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Clint Eastwood - A Career History |
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 After the usual travails of the aspiring
actor, Clint was enthusiastic when he landed a contract with Universal
Pictures in 1955. He muffed his very first line in his uncredited role
of a lab technician in "Revenge
Of The Creature". Throughout the
year, he appeared (also uncredited) in such classics as, "Francis
In The Navy", "Lady Godiva". and "Tarantula". Finally, in 1956, he
landed the role of "Will" in "Never Say Goodbye", starring Rock
Hudson as a prominent surgeon, Dr. Michael Parker, along with Eastwood's
life-long friend, David Janssen. Thrilled to finally have a speaking
part (one scene) in a major production, Clint secured a pair of prop
glasses in an attempt to further develop his character. When his scene
was being shot, Rock Hudson halted the shoot and stated that as a
prominent surgeon, his character should be wearing the glasses. The
director promptly removed Clint's glasses and Hudson wore them for the
scene (the only scene in the film where Hudson wears
glasses).
 Such was Clint Eastwood's life as an eager young contract player at Universal.
It turned out to be a short one--the studio dropped him after a year and a half,
stating that his "Adam's apple was so large, it distracted
from his face".
He then returned to what young actors do: acting classes, constant workouts at the gym, auditions,
and the never-ending odd jobs. Once in a while, he would land a TV acting job,
"Highway Patrol", "Death Valley Days", "West Point Stories",
and an episode of Warner Bros.' hit western "Maverick". He did
manage to score good billing in a feature film "The First Traveling Saleslady", playing opposite Carol Channing;
but the film was a flop. He thought for awhile that he had one of the leads in another feature,
"Lafayette Escadrille", but when Tab Hunter landed the
part, he had to settle for a much smaller role. When he finally got a decent part in a movie,
the B western, "Ambush At Cimarron
Pass". The movie was
so bad he considered quitting the business.
After four years of
the archetypal show-biz
struggles,
Clint was visiting a friend at CBS and
was strolling down one of the office corridors, when an studio executive popped out of a door, took a long look at the
good-looking young man and asked,
"Are you an actor?"
It turned out he was looking for someone to play the second lead in a western series called
"Rawhide" that was under development by the network. That day proved to
be the birth of rugged, young cowhand, Rowdy Yates, plus the 50+ year
career of film legend, Clint Eastwood. This role would enable Clint to achieve his first fame and, if not fortune,
definitely the financial security of a hit television series which lasted
for seven years.
Rowdy Yates epitomized the characters that
Clint portrayed during those early years in his career, a nice young
man, politely spoken and highly principled. But, as Clint points out:
"not very interesting". At one time, Clint confided to an
interviewer that he knew he "wouldn't make any impact until [his] 30s".
He knew that in those days he still looked like he was about 18 and "had a certain amount of living to do".
Unfortunately (career-wise), he was still playing Rowdy when he reached his early 30s, which
he found terribly frustrating. Hoping to escape the clutches of
type-casting, he agreed to spend the 1964 Rawhide hiatus in Spain making a western for a
then unknown Italian director, Sergio Leone. The $15,000 salary was poor, the
professional prestige was nonexistent, but it did offer Clint an
opportunity to finally play a role different from Rowdy,
a grizzled adult, tough and
morally ambiguous, who never hesitated to kill when necessary.
Eastwood has never
really received enough credit for the risky, imaginative leap this undertaking represented.
He had foresight, and the courage it required, to willfully subvert his safe, boyish image of that time. By taking this long shot, he not only ended his long
acting apprenticeship, he was about to become a true rarity in the
motion picture industry - an entirely self-made star.
 Sergio
Leone's
film, "Per un Pugno di
Dollari" was released in Italy and received an unexpected, overwhelming
response. Its popularity spread throughout Europe and into countries
west. It was eventually dubbed in English and released in the US as "A
Fistful of Dollars". Little did Eastwood suspect that in an effort to
escape the evils of typecasting, he would again be consumed by a
character that would follow him for 28 years, aging before film
audiences, eventually retiring as
William 'Bill' Munny (the old,
burned-out gunslinger), in 1992's
Academy Award winning classic "Unforgiven".
