"All I was really thinking was, 'I'd like to go.' I was trying to figure out how to get his hand off my butt and his arm away from me without making a big deal of it. I remember thinking, 'Geez, that's a strong arm.' ... I was just thinking, 'Let me get out of here.' "
She said she looked at the ceiling and looked at her boss, who kept repeating, "We've got to go now. We've got to go now,' and yanking my arm. My boss did the best she could to get me away."
The secretary said Schwarzenegger released her after about 20 seconds.
Later, as they left the production office, the secretary said her flustered supervisor remarked, "Oh, my gosh! I had no idea he would do that." The secretary said she replied: "Oh, well, no big deal."
"I was sort of embarrassed in front of her. It just felt strange."
A day or two later, Schwarzenegger called her boss' office, and the secretary said she answered the phone. "He figured out it was me and he said, 'Oh, you still haven't come to work out with me.' " She said she did not respond and simply put her boss on the line.
Six or seven years later, the secretary recalled, she walked past Schwarzenegger on a studio lot. "No recognition. No looking," she said.
Now 47, she has been in and out of the entertainment business. After a long period of unemployment, she said she now has another secretarial job at a movie studio and does not want to risk losing it by being publicly identified. She also declined to provide the name of her boss on the Columbia lot.
She has, however, recounted the story numerous times through the years -- initially as a warning to other women with whom she worked. Yet the secretary said most women she knows in and around the entertainment business were untroubled by the incident.
"I was like, 'He's disgusting, he's revolting.' They said, 'No, he's hot.' The attitude of women was more upsetting than he was."
She also told the story to a friend, Michael Collins, a freelance writer and a director of the Los Angeles Press Club. In an interview with The Times, Collins said that she recounted the episode to him eight months ago -- well before the recall race. "She never thought he might run for governor," he said.
'This Is Disgusting'
In late 1990, Schwarzenegger was in the San Bernardino County town of Fontana, shooting "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." According to a female crew member, Schwarzenegger harassed her on several occasions.
