George Hamilton on his Hollywood adventures

Legendary actor George Hamilton shares his journey from Arkansas to Hollywood and the famed friendships he formed in his memoir "Don't Mind If I Do." In this excerpt, he recounts his experience as a contestant on the reality show “Dancing With the Stars” and how it made him feel young again.

Chapter one: Desperate times demand desperate measures
My life was a train wreck.

I had torn the rotator cuffs in my shoulders. This was a result of years of rehearsing for movies like “Zorro,” the “Gay Blade,” where twelve hours of fencing lessons one day, followed by twelve hours of bullwhip practice the next, had caused my shoulders to be stuck in the ten o’clock and two o’clock positions, in a sort of hideous, contorted version of Al Jolson in Mammy. To make matters worse, I had blown out my knee in the Broadway musical Chicago when the young actress playing the dummy to my ventriloquist became too energetic and bounced so hard on my knee that I felt my right joint explode on the spot. The doctor later confirmed that part of the cartilage had shredded, making it temporarily impossible for me to walk. So much for the old razzle-dazzle. Even worse, not long afterward, in a bad parody of Errol Flynn in Captain Blood, I had broken four ribs jumping aboard a friend’s yacht. Plus, there was the little matter of my balance problem ...

And that was the good news.

In the midst of my assorted agonies, my agent called me up. He seemed to call me only when three little old ladies in a nursing home needed entertainment. But this time, opportunity, big-time, he said, was pounding at my hospital door. My agent’s chance of a lifetime was for me to be a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars,” the reality dance-off show pairing celebrities with professional dancers, recently imported from England by ABC. In its first season, in the summer of 2005, “Dancing” had been the number one show in the country, with more than fifteen million viewers.

My first response at hearing the offer was to laugh so hard that I nearly broke another rib. Well . . . well? the agent pressed me. Wasn’t I thrilled? Wasn’t I interested?

Sure, I thought. If we can find a dance where seizing up, screaming in pain, and dropping to my one decent knee was part of the routine. “It’s a great career move,” the agent said, falling back on the ultimate showbiz cliché.

“The Bataan Death March had a better chance of having a happy outcome,” I replied. “Millions of people will be watching,” he said, giving me the hard sell.

“That could be a problem,” I replied.

The agent sold and sold, puffing about how big the show had been in the UK and now here. What stars had been on the first season? I asked. He hemmed and hawed. Evander Holyfield, he said. The boxer. The champ. The guy whose ear Mike Tyson bit off. Trista Sutter. Who was that? I asked. Big star of “The Bachelor” reality show. Huge, he said. A star? Stars were different when I first started in the game. Who else?

Kelly Monaco, the season’s winner. Major soap opera star, major Playboy model. Who else? Rachel Hunter. Rachel Hunter? Now, he was talking. Rachel, the supermodel, had been married to Rod Stewart, just like my ex, Alana, the supermodel. Rod and I, who on the surface seemed to have nothing in common, did share a seemingly identical taste in women. Before Alana, we had both been involved with Swedish bombshell Britt Ekland, and after Alana, we both dated the beauty Liz Treadwell. At least I always came first. In any event, in my Six Degrees of Rod Stewart game, the mention of Rachel Hunter made me feel that perhaps destiny was at work here. “Good career move?” I sought the agent’s assurance. It would be huge exposure, I mused. It was better than having folks continue to confuse me with Warren Beatty or, worse, forget me altogether. I had begun to get those people coming up to me and saying, “I know you. I know you.”

And I would prod, “George Hamilton?”

“No, no, not him,” they would reply. “What show’d you play on?” they would continue.

After I had rolled off half a dozen titles or so, they still had a blank look. Somehow the excitement disappeared when I had to give them clues.

At this point, I think it’s important you know something about me. I have never been good at planning. You might say I hate plans. They take all the fun out of living. In my family, we liked to do the dumbest thing possible just to lessen the chances for success, and then work our way out of it. What is life without challenges? That’s how we lived. So Dancing with the Stars was really no leap of faith. I knew I would heal. I knew I could pull it off. I didn’t know exactly how right then, but I knew I could do it. “God watches after us,” my mother had always assured us, and I believe that, too.

So I limped, hobbled, and dragged my disapproving body onto a plane and made my way from Florida, where I was recuperating, to Los Angeles — to Studio 46 in CBS Television City in Hollywood, with rehearsals already under way for a show that still had a few bugs to work out. It was a scene of only slightly organized chaos. The costume designer was showing off sequin-bedecked numbers to doubting executives, while makeup artists were practicing their art on their reluctant celebrity captives. In the midst of all this, the network people were quarreling over musical arrangements. I could see they were all as ill prepared for what lay ahead as I was, and somehow this was consoling. I met the other stars, my rivals for the mirror-ball trophy they gave the winner after eight weeks of dips and splits and twirls and whirls.

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