Clint Eastwood
once said:
"I never considered myself a cowboy, because I
wasn't,"
"But I guess when
I got into cowboy gear
I looked enough like one to convince people that I
was."
Surely, there were short,
chubby, talkative cowhands in the Old West, but in Hollywood, these guys
are called "Sidekicks". In the movies, the classic western heroes have
always been tall, thin, laconic--and usually, low talking and
flinty-eyed. Does the name John Wayne ring a bell? Clint looked the part, and he gained his first featured
movie roles ("The First Traveling Saleslady", "Ambush at Cimarron
Pass"), his first taste of fame (Rowdy Yates - Rawhide), the
beginnings of his international film stardom (three spaghetti westerns
with Sergio Leone) a twenty year film career (a dozen western
characters) and finally, the ultimate coup, his Academy Awards
("Unforgiven"), all for playing the role of the quintessential "cowboy hero".
When he left for Italy to
film 'A Fistful of Dollars", Eastwood thought: "the western was in a dead place, encrusted with myth, poetry, stale pictorialism and simple moralizing." The thing that drew him to this unlikely, low-paying project was the
innate quality that has earned it and his other two Leone films so much disapproval when they first appeared--their straightforward, darkly comic insistence on the primitive and entirely ignoble nature of frontier life.
The impact on the genre
by Leone's western trilogy was ultimately liberating, both for Clint Eastwood as well as to
most of the others working within the form. In the first Leone film, Clint's character was styled as "a grizzled Christ figure" (to use critic Richard Corliss' phrase) who undergoes a
Calvary and a resurrection before bringing redemption--at the end of his gun barrel--to the hellish Mexican border town of San Miguel.
In the first film Clint's Malpaso Productions produced,
"Hang 'Em High", his character, Jed Cooper, is hanged and left for dead in the movie's opening minutes. Rescued, he becomes a lawman who liberates an entire frontier territory from
its reliance on the age-old "lynch law". In
"High Plains Drifter", the first western Clint directed, his character quite possibly represents a figure reincarnated to bring justice to a town every bit as evil as San Miguel. In
"Pale Rider", his Preacher is unquestionably such a figure--returned from the grave to defend the meek from their earthly tormentors. In the two most aspiring
western films he has directed,
"The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Unforgiven", he plays a man broken in spirit who finds redemption through altruistic actions reluctantly undertaken (and in the latter, more ambiguously stated).
Some aspect of the western landscape obviously moves Clint Eastwood to thoughts of regeneration, a subject
not addressed in his other films. Perhaps such meditations can be traced back to his boyhood, when his parents took him to
California's Yosemite National Park. He remembers when he first
"looked down into that valley" and was
"moved to something like a
spiritual experience by the silence, the emptiness, the beauty of the place".
"If ever a man were lost and needed to find himself, it is in such a place that he might begin the search".
What we find in his westerns, harsh and "realistic" as they may be in tone,
is a whispered yearning for--dare one use the word--"transcendence",
that can sometimes be heard.
Clint Eastwood became a star in westerns, but he became a superstar playing cops. One can even identify the exact moment when it happened. It is early in
"Dirty Harry", when a gang tries to rob the bank across the street from Inspector Harry Callahan's favorite hot dog stand. He looks up irritably as sirens sound, guns fire, cars start crashing. Then he strolls out into the street, still chewing his food as he
draws his .44 Magnum, wounds one of the miscreants and opens his immortal dialogue with the man:
"I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five."
