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The result was that in 1929, when Colbert knocked on the door of Manhattan's law firm, Larkin, Rathbone & Perry, the interviewer described him as "a personable young man with no recommendation from the Dean." Nevertheless, Colbert's bounce, flair and talk caught the fancy of Partner Nicholas Kelley, a Chrysler vice president, director and legal adviser. Kelley hired him as a law clerk at $2,100 a year—less than a single summer's earnings on the cotton market.
Soon Tex caught an even more important eye—Walter Chrysler's. Colbert helped Chrysler's son-in-law Edgar Garbisch (the famed West Point center and dropkicker) organize Tish Inc. (paper handkerchiefs). Colbert did such a good job that when Chrysler wanted Nick Kelley to open an office in Chrysler's Detroit headquarters, Colbert was the natural choice for the job.
"What Next?" In Detroit, where the long war between unions and management was just beginning, Colbert soon became the corporation's expert on labor law. In 1935, when he was only 30, he was made a vice president and director of the Dodge division. It was then that President K. T. Keller took him under his wing and began to train him for a bigger job.
As Keller's staff man, Colbert would finish one job and say: "What next, Mr. Keller?'; Keller sent him into the plants to handle production problems firsthand, to night school to learn how to read a blueprint and run a lathe. Says Colbert: "I decided that this was much more to the cut of my jib than practicing law."
When war came, Colbert got his first big chance to prove his mettle, show what production tricks he had learned. He went to Washington one morning, returned to Detroit the same day with the green light to build one of the biggest plants in the world at Chicago and make B-29 engines (Wright Cyclone). Colbert was made second in command of the Chicago project; when his boss, William O'Neil, took sick a few months later, Colbert took over.
When the mud on the 500-acre site got so deep that supervisors could hardly walk or drive around, Colbert had a typical Texas solution: hire 25 horses from a local riding academy. When morale sagged in the long months of endless construction and production problems, Colbert said to his staff: "If I hear anyone here say this plant won't be built,' this engine won't run, this ship won't fly, or this plane won't win the war, I'm going to ask for his resignation immediately." When an assembly line slowed down, Colbert would hop on a motor scooter and dash to the scene of the trouble. Finally, the first engine came off the line and began its loo-hour test run. After 70 hours, the engine blew up; a tiny oil hole had not been drilled all the way through. But the next engine tested perfectly.
By war's end, the Dodge-operated plant had turned out 18,413 engines, cut the cost to the Army by more than one-half (from $26,000 to $12,000 apiece), and kept ahead of schedule every month, despite some 6,274 design changes. Wrote General "Hap" Arnold: "You accomplished what seemed to be the impossible."