Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

doesn’t let go, and the guy wipes out. I had to do that scene without any show of anger or effort—to Julius, it’s just common sense to hold on to his suitcase, and he’s born with such tremendous strength that it’s no effort at all. I’m not trying to make the guy crash. As a matter of fact, I’m worried that he’s hurt and try to help him!

The comedy was there. We knew we had a winner. The idea of opposite twins worked perfectly, and there was always laughter on the set. Every evening when we watched the dailies, cast and crew who had seen us do four, five, or six takes of a scene would still laugh when they saw it on the screen. At first we shot in LA, and then we moved to the desert near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

No matter where we went, people would visit because word spread that it was a happy set. Clint Eastwood dropped by on the day we shot the scene where I sing. Julius is on an airliner listening to rock ’n’ roll on headphones for the first time in his life. He starts singing along to a 1950s hit by the Coasters, “Yakety Yak,” without realizing that all the other passengers can hear. It was my movie singing debut, and let’s just say that I’m no Frank Sinatra. Afterward, Clint said, tongue in cheek, “I didn’t realize you had such talent.” The only time I sing in real life is at the end of a party when I want the guests to leave.

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One of the running jokes on the set was, “Never ask Arnold about politics.” Not that I’d get upset, but if you asked me, I’d fill your ear with sales talk about Vice President George H. W. Bush. It was presidential primary season, and he was battling Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and evangelist Pat Robertson for the Republican nomination to succeed Ronald Reagan. The other cast members of Twins were all Democrats, and the joke was that if I started talking, they’d get upset with me, which would threaten the sunny mood.

Something did happen during the time we were filming Twins that dampened my sunny mood, although it had nothing to do with either the movie or US politics. In February the News of the World, a London tabloid, ran a front-page story about me headlined “Hollywood Star’s Nazi Secret.”

The story attacked me, but the focus was my father. It claimed that he’d been a Nazi and a member of the SS, and that he’d rounded up homosexuals and Jews for the concentration camps. It called me “a secret admirer” of Hitler and claimed that I took part in the neo-Nazi movement and held “fervent Nazi and anti-Semitic views.”

Normally I would just blow off criticisms, but I’d never been libeled about something so serious. I knew I would have to respond. My first move after talking to lawyers and publicists was to call the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, whom I’d met before in Aspen. He listened as I explained that the story was false. “I would appreciate it if you don’t print it in America,” I said. “And I would appreciate it if the paper would publish an apology and say that it was a mistake, they got the wrong information. That’ll be the end of it. Mistakes can be made.”

“Well,” said Murdoch, “my guys over there tell me that they did a very thorough investigation. And if it is true, then I don’t think anyone should apologize. But in the meantime, I can promise you that I won’t print it here.”

“I’m not blaming you for every story in all your papers and outlets,” I emphasized. “But I want to bring to your attention that this is an injustice. Please look into it.” Rupert was as good as his word; he never did publish the story in his US publications or report it on his new Fox TV network. But nothing else happened. And while my lawyers sent a formal letter demanding a retraction and prepared to sue, other journalists started asking for my response.

I was in a very uncomfortable position. I knew that what the story said about me was false, but what about the accusations against my father? I thought they must be wrong, but what did I really know? There had been so little conversation at home about the Second World War. I truly had no idea.

So I decided to call my friend Rabbi Marvin Hier at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “I need your help,” I told him. “I know you have a system for tracking down war crimes. Could you check out my father’s war record? I want to know, Was he a Nazi? And second, did he belong to the SS? What was he in charge of during the war? Did he commit any war crimes—actively or passively? Did he do any of those things?”

“Arnold,” the rabbi said, “within a week or two I’ll have everything, because we have access to all the papers.” He called his people in Germany and maybe even the great Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal himself in Vienna, whom I met later. After three or four weeks, he came back with the information. He said, “Your father had the Nazi party membership card, but there is no evidence of any killing or war crimes on your father’s part, against homosexuals or Jews or anyone else.

“He was a sergeant, not in a position to order such acts without the authority of an officer. There is no indication that there was such an order given.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent that information officially so that it could be used in court.

As for the News of the World’s allegations against me, Simon Wiesenthal himself wrote a letter to the court stating that there was no evidence whatsoever to back them up. Having those statements, together with the tabloid’s inability to produce facts to support its story, made it clear that its sources were unreliable. It took many months in court, but the tabloid eventually published a total retraction and paid substantial damages in an out-of-court settlement. The money went to the Special Olympics in Great Britain.

The Twins shoot wrapped just before Easter 1988, in the middle of the presidential primary season. Vice President Bush had been fighting hard battles. Even though he had Reagan’s endorsement, he lost some of the early primaries to Bob Dole. That’s because many people regarded Bush as Reagan’s shadow: what Austrians would call his Waschlappen, or dishrag. I knew the vice president from my visits to the White House. He was always very gracious, a real mensch, and he had his act together because of the important positions he had held previously, such as UN ambassador and director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Contrary to the Democrats’ spin on him, he had tremendous strength of character and will. But of course political campaigns are unfair. You look for vulnerability in your opponent; some flaw that you can make stick. The Democrats knew very well that Bush was fulfilling his office just as the Constitution meant the vice president to do: by supporting the president and standing ready to step in and lead if necessary. But they gained ground at the start by calling him weak. Bush battled back, and by the time we finished shooting, he’d dominated the primaries on Super Tuesday and had the nomination sewed up.

I followed the presidential campaigns that year with great interest and accepted happily when I was invited to take part in the Republican National Convention in New Orleans in August. My assignment was to add celebrity power to one of the “caucus teams” of Reagan administration officials and Bush supporters whose job it was to glad-hand the state delegations and chat them up on key issues.

I’d been to Republican conventions before, but this was the first since I’d married a Shriver. Maria and I believed that we should continue as we always had: she would go to the Democratic convention and to gatherings for all the things she believed in, and she would cover Republicans as a journalist, and I would keep going to the Republican convention. But we needed to be careful to avoid unnecessary controversy. Everything went well in New Orleans until my friend and trapshooting buddy Tony Makris, the PR guru of the National Rifle Association, mentioned that the NRA was holding a brunch in honor of Texas Senator Phil Gramm—would I like to stop by? I’d gotten to know Gramm well by then. When I showed up the next morning, other celebrities were there also, but the reporters converged on me. The Kennedys, having endured two tragic political assassinations, were very antigun, so what was I doing at an NRA reception? I hadn’t even thought about it. If I had, I would have been sensitive enough not to attend this NRA event. They also asked, as a Kennedy by marriage, was I supporting the NRA? What was my position on automatic weapons? Saturday night specials? Sniper rifles? Cop-killing bullets? I didn’t know how to respond. I belonged to the NRA because I believed in the constitutional right to bear arms, but I hadn’t thought through all those issues and details. There was even a question about my very presence at the 1988 Republican National Convention: was it some kind of statement in defiance of the Kennedy family? The truth was that none of the Kennedys cared, particularly not Sargent or Eunice, who depended on support from both parties for their programs and had Republican lawmakers over to their house. But I realized that the NRA was a bigger issue, and I left the brunch before the speakers even began. I was just dropping by, and I didn’t want my presence there to become the story. I’d come to the convention to support George Bush, and I wanted them to write about that rather than guns.

I needed to regroup. The swarm of attention and publicity surrounding Maria’s family was something I was still getting used to. This was the first time I’d really felt its sting. It was a blessing and a distraction, much more intense than what usually comes with stardom. I attended the rest of the Republican convention but skipped the meetings of my caucus group with the individual state delegations.