This exchange provides one of the sublime moments in modern American movies, not least because it so deliciously parodies the whole tradition of super-cool movie heroism without ever acknowledging what it is up to. Audiences, of course, loved the scene and the tough, suspenseful Don Siegel movie in which it was embedded. Ultimately, Clint would reprise his Dirty Harry characterization four times. But one critic, Pauline Kael, loathed it. The action genre, she wrote,
"has always had a fascist potential, and it has finally surfaced." Her
harsh criticism of the movie resulted in it being branded "controversial",
but worse was her insinuation that Clint, himself, was some kind of right-wing crazed
fanatic. These allegations dogged the actor for several decades.
"Dirty Harry" tapped into popular resentment of what many felt at the time was an excessive judicial concern for criminal rights. In those days, the liberal intellectual community felt that these protections, most famously expressed in the Miranda decision, had been late in coming and required defense against critics in law enforcement. When Dirty Harry appeared in 1971, the
liberal spirit of the sixties (generally anti-establishment, specifically anti-police), was still very much
present in the public's mind. Thus, critic Kael's excessive panning and
negative ideological spin of the picture ignited controversial
discussions throughout the nation. It is certainly true that Harry Callahan's attempts to capture a psychopathic killer who is terrorizing San Francisco are constantly thwarted by a police bureaucracy bowing to liberal pressure and that he fails to observe all legal niceties in this case. Granted, Harry is not always--to put it mildly--careful in the way he expresses contempt for this caution, and he is not often delicate in his handling of suspects. On the other hand, his willingness to take certain aspects of the law into his own hands fits well within a long tradition of rebelliousness against bureaucratic authority in police dramas. The cop who refuses to go entirely by the book is nearly always the hero in these films. Dirty Harry merely ratchets up the intensity of that very basic conflict. In any event, Kael was dead wrong about the nature of fascism: in its essence, fascism is bureaucracy gone mad, intruding into every aspect of ordinary life, and is, as this century's history amply proves, a phenomenon of both the left and the right. Since Dirty Harry Callahan is at least as much against bureaucracy as he is against "coddling" criminals, he is manifestly an anti-fascist-some kind of instinctive libertarian more likely, and a man who judges his fellows on the basis of deeds rather than ideology. As we look back on the film almost a quarter century later, we see two things: that at every level of society sympathy has switched decisively toward victim rights and away from criminal rights, which makes Harry Callahan look almost like a prophet; and that the violence of the movie, also much criticized at the time, looks mild in comparison to the preposterous firepower now routinely released in urban action films (Die Hard or Lethal Weapon films or almost anything starring Sylvester Stallone).
All of that aside, Harry Callahan's popular appeal
was not based on his actions, or even in his "philosophy." It was a matter of character. He was the ultimate blue-collar guy, stuck in a tough, underpaid, generally unrewarding job, harassed by fancy-talking, over-privileged bosses. The difference between
the character of "Harry" and the ordinary guys (females, as well) in the audience, is that he had the
guts (gumption) to talk back and to take muddled matters into his own hands,
rectifying them without seeking the permission of the proper
authoritative figures. Additionally, his lonely, loveless life, his bad wardrobe, his cruddy diet,
these were the sacrifices necessary for his independence and his devotion to duty.
These personal sacrifices were a resultant tradeoff, ones with which the
movie audience could readily identify.
Clint Eastwood understood this character with whom
he too could identify. He had been raised in blue-collar Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco, gone to a trade and technical high school, knew (and continued to respect) working-class people, their virtues, their frustrations, their outrages. Ultimately,
he felt that that was what this movie, and the subsequent "Dirty Harry"
films, were most concerned. Plus, the other cops he played--whether it was the drunken loser, Ben Shockley in
"The Gauntlet" or the sexually confused Wes Block in "Tightrope", also
possessed these same characteristics. They were never smooth, articulate
guys. They weren't especially intelligent; they just had good, sound instincts. These
characters all used flattery, with understanding, to calm the enraged
authority figures, yet never toadied to them. It's no wonder Clint's audience could never get enough of them.
While attempting to master
the screenwriter's trade, F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote:
"Action is character"
The accuracy of Fitzgerald's
observation is debatable.
