Chapter 5

From Reno, we headed down to Yuma Arizona. Clint was providing the bulls for a movie down there starring John Wayne, Elvis Presley, and Tab Hunter with a working title of, “It Never Happened.” My job was to clean up after the bulls, feed, and water them.

I was doing that the second morning when John Wayne came out all hot and bothered.

“Where the hell is everybody, we got a scene to shoot,” he bellowed as only John Wayne could.

He saw me and told me, “Get your butt over to costuming now. You are not being paid to stand around.”

Well actually, I was being paid to stand around with the bulls but when you’re fourteen and John Wayne yells at you; you move!

It was just around the corner of the set and since my dress met the requirements, they strapped a prop gunfighters rig on me, mounted me on a horse, and gave me my direction. Now if I could really ride it would have ended up differently.

My job was to be in the back of the pack of bad guys and when I hit a mark in the sand, I was supposed to slide off my horse away from the camera. Well, it worked until I tried to slide off the horse. My boot caught in the stirrup and the horse started to drag me.

My weight was enough the horse tried to turn away from me. In doing so he dragged me right in front of the camera. He went about a hundred feet down the road and figured out I was too much to drag and stopped. Then I worked myself free.

When I stood up, there was Wayne and the Director followed by the rest of the cast and crew. Wayne wanted to know if I was okay, the Director wanted to know if I could do a retake if they didn’t get the shot.

I guess my mouth hung open because they all started laughing at me. Elvis accused me of being a scene-stealer. He was laughing, so it was okay.

Clint showed up about then and it came out that I wasn’t even an extra, but a bull wrangler. When I confessed that Wayne’s yelling got me in the scene they all thought it was a hoot.

Since I had a Screen Actors Guild card for being on the Mickey Mouse set they decided to use the shot as it was too dramatic to pass up. This was during the time when they had to do the stunts instead of using computer-aided backgrounds.

The next few days I bummed around with Elvis, and we both were taught Western gun handling with real Colt 45’s, and how to quick draw. We even got to go out in the desert and plink at tin cans. Elvis was a little upset that I could hit them repeatedly and make them ‘walk’, and he couldn’t. We got along anyway.

The shooting ended for the week. Elvis and Tab Hunter asked me to go to Tijuana with them. Since Clint was heading home, I told them yes. Clint reminded me that I was entered in the National Junior Bull Riding Championship and not to forget to go to Dallas. I promised him I would go. We parted company on a good note.

We arrived in Tijuana early on a Saturday night. We walked around eating food from the street vendors. I stayed with corn on the cob as the most likely not to give me stomach problems. It worked, but then neither of the others had problems, at least of that sort.

What I really remember of Tijuana was the buses, the stop signs, and the shoeshine boy. I had never seen so many people on a bus.