Call Me Lucky: A Texan in Hollywood (review)

What is it about childhood privation that seems to land so many individuals in successful Hollywood careers? There has been a spate of autobiographies released within the past few years written by wealthy Hollywood types emerging from humble beginnings, but Call Me Lucky: A Texan in Hollywood is not just another rags-to-riches story; it describes a fantastic series of seemingly randomly generated opportunities conferred by the universe upon a hard working young construction laborer turned actor/producer from the arid plains of West Texas.

Within this book's 273 pages, the reader is treated to the entertaining life story of Robert Hinkle, a self-described "ol' rodeo cowboy" who found pleasure in fistfights with friends, chicken fried steak, and performing death-defying stunts for his chums in a "borrowed" Piper Cub J3 airplane during breaks from his childhood job at a dusty local airstrip. The eldest of three children, Hinkle quips that his family was so poor that "they could only afford a tumbleweed as a pet." Unlike some self-aggrandizing memoirs, Call Me Lucky rivets the reader's attention with a seamless narrative and the use of humility-infused anecdotes sprinkled evenly throughout the book.

Hinkle's rise to stardom came about in an unlikely way. Bored with high school, he dropped out to join the United States Air Force just prior to the Berlin Airlift in 1948. Though he would take correspondence courses during his military service and graduate with his original class the next year, Hinkle became a crew chief in the interim, delivering coal and supplies into Berlin. During one flight aboard a C-54 cargo plane, the pilot suffered a heart attack. Aware of Hinkle's (limited) flying experience, the copilot attending to the ailing airman ordered Hinkle into the cockpit. For the next six months Hinkle piloted the craft during many more flights until his discharge from the service in September 1950. After his parents moved from Texas to Washington, Hinkle joined them and took up his old hobby of rodeo riding, winning substantial prize money and, perhaps more important, meeting a young rodeo queen named Sandra Larson who would later become his wife.

During one rodeo event, Hinkle was introduced to director Budd Boetticher, who was shooting a film called Bronco Buster (1952) starring Scott Brady and John Lund. This introduction marked the beginning of an acting career spanning nearly 50 years that included many films, the first of which was director Boetticher's Wings of the Hawk (1953) in which Hinkle was dispatched by machine gun fire in one scene, much to the chagrin of his mother, who cried uncontrollably when she saw him 'die.'

Through his career as a speech coach, Hinkle became friends with Hollywood notables Rock Hudson, Dennis Hopper, Carroll Baker and Mercedes McCambridge as he taught these veteran performers how to talk and act like a Texan for the 1956 film Giant. Part II of Call Me Lucky details the production of this film, affording the reader an interesting behind-the-scenes look at many of the actors' personal lives, and detailing the special friendship that evolved between Hinkle and actor James Dean, who spent many an evening hunting jackrabbits with Hinkle on the Texas plains and who was a frequent guest at the Hinkle household until Dean's untimely death in 1955. Hinkle's television credits include Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Dragnet, and Walker, Texas Ranger. He also helped a once unknown motorcycle stunt performer named Robert Knievel emerge as American popular culture icon Evel Knievel.

Chapter 12 of Call Me Lucky marks Hinkle's rather abrupt jump from actor to producer/director during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Having made several connections in the movie industry, Hinkle cobbled together an idea for a film about a boy and his snake-hunting dog. Through a series of missteps, Hinkle found himself with a cast, crew, camera operator, and financial backing, but the director he had hired was arrested by...