Clint Eastwood
Clinton Eastwood Jr. is an American actor, musician, and filmmaker. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Eastwood's greatest commercial successes are the adventure comedy Every Which Way but Loose and its action comedy sequel Any Which Way You Can. Other popular Eastwood films include the Westerns Hang 'Em High, The Outlaw Josey Wales and Pale Rider, the action-war film Where Eagles Dare, the prison film Escape from Alcatraz, the war film Heartbreak Ridge, the action film In the Line of Fire, and the romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County. More recent works include Gran Torino, The Mule, and Cry Macho. Since 1967, Eastwood's company Malpaso Productions has produced all but four of his American films.
An Academy Award nominee for Best Actor, Eastwood won Best Director and Best Picture for his Western film Unforgiven and his sports drama Million Dollar Baby. In addition to directing many of his own star vehicles, Eastwood has directed films in which he did not appear, such as the mystery drama Mystic River and the war film Letters from Iwo Jima, for which he received Academy Award nominations, as well as the legal thriller Juror #2. He also directed the biographical films Changeling, Invictus, American Sniper, Sully, and Richard Jewell.
Eastwood's accolades include four Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three César Awards, and an AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2000, he received the Italian Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award, honoring his lifetime achievements. Bestowed two of France's highest civilian honors, he received the Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1994, and the Legion of Honour in 2007.
Early life
Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born on May 31, 1930, at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco, to Ruth and Clinton Eastwood, who at the time lived in Oakland's Lake Merritt neighborhood. During her son's fame, Ruth was known by the surname of her second husband, John Belden Wood, whom she married after the death of Clinton Sr. Eastwood was nicknamed "Samson" by hospital nurses because he weighed at birth. He has a younger sister, Jeanne Bernhardt.He is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry. Eastwood is descended from Mayflower passenger William Bradford, making him the 12th generation of his family born in North America. His family relocated three times during the 1930s as his father changed occupations. Contrary to what Eastwood has suggested in media interviews, they did not move between 1940 and 1949. After settling in Piedmont, California, the Eastwoods lived in an affluent part of town, had a swimming pool, belonged to a country club, and each parent drove their own car. Eastwood's father worked as manufacturing executive at Georgia-Pacific for most of his career. As Clint and Jeanne grew older, Ruth took a clerical job at IBM.
Eastwood attended Piedmont Middle School, where he was held back due to poor academic performance, and records indicate he also attended summer school. From January 1945 until at least January 1946, he attended Piedmont High School, but was asked to leave after writing an obscene suggestion to a school official on the athletic field scoreboard and burning an effigy on the school lawn, in addition to other infractions. He transferred to Oakland Technical High School and graduated on February 2, 1949.
Eastwood worked a number of odd jobs, including lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy. He said he attempted to enroll at Seattle University in 1951, but instead was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War. Don Loomis recalled hearing that Eastwood was romancing one of the daughters of a Fort Ord officer, who may have been encouraged to look out for him when postings were assigned. While returning from a prearranged tryst in Seattle, he was a passenger on a Douglas AD bomber that ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean near Point Reyes. Using a life raft, he and the pilot swam to safety. Eastwood was discharged in February 1953.
Career
1954–1962: acting debut and ''Rawhide''
According to a CBS press release for Rawhide, Universal-International's camera crew was shooting in Fort Ord when an enterprising assistant spotted Eastwood and invited him to meet the director, although this is disputed by Eastwood's unauthorized biographer, Patrick McGilligan. According to Eastwood's official biography, the key figure was a man named Chuck Hill, who was stationed in Fort Ord and had contacts in Hollywood. While in Los Angeles, Hill became reacquainted with Eastwood and managed to sneak him into a Universal studio, where he introduced him to cameraman Irving Glassberg. Glassberg arranged for an audition under Arthur Lubin, who, although very impressed with Eastwood's appearance and stature, disapproved of his acting, remarking, "He was quite amateurish. He didn't know which way to turn or which way to go or do anything." Lubin suggested that he attend drama classes and arranged for Eastwood's initial contract in April 1954, at $100 per week. After signing, Eastwood was initially criticized for his stiff manner and delivering his lines through his teeth, a lifelong trademark.In May 1954, Eastwood made his first real audition for Six Bridges to Cross, but was rejected by Joseph Pevney. After many unsuccessful auditions, he was eventually given a minor role by director Jack Arnold in Revenge of the Creature, a sequel to the recently released Creature from the Black Lagoon. In September 1954, Eastwood worked for three weeks on Arthur Lubin's Lady Godiva of Coventry, won a role in February 1955, playing "Jonesy", a sailor in Francis in the Navy and appeared uncredited in another Jack Arnold film, Tarantula, where he played a squadron pilot. In May 1955, Eastwood put four hours' work into the film Never Say Goodbye and had a minor uncredited role as a ranch hand in August 1955 with Star in the Dust, starring John Agar and Mamie Van Doren, the latter of whom he dated briefly. Universal presented him with his first television role on July 2, 1955, on NBC's Allen in Movieland, which starred comedian Steve Allen, actor Tony Curtis, and swing musician Benny Goodman. Although he continued to develop as an actor, Universal terminated his contract on October 23, 1955.
