You Never Know: A Memoir

by Tom Selleck

I decided to wear my uniform. I don’t know why. Maybe I had seen too many movies. Well, actually, yes, I do know why. I was proud to wear it. And I wanted to be in uniform when I saw my family.

After a couple hours of that, the student protestors were suddenly confronted with one of the severest tests of commitment you could imagine . . . it rained. And the committed protestors all retreated to their apartments.

Here’s my sense of all this: It must have been fun for a bunch of college kids to burn down a building, kinda like when we blew out the windows of the SAE

house with our fraternity’s fire hoses. That’s what college kids do. That isn’t fair . . . but I don’t care. Their behavior was a real problem for me and haunts me to this day. I’ll tell you why. At about nine p.m. that rainy night, our platoon sergeant, John Lopez, was pulled out of the line, taken aside, and told that three of his children—Frances, five; John, nine; and Juliana, twelve—had been killed in a car crash. His wife, Ramona, was driving the station wagon and was in critical condition along with his other two children, Eddie, seven, and Laura, six. Their friend Damancio and his two daughters, Margie, fifteen, and Celia, thirteen, were also killed in the crash, along with the driver of the van that hit them. That’s a pretty heavy price to pay for a happening in Isla Vista. If John had been home, the timing and circumstances would have been different. And John Lopez would still have his family.

I’m no hero, but I served. I was privileged to wear the cloth of our country. I earned the rank of sergeant in the United States Army Infantry. I pulled my weight.

Well, don’t know where I’m goin’, but there’s no use bein’ late.

If you didn’t come in with a chip on your shoulder and you said please and thank you, that went a long way.

“I wouldn’t recommend the deal, except the guy writing the pilot I know is someone who can and should write for you. His name is Steve Cannell.”

But one ad had consequences I couldn’t possibly see coming. There was a period when several cigarette companies were doing full-page magazine ads of guys holding a pack of the company’s brand.

The picture they chose was pretty good, except they changed the color of my eyes. Apparently, menthol cigarettes make your eyes blue.

When my golf ball landed next to his feet, he spun around and glared at me. I think I yelled out something like “I’m sorry.” My new problem was that Garner and his friends had to pass right by me to get to the next hole. As he did, James Garner looked at me and said in that ironic way of his, “I believe the expression is fore.”

I asked Steve what James Garner was like. All Steve said was “Actors should take ‘star’ lessons from him.”

Jim is interrupted by Lance’s wristwatch alarm, a frequent occurrence. “You on some kind of medication, Lance? That thing keeps going off.” “That’s because I set it at ten-minute intervals.” “Why do you do that?” “Because time is valuable, Jim. And I don’t like to waste it. I like to be aware that it’s passing.” “Time is just a measurement, Lance. It doesn’t improve because you watch it.”

Look, being offended is a choice; you have to make a choice to be offended. I chose not to be offended.

Bettye said she was sending me a script for a pilot at Universal. “What’s the offer?” I asked. “You wanna hear the rest, Tom?” “The rest?” “It’s not an offer,” she said. “They are assigning it to you under your last pilot deal.” “That’s over,” I said. “I know that, Tom.” “They can’t do that,” I said. “That’s just not right.” “I know that too. So . . . ?” I took one of my deep breaths. “Is the script any good?” I asked. “Not for me to say, Tommy,” Bettye answered. She told me the show was called Magnum, and it was about a private detective in Hawaii. Bettye, also being a writer’s agent, said the script was written by Glen Larson and he would be the executive producer. “You know what I’m going to say next,” I told her. “That you don’t really like his shows.” “Good guess.” She said I should at least read it. “And then we’ll talk.”