Sometimes it can apply, but
often in motion pictures (particularly in the last few decades), action
really is nothing more than just that - "action". This situation can become frustrating to players who regard themselves primarily as character actors.
While discussing the merits of this topic, Clint Eastwood once stated
(somewhat surprisingly):
"I've never thought of myself as a leading man,"
"though I guess at one time I was considered one...
being one of the young guys
'boppin' around town on a television series.
But I always tried to be a character actor even then."
Maintaining this identity was hard for Clint-casting directors couldn't see beyond his good looks. Later, when he had established himself with Rawhide and the spaghetti westerns, agents and studio bosses wanted him to play straightforward heroic leads. That's where the money is, after all. For a time, he obliged them with
"Where Eagles Dare", "Kelly's Heroes", "The Eiger Sanction",
but almost always alternating these big pictures with smaller, anti-heroic ventures like
"The Beguiled" and "Play Misty for Me" (his debut as a director).
It seems he's an economical pragmatist, but a true actor at heart.
The more expensive, expansive films fulfilled their function of helping to establish Clint's credentials as a star
one who could carry a big movie. "Bankable" is the term used within the
industry. This was a status that provided him the ability to sell other
projects, leading, of course to the early establishment of Malpaso
Productions. Yet his performances in the blockbuster type films tend to
be more subdued, withdrawn and shy, sometimes almost self-effacing. His
performances in these contexts reflects an actor more serious about his craft than he sometimes chooses to let on.
As a producer and director, it appears he's in search of a screenwriter capable of
developing a real character for him to portray. He's never been shy
about taking a chance in his choice of acting roles (Josh Logan's "Paint
Your Wagon"), and even more adventurous when behind the camera ("Plat
Misty For Me" and his recent triumph - "Million Dollar Baby").
Though the more "off-beat" movies
aren't usually as successful on a financial level, they do
provide Clint
with the opportunity to hone his acting chops, as well as present
divergent themes to the movie audience (1980's "Bronco Billy" comes to
mind). A comparison of "Bronco Billy" to the action-less, but expensive
musical, "Paint Your Wagon" shows that the latter, after a period, wears poorly, precisely because
it does not intelligently confront personal issues, such as the costs of heroism,
(machismo?) and such. This is a subject that deeply interests Clint
Eastwood, though he seldom discusses the issues.
Clint
intended to explore this theme on a deeper level when directing 1982's
"Firefox".
However, during production, the emphasis of the plot, and particularly,
the overriding special effects, forced the thematic examination into the
background to ensure commercial success. He was more successful in 1986
when he produced and directed "Heartbreak Ridge". As the "aging
Leatherneck", Gunnery Sgt. Tom 'Gunny' Highway, Clint raucously, yet
poignantly, asks what a lifelong soldier is supposed to do when he's too
old to fight, especially in wars that are becoming increasingly
meaningless. Again in 1990's "White Hunter, Black Heart", Clint examines
what a macho movie director must do when he reexamines the noisy,
careless audacity by which he has lived his life and in particular, the
manner in which he has managed his lifelong professional career.
With these movies,
Clint, the character actor, has found some real, intricate characters to play,
men who, in some ways, subvert, or at least cause us to question, common (and superficial) assumptions about Clint Eastwood's
macho, movie image. In his mind, he has never been an action star, any more than he has been a leading man.
Consequently, without talking about it directly, he would like us to
see, and more importantly, understand this about his "Action Star"
status.
Years back, someone once asked Clint Eastwood,
"Did
you once describe yourself as a bum and a drifter!"
"No,"
Clint replied.
"What are you, then?"
The
reporter asked.
Clint's reply,
"A bum and a drifter."
