Flashbacks

FLASHBACKS takes you on Art Hansl's journey through life - Marine Corps, Mexico, Europe, a film career, and all the adventures he experienced along the way. Read how one guy was able to get by on humor, good looks, and luck! And As Luck Would Have It... Art Hansl was born with a silver spoon in his mouth the size of a shovel, though it melted away during the depression years. His mother was a writer with a play on Broadway at age twenty-two; his father an athlete and an associate of J.P. Morgan & Company. They fired him off to private schools at an early age, where he found an aptitude for languages. After his father died, young Art struck out on his own. He joined the Marine Corps during the Korean conflict, but the war was over before he was ready to ship out so he served as a military cop at Camp Pendleton. The bars between Laguna Beach and Newport kept Marines busy, and the assets of California beach bunnies weren't exaggerated. After the Corps, he returned to Mexico for three weeks and stayed for three years. It was a sunny place for shady people and he met a lot of them, from gangsters to con artists, along with a variety of playboys and playgirls. A lovely local, Brenda Conde, taught him Spanish. A plan to open a beach club with a couple of seriously unstable partners was dropped just in time. He moved on. Spain was cheap and pleasant but Italy beckoned because of a beautiful, successful actress and model in Rome, whom he married. He will always credit Mary Arden for urging him out of his lackadaisical life-style. They partnered in a series of commercials that jumped to the head of the line in Italy-a stepping stone to feature films. His first was a barely visible gig in Cast a Giant Shadow with Kirk Douglas. He went on to more prominent parts with Ugo Tognazzi, Stefania Sandrelli and Ursula Andress, but was usually cast in action pictures, James Bond rip-offs, because he looked good and moved well, though his acting could improve. Location work took him to slave markets in Marrakech, through an avalanche in Switzerland, and he survived a mob in Yugoslavia. But the Dolce Vita ended around 1968 and Art, among other expat actors, headed for California. After losing a television series to Darin McGavin, he decided to return to Mexico. There he made a dozen or more films, including a soap opera with Maria Félix, Mexico's favorite leading lady. He went from heroes to heavies-more fun to play. Back in California again, he did a stint in the soap opera, General Hospital, a couple of parts in films with Charlie Bronson and made a few lucrative commercials. Divorced now, he turned to writing with the encouragement of an outrageously beautiful French girl he fell in love with and married in a rare moment of insight. Four novels later he decided to put down the events that brought him to this point.