The 60-Day Man

One day last week a short, sandy-haired man walked into the Dallas Petroleum Club, where million-dollar deals are finished as smoothly as juleps. Fellow club members took in his getup -- brown suit, blue shirt, a screaming green-&-yellow tie. They also caught the gunning look which Clinton Williams Murchison's eyes get when he has closed a deal.

Even for Clint Murchison (pronounced Murkison), the deals had been flying fast. He had 1) clinched an $800,000 bargain to build a 36-mile natural gas pipeline to Monterrey to tap the rich Mission fields cf Mexico; 2) launched a $1,000,000 rental-housing project in Dallas; 3) set up ten scholarships at Texas Agricultural & Mechanical College; 4) bought Colorado's famed tourist attraction--the Royal Gorge, complete with cable-car railvay.

Murchison got interested in the Royal Gorge when he learned that "what with popcorn and all," its tourist concession was grossing $125,000 a year. In characteristic fashion, he formed a "syndicate" (with 65% Murchison control), bought the business for $350,000. It included the world's highest suspension bridge, 1,053 feet above the Arkansas River.

It was not the view that impressed Murchison. In his obscure Dallas office, which hasn't even a name on the door, his mind's eye can range over a far bigger domain--the $100 million industrial empire he controls. In building it he has seldom bought more than 25% of a company--often with borrowed cash--regarding that as sufficient for control. He then pyramids that holding into some new venture. His favorite cry is "Gimme 60 days." In that time he can usually nail down the major flaps of any deal. He then turns it over to underlings to finish, keeps them hustling with: "Boy, if you don't get busy, they're going to clean your plow!"

Bankers are not sure whether or not Murchison is entirely a blessing. His business is big, but also fast and bewildering.

Small Fry. Murchison, now 51, learned about banking from his father, who ran the First National Bank in Athens, Tex. (pop. 4,971). When young Clint, after three weeks at Waxahachie's Trinity University (Presbyterian), was expelled for shooting craps and refusing to sign a pledge to shoot no more, he worked for a time as a bank teller. But he soon discovered that he could make more money trading hogs, sheep, cattle, horse collars, etc. on the outside.

When World War I came, he began selling cordwood to Army camps, but had trouble finding enough woodcutters. He threw a party in three railroad coaches at San Antonio and offered free whisky to footloose Mexicans. When the Mexicans woke up from their binge, the railroad cars were deep in the woods. They had to cut their way out.

After a stint in the Army, Clint headed for Fort Worth, then full of adventurers, gamblers, and rumors. When business was slack, Murchison and others trading in oil leases spread rumors about oil being found on land they secretly held.

Big-Game Hunter. He made his first killing in a gas pipeline, later set up his own Wink Gas Co., acquired some oil wells. At 32, he sold out his oil properties for several millions and retired. But hunting and fishing palled and he went back to stalking big financial game.

Now he controls ten oil companies and pipelines, a Cincinnati soap factory, two Texas waterworks, sizable chunks of five Rio Grande Valley banks, two small newspapers, bus systems in Austin and Waco, a San Antonio wholesale house, a silverware factory in Mexico, an inland waterway barge line, the Dixie Bus Lines, a Dallas chili plant, and 22% of Henry Holt & Co., Inc., Manhattan book publishers.

A fond parent, he is making a place for his two sons. When John Dabney, 25, who finished Yale last month, showed interest in publishing, Murchison bought into Henry Holt, made John Dabney a director. For John Dabney and Clint Jr., 23, who graduates from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in September, Murchison also bought two insurance companies.

Despite his complex deals, Murchison is no round-the-clock grind. In his 20-room mansion near Dallas, he likes to give big parties in a bar whose walls are sheathed in gleaming tarpon scales. Murchison takes off his tie, rolls up his sleeves, and invites his guests to do likewise. He keeps a six-seater converted C-47 (complete with bar, three couches and card table) to whisk him back & forth from his 120,000-acre Mexican ranch, where he goes to hunt and fish. And his way of announcing his arrival at home is to bellow to his houseman: "Start the juleps rolling!"

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