This is the image of
himself that Clint has loved to portray to the press and his fans
for decades. Indeed, he was
a child of the Depression, forced to move about constantly as his father
looked for work throughout California. As Clint tells it:
""I can't remember us being poor or
suffering as children. Maybe my father did have his worries but neither
Jean nor I ever knew about them. When I look back, I know Dad had to
think pretty fast at times because there were a lot of people out of
work in America around the time I was born. He often moved from one
stocks and bonds company to another to try and better himself. That's
why although I was born in San Francisco, my earliest memories are of
living in Oakland. But it seems to me now we didn't live much in houses
at all - we lived in cars. I can remember only a few of the places like
Oakland and San Francisco and Sacramento - twice - and Seattle."
Douglas Thompson - CLINT EASTWOOD
RIDING HIGH (1992)
Although the picture he draws sounds bleak, in reality, young children
don't feel the anxiety and financial pressures unless their parents
share them, and worse, dwell on them or squabble in front of the
children. The family never went hungry and Clinton and Ruth saw to it
that their children got to experience the wonders of nature while
growing up. Again, Clint recalls the early days of his youth:
"My father was a big man physically and
had competed in both football and track. He was fond of the outdoors and
he took me hunting and fishing. He also taught me to swim well. When we
lived in Redding and Sacramento, the Sierra Nevada Mountains were nearby
and Jean and I were pretty good at skiing while we were still kids."
Ibid.
His beloved mother, Ruth, also was usually employed as well, so
Clint and his sister, Jeanne, spent several summers at their single maternal
grandmother's chicken ranch in the mountains of Northern California.
Despite the family's itinerancy, he grew up in a loving, supportive
environment, and subsequently, developed his hard-working, independent
spirit from both his parents, and especially from his single
grandmother. The only negative results of the family's early lifestyle
was in Clint's social and academic development. He usually found himself
attempting to catch up with his classmates as he moved from school to
school. It also prevented him from establishing lasting childhood
friends, thus making him the freakishly tall new kid in school, - "THE
LONER". As a result of these recurrent situations in school, he
developed a very creative, active imagination, something which would
prove quite useful in his future career in the entertainment business.
Another trait which matured in those years was his masculinity. The "New
Kid" - the big, silent guy, was usually at least a foot taller than his
classmates, and though silent and shy, was already attracting the
attention of most of the young females in his classes. This situation
taught him fighting skills, another professional attribute. Clint
remembers when his priorities began to change:
"I became hooked on girls at an early age...
I was at Glenview [at age fourteen in Oakland, California] Grammar
School. Her name was Joan and she was a redhead, a little teeny bopper.
What attracted me, I think, was that she was the most popular girl in
class. It was actually very much a one-way situation. She never showed
any signs of being intrigued with me. But for a time I stopped staring
out of the window and began dreaming up to the front where she was
sitting."
Ibid.
The next
major change for Clint came before he turned fifteen. His father bought
him an old rattle-trap car for $25. The car took his mind off of the
girls (for a very short time). The car became his first priority while
girls took a back seat (soon to be literally). He turned 15 on May 30,
1945 and that summer, left home for the first time. He was about 6ft.
3in. at that age and the police never bothered him. He headed south and
found a job baling hay in the California ranch country. He remembers
barely being able to crawl into his bunk after a day's work. but by
summer's end he had really buffed up his fifteen year old body. He was
finally able to bond with some buddies and the hard working young ranch
hands were known to "raise some hell".
Clint remembers that summer as the happiest time of his young life.
Though he had worked since he was 13, delivering newspapers and
groceries, his new car now provided him with more lucrative financial
opportunities, as well as new social avenues. After
graduating from Oakland Public and Oakland Technical School in summer
1948, he headed up to Grandma's chicken ranch in the Hayward County
mountains, not far outside of Oakland. He soon realized that chicken
farming was not going to be his career and hit the road to find himself
and his future. He got a job working midnight to 7AM at the Bethlehem
Steelworks just outside of Oakland. He decided dodging red hot flying
sparks from the huge Bethlehem furnaces was not the answer to his
occupational dreams either. However, one of his dreams was to be a
lumberjack, so he followed his fascination with the macho logging
business and headed north. When he hit Eugene, Oregon he found a job at
the Weyerhauser pulp mill in Springfield, on the famed Willamette River.
