With his new movie, Zorro, the Gay Blade, about to be released, George Hamilton met with freelancer John Calendo at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel. The actor was dressed in a Western-style suit--"the kind of thing you'd wear in Texas," said Calendo, "if you had money."

Q 1

PLAYBOY: You came from a family with lots of money, right?

George Hamilton: No, I came from a family that went through lots of money.

Q 2

PLAYBOY: Then how did you survive in movies before your hit Love at First Bite?

George Hamilton: I went after roles, worked on picture after picture, did TV game shows to pay the electric bills. See, Hollywood is prone to everything from fad diets to fad movie stars. The life of a major star is generally two to three years, then it levels off for ten or it goes. I did not want to be a short flash. I came to Hollywood in the Fifties, when they wanted to re-create the matinee idols. I'd go down to wardrobe at MGM, take Cary Grant's suits apart, study Fred Astaire's clothes on dress dummies, and I saw that all the actors who had survived had gotten rid of their negatives and played up their positives. Cary Grant had a short neck and round shoulders, so he picked up his collars and added extra-thick padding to his shoulders. Clark Gable's wife taught him how to really see himself in a mirror--you look into a mirror by looking into a second mirror.

So if you were willing to learn, Hollywood could provide commando training in survival. If you wanted to be a long-distance runner, you wore lighter shoes, ate a certain diet and went for stretches of being called a lightweight Cary Grant impersonator. And yet when the dust settled, there wasn't anyone else around to do Cary Grant. Love at First Bite grossed over $45,000,000 and I cleared $2,000,000.

Q 3

PLAYBOY: You've made recent killings in real estate, reselling mansions at 100 percent profit. Do you have a philosophy for success?

George Hamilton: Yes. All businesses are the same; you must sell yourself. But you can't do it outright. You sell yourself by selling something else. The man who says, "This is the greatest thing in the world; I made it" is not believed because he made it; he's biased. But you'll listen to the man who says, "I work for a company; this company makes a product; I came to work for this company because this product is the best and I wouldn't be involved with anything less." My father always said, find out the other person's dream and then feed it back to him. Therein lies success. Right off, it gives you a genuine interest in the other person.

Q 4

PLAYBOY: Your tan is your signature. Do you mind that it has been spoofed in Doonesbury----

George Hamilton: "The George Hamilton Cocoa Butter Open." I love it. It's the ultimate compliment.

Q 5

PLAYBOY: What are the secrets of stalking the perfect tan?

George Hamilton: I'm one of the few people who go to an airport and say, Where's the sun? They say, "Where would you like to go?" I say, That's not important; how is it in Acapulco? "Eighty-two and overcast." How is it in Tangier? "Variable weather, patchy clouds." How about Brownsville, Texas? "Eighty-four and clear." That's it. I go to Brownsville and sit on the beach. I have stipulations in my contracts; if I'm on location and it's raining, I get weekend air fare to Casablanca or the Canary Islands, wherever the sun is.