His current hit was Battlestar Galactica. A kind way to put it was that the show was derivative of Star Wars. He’d also done Alias Smith and Jones, which was derivative of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I dutifully read the script. My role was Harry Magnum. Between that name and the title, one could say that Glen’s latest idea was derivative of Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan in Magnum Force. Except it wasn’t that. It was more James Bond–ish. It’s hard to explain, but the whole story seemed to be watching itself. Harry Magnum owned a Ferrari and had a stewardess on each arm, and there were also a couple of Dobermans. There were lots of explosions but not a flaw to be found in Harry Magnum. For someone who would be happy channeling Murray Burns in A Thousand Clowns, this was a problem. “So, Bettye,” I said, “I read the script.” “And . . . ?” “I don’t like it.” If you added the circumstances under which it came to me, I hated it. “This isn’t right,” I said. “I won’t do it.” And I meant it.

Jim said something about not wanting to give career advice to anyone, but then he said, “Look. You don’t have much power. But if you don’t want to do it and they want you, you will never have more power than you do right now. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

He said he wants to take you to Hawaii.” “Why?” “So the two of you can hang out and have some fun while he rewrites the script and tailors it to your talents. That’s an exact quote, ‘tailors it to your talents.’ ” The tone in her voice was more than a little sarcastic. “I don’t want to go to Hawaii with Glen,” I told Bettye. “I’m sure he’s a lot of fun. He seems like a good guy. But I know me, and if I go over there with him, it’s gonna make me feel obligated.” Bettye just listened. “You gotta understand, Bettye. It’s not the character. It’s not the story. It’s not even what he thinks is funny.” “Okay?” “It’s the character, the story, and what he thinks is funny.” “You’ve got to call him, then,” she said. “Remember what Skip said. ‘Good faith.’ ” When I called Glen, he couldn’t have been friendlier. “We’ll stay at the Kahala Hilton,” he said. “I’ll rewrite the script. We’ll have a great time.” I had my excuse ready. “I can’t. I promised my son we’d finally spend some time together. I’m sorry, but this is family.” “So bring your son!”

I don’t want to beat up Glen,” I said. “He has every right to do the show he wants to do. It’s just not a show I want to do.”

I remember Jim Garner saying to a director, ‘I don’t do comedy. I do humor.’

And there it was. Don had written a terrific movie, and it truly was a movie. No happy scene at the end where the main characters prove how much they like each other and why you should tune in next week. It was a story about a career Naval Academy graduate who served as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam and decided to hit the pause button. No, not because of disillusionment or delayed stress, but because, as he put it, “One day I woke up at thirty-three and realized I’d never been twenty-three.” His name was Thomas Magnum.

I also kind of knew Magnum should wear Hawaiian shirts.

I wasn’t really interested in reminding the viewers we were in Hawaii. I mean, one could consider that obvious. I thought those shirts represented something more important. Thomas Magnum, the Annapolis career officer, had made a startling change in his life. That narrative was critical to the heart of the character. I wanted something that looked kinda like the ones Montgomery Clift wore in From Here to Eternity. That retro look.

The other essential shirts needed to have a military feel, lots of khaki and OD green. And they needed to have some age on them. Thomas Magnum was not doing all that well as a private investigator.

shorts were definitely in his closet. He could have no idea that over time his shorts would be considered short. That’s what shorts are, short. Traditional shorts, anyway. And as an authority on Thomas Magnum, I can tell you that he could also have no idea that shorts would mutate into oversize pajama bottoms. And that his response would be to “hold the line” until the pajama-bottom aberration was swept away by the inevitable wave of traditional shorts. And pajama bottoms would be doomed to fashion exile.

I would need to think straight through this new chapter of the Magnum saga. Always expect the unexpected.

Don kind of validated the spirit of those encounters when he kept telling me, “You gotta see this line I wrote! When you finally come face-to-face with the kung fu killer . . . you see, his name is Ho. And you say, ‘Hi, Ho.’ ”

There’s no such place as getting there. There’s always somewhere else to go.

The Academy Awards were very different back in 1982. This was an elegant, dignified, worldwide event.

There would be two dozen red roses at the New London Theatre for Rumpleteazer every Friday night.