood-river and Alton. 111., where his father «6’3* worked as a pipe fitter, boxer, wrestler, athletic coach and musician # 'Tip afraid to go back to Alton now. There'll be people who will resent all this business about me being a football hero and state wrestling champ. I never had time for wrestling and football then—I was setting up metal milk bottles as targets m a carnival when I:was nine.”When he was 11 he was a pin-setter in a bowling alley and in the following years worked as a messenger, harvest hand, on river boats and in a steel foundry. When he was old enough he served ahitch m tin* merchant marine andthen in 1948 married his Altonsweetheart.In 1950 he and his wife and daughter set out for Texas where he made a hare living on construction jobs, punching cattle and prospecting. Next he moved on toCalifornia where he woHced as a vacuum cleaner salt sman. nightclub bouncer, private detective and truck driver.WORKED IN VEGAS' Then I heard about guys making a lot of money in Las Vegas.”i lint explained in \ rgas in* found l job as deputy sheriff and eventually. through contacts made in Nevada, got a small role in The Ten Commandments.I'm in a position now ” the western star said in a soft but determined drawl, “where 1 can refuse to go along with the phony stuff. I kind of resent these guys. •I don't want to worry about making a liar out of myself or being called on to do something I can’t do. I don't figure I've led thatdull a life.’♦Mejiee Named
Newspaper Details
Anderson Herald Bulletin
Anderson, Indiana, US
Thu, Jun 07, 1956
Page 18
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
CO, USA 08 Jan 2017
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