He barely escaped death when a load of giant logs fell from a crane and
jammed against the crane missing the teenager by inches. He was assigned
to a job inside the mill which paid a higher wage. Despite the pay
increase, Clint preferred working outdoors and soon returned to his job
felling trees, enjoying the rugged mountains, and tall pine and fir
forests. On weekends, the mature teenager joined his fellow loggers and
descended on the town of Eugene and, as Clint puts it:
"more or less turned the place inside out".
The lively bunch of loggers earned a
reputation in Eugene and soon took their rowdy action to a little
Country Western joint just out of town. Though earning good money for
his labors, the young drifter knew this was not to be a career job. When
the Korean War began on June 25, 1950, Clint had just turned twenty
years of age. He knew the draft was inevitable so together with a group
of his fellow, footloose loggers, decided to take their newly refined
party skills to the next level and headed south to San Francisco. Clint
is proud of the time the gang had prior to their Army induction.
"We enjoyed ourselves so much that by
the time we reported for our physicals we were so exhausted and partied
out that we thought we might fail our examinations. But, we all made
it".
He joined the Army, serving most of his stint at Fort Ord, in the San
Francisco area. An excellent swimmer, he served a good portion of his
army career as a lifeguard, a job that he held outside of the service as
well. He moonlighted as a bouncer for a local bar as well but had to
quit when he began to fall asleep in his lifeguard chair. After the Army
he again worked in his share of manual labor jobs, while deciding his
career direction. He drifted south to Los
Angeles, and thought higher education might be the avenue to better
jobs. He decided to take advantage of his Army benefits and enrolled in Los Angeles City College,
majoring in Business. He had fallen for a leggy, young blonde model in
Berkeley, Maggie Johnson, and they moved in together while pursuing
career alternatives in Hollywood. For a time, Clint managed an apartment
building in Beverly Hills to cover their rent in Tinseltown. While in
the Army, Clint befriended young actors, David Janssen and Martin
Milner, and they persuaded him to consider acting as a career. Clint was
hesitant due to a bad experience in a high school play. Maggie enjoyed
some success in her pursuits and also urged Clint to give it a try. He
decided it was worth a shot. He soon found himself digging
swimming pools under the hot sun of the San
Fernando Valley, and searching for work as an actor.
He eventually contacted Universal Studios and persuaded Director Arthur
Lubin to give him a screen test. Lubin did a silent screen test to see
if the tall, rugged young man photographed well. After a wait of 3
weeks, Universal offered him a standard actor's contract, paying him
$75.00 a week with a 40 week annual guarantee. CLINT WAS AN ACTOR!
His lifelong passion for jazz drew
him to his share of shady clubs, just as he had done while in the Army.
He was a student Disc Jockey while in college, a job that didn't
pay any bills, but did provide him the opportunity to develop his
artistic, performance skills (think "Play Misty For Me" - his first
experience as a director). This background gave him the sympathetic
sense of the working-class life, neither patronizing nor indulgent, that
marks some of his best, and no doubt most
enduring, work.
 Humble beginnings are something alluded to by
the famous when an interviewer is looking for a little background
history for their story. Very few return to those beginnings in their work, and none have done so as consistently,
or as well, as Clint Eastwood. Almost everyone of his associates at the studio advised him
against "Every Which Way But Loose", his lowbrow comedy about Philo Beddoe, the bare-knuckle boxer
and his best pal, the affable orangutan, Clyde.
 However, Clint viewed the project
as a way to escape the tough-guy typecasting that had followed him
thus far in his career. It reminded him of his easy-going, "hang-out-with-the-guys" past, and
felt that audiences could embrace a character such as Philo Beddoe, a
goofy, likable kinda guy. He felt they could more easily identify with
this sort of character, as opposed to his grimly taciturn cowboy tough
guy heroes, or the larger-than-life bas-ass cop, "Dirty" Harry Callahan.
His feelings were obviously correct as the off-beat film was both a
critical and financial success, and, like his western and cop franchised
heroes, spawned a sequel, "Any Which Way You Can".
 "Every
Which Way But Loose" enabled Clint to
loosen up in many ways. The movies made it possible for him to relax the set of his jaw, let the ice in his eyes melt a
bit, and most importantly, it finally allowed the droll side of his nature
to emerge on screen. The films subsequently helped launch a line of work which includes
the two films that Clint always lists among his own favorites: "Bronco Billy", the story of an erstwhile New Jersey shoe salesman,
dragging his rag-tag Wild West Show along the
back roads to nowhere; and "Honkytonk Man" (featuring his son, Kyle), the saga of Red Stovall, a country singer whose
greatest talent is self-destruction. Neither movie ranks among his most popular films, but both pay sweet tribute to the power of
the American dreamer. Both pictures recognize that even blue-collar,
middle class, working folks can also be possessed by these off-beat dreams.
* Author's Note:
Before you send me scathing Emails denouncing my intelligence, I know
that the 2 movies feature an orangutan, Clyde, not a monkey. as Clint's
costar. However, in the same vein as the three Leone westerns, I have no
recollection of Clint's anonymous protagonist ("Man With No Name",
"Joe", "Blondie") ever consuming any pasta in these classic
westerns -yet fans and critics alike have bestowed the title "Spaghetti
Westerns" upon the trilogy. The same phenomenon seems to apply to the
pair of "Orangutan Movies". Who am I to debate with the millions?
 For Clint Eastwood, directing was something he was determined to do from his
very first days as an actor. It was a process which intrigued him since
the day he first walked onto a soundstage. When starting out as a
Universal Contract Player in 1955, he found himself with a lot of
"Down/Dead Time" when on set. He was being cast in roles essentially one
step up from an extra. His speaking roles usually consisted of a couple
lines, or more often, less, thus his need to learn his lines, spend time
in costumes, makeup, and such, were minimal to say the least. Unlike the
majority of extras and bit players, he refrained from reading the
newspaper, playing cards, or "shooting the breeze" with others of his
ilk, choosing instead to observe all aspects of motion picture
production. The big break in his acting career proved to be the same for
his future as a director. When signed to play Rowdy Yates in the new CBS
western series, "Rawhide", I'm sure acting was foremost in his mind.
Even though he was now cast as one of the stars of this soon-to-be
television hit, after a while adjusting to his new position, he again
enjoyed the time to examine the creative process behind the production
of shows. Clint learned to direct mainly by watching. Directors would come and go on Rawhide, the old pros and the young hotshots, the hacks and the caring craftsmen,
Clint studied them all.
"The things that impress you, you remember and use yourself,"
he
has said, "and the things that don't impress you, you discard."
After seven long years on the series, he got to see them all. Unlike a
film school graduate, or budding
auteur, Clint learned the trade from a
pragmatic, professional view, always aware of budgeting, scheduling, and
the other aspects of both producing and directing, an education that
would serve him well in the future. Consequently, he is known for always
being on budget and usually ahead of schedule. Actors love working with him because, being an actor himself, he allows them to find their own
character interpretations, with just the occasional, supportive suggestion.
As intelligent and talented as Clint Eastwood might be, I'm sure he
would be the first to acknowledge how fortunate he has been in his
career choices. Just as "Rawhide" had provided such a huge professional
step for him seven years earlier, his next step would be even bigger.
"Rawhide" had made him a television star and young American heartthrob,
but he recognized the professional hazards he was about to face as
"Rawhide" had run its course over seven years. Even the biggest of
television stars seldom make the transition to Motion Picture stars.
Typecasting is prevalent throughout the industry and success on
television can pigeonhole an actor for the rest of their career. Because
the TV star is seen in the homes of America on a weekly basis, fans
naturally tend to equate an actor with the role he plays. Can you
imagine Roy Rogers cast as a rapist or murderer? Clint was certainly
aware of the dilemma when he
accepted his role
in then unknown Italian director,
Sergio Leone's,
film,
"Per un Pugno di
Dollari"
during the 1964 hiatus of "Rawhide". Once again, this decision
would prove to be successful beyond anyone's expectations. Clint had the
good fortune to work with a foreign director/screenwriter who had
learned his craft working on low cost foreign
"sword and sandal" historical epics which were popular
throughout the fifties. Leone also worked as an assistant director on
several large-scale, high-profile Hollywood productions, a.k.a. "runaway
productions", filmed at Rome's Cinecittą Studios, notably "Quo Vadis"
(1951) (in which a teenaged Sophia Loren appeared in a small role) and
Academy Award winning mega-hit, "Ben-Hur" in 1959. As a result,
he was well equipped to produce low-budget
films which looked and felt like Hollywood spectaculars. In the early
1960s, demand for historical epics collapsed, and Leone was now
fortunate enough to be at the forefront of the genre which replaced it
in the public's affections: "The Western". It was the synergistic
pairing of Eastwood and Leone that was responsible for returning the
western to the level it had enjoyed in American cinema for the past forty
years. Once again, Clint had the good fortune to work with a director
known for his scheduling and budgeting skills, but this time, one whose
talent for panorama and spectacle were well respected, but were destined
to be overshadowed by his long, slow, very tight, facial close-ups.
Leone also displayed an extraordinary ability to assimilate his
soundtrack into these close-up scenes to intensify the dramatic impact.
As if by destiny,
Eastwood again was fortunate to have the opportunity to learn from a
master of the trade.
By the release of "The
Good, The Bad And The Ugly" in 1966,
 Clint Eastwood was an international
film star, one who could now choose his next project. What better time
to establish his role as Producer. His production company, Malpaso
Productions (name Malpaso is derived from a creek south of Carmel,
California, where Eastwood has spent much of his life), was formed and
Clint hung his shingle, quickly signing a deal with
United Artists.
For his first US film, he wisely
selected a western,
"Hang 'Em High"
(1968).
-Tagline: "The hanging was the best show in town. But they made two
mistakes. They hung the wrong man and they didn't finish the job".
-Plot Outline: When an innocent man barely survives a lynching,
he returns as a lawman determined to bring the vigilantes to justice.
Does something sound familiar here? The "Man With No Name" was being
resurrected as an innocent man, Jed Cooper,
who survives a lynching, and comes back as Marshal Jed Cooper, to see
that "justice is done" (revenge?). The film's
presentation of the contrast of the moral undercurrent of justice:
"by a dirty rope on the plain, or a judge in a robe standing before the
American flag" was rather striking, and continued in the tradition
of Leone's "Dollar Trilogy".
Eastwood's innate wisdom led him to hold up on his direction aspirations
for the moment and look to his experience for the right man to direct
Malpaso Productions' first film. The obvious choice,
Sergio Leone, was considered but he was working on "C'era una volta il
West" (Once
Upon A Time in the West), the Bernardo Bertolucci scripted
epic which would become known as Leone's "Masterpiece". Clint then
turned to Ted Post, one of the directors that he truly respected from
his "Rawhide" days. In addition to the four episodes of "Rawhide", Post
had also directed episodes of most of the top TV westerns, including
"Zane Grey Theater", "The Rifleman", "The Virginian", "The Peacemaker",
"The Westerner", 17 episodes of "Gunsmoke", and of course, "Wagon
Train". This guy knew westerns, and had worked within television budgets
for over 16 years. With a cast of seasoned western character actors
(Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, Alan Hale Jr., Pat Hingle) the project was
an obvious success and established Eastwood as a producer, but Clint
still aspired for that director's chair.
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