Eastwood joined the Marsh Agency, and although Lubin landed him his biggest role to date in The First Traveling Saleslady and later hired him for Escapade in Japan, without a formal contract, Eastwood was struggling. On his financial advisor Irving Leonard's advice, he switched to the Kumin-Olenick Agency in 1956 and Mitchell Gertz in 1957. He landed several small roles in 1956 as a temperamental army officer for a segment of ABC's Reader's Digest series, and as a motorcycle gang member on a Highway Patrol episode. In 1957, Eastwood played a cadet in the West Point series and a suicidal gold prospector on Death Valley Days.
In 1958, he played a Navy lieutenant in a segment of Navy Log and in early 1959 made a notable guest appearance as Red Hardigan on Maverick opposite James Garner as a cowardly villain intent on marrying a rich girl for money. Eastwood had a small part as an aviator in Lafayette Escadrille and played a major role as an ex-renegade of the Confederacy in Ambush at Cimarron Pass, a film that Eastwood considers the low point of his career.
In 1958, Eastwood was cast as Rowdy Yates in the CBS hour-long western series Rawhide, the career breakthrough he had long sought. Eastwood was not especially happy with his character; Eastwood was almost 30, and Rowdy was too young and cloddish for his comfort. Filming began in Arizona in the summer of 1958. It took just three weeks for Rawhide to reach the top 20 in TV ratings and, although it never won an Emmy, it was a major success for several years, and peaked at number six in the ratings from October 1960 to April 1961. The Rawhide years were some of the most grueling of Eastwood's career, often filming six days a week for an average of 12 hours a day, but some directors still criticized him for not working hard enough. By late 1963, Rawhide was beginning to decline in the ratings and lacked freshness in the scripts; it was canceled in the middle of the 1965–66 season. Eastwood made his first attempt at directing when he filmed several trailers for the show, but was unable to convince producers to let him direct an episode. In the show's first season, Eastwood earned $750 an episode. At the time of Rawhides cancellation, he received $119,000 an episode as severance pay.
1963–1969: spaghetti Westerns and stardom
In late 1963, Eastwood's Rawhide co-star Eric Fleming rejected an offer to star in an Italian-made western called A Fistful of Dollars, filmed in a remote region of Spain by a then relatively unknown director, Sergio Leone. Richard Harrison suggested Eastwood to Leone because Harrison knew that Eastwood could play a cowboy convincingly. Eastwood thought the film would be an opportunity to escape from his Rawhide image. He signed a contract for $15,000 in wages for eleven weeks' work, with a bonus of a Mercedes-Benz automobile upon completion. Eastwood later said of the transition from a TV western to A Fistful of Dollars: "In Rawhide I did get awfully tired of playing the conventional white hat. The hero who kisses old ladies and dogs and was kind to everybody. I decided it was time to be an antihero." Eastwood was instrumental in creating the Man with No Name character's distinctive visual style and, although a nonsmoker, Leone insisted Eastwood smoke cigars as an essential ingredient of the "mask" he was attempting to create for the character. "I needed a mask more than an actor," Leone would later explain, "and back then Eastwood had only two facial expressions: with the hat and without the hat".A Fistful of Dollars proved a landmark in the development of spaghetti Westerns, with Leone depicting a more lawless and desolate world than traditional westerns, and challenging American stereotypes of a western hero with a morally ambiguous antihero. The film's success made Eastwood a major star in Italy and he was rehired to star in For a Few Dollars More, the second of the trilogy. Through the efforts of screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni, the rights to For a Few Dollars More and the trilogy's final film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, were sold to United Artists for about $900,000.
In January 1966, Eastwood met producer Dino De Laurentiis in New York City and agreed to star in a non-Western five-part anthology production, The Witches, opposite De Laurentiis's wife, Silvana Mangano. Eastwood's 19-minute installment took only a few days to shoot. Two months later he began work on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, again playing the mysterious Man with No Name. Lee Van Cleef returned as a ruthless fortune seeker, with Eli Wallach portraying the Mexican bandit Tuco Ramirez. The storyline involved the search for a cache of Confederate gold buried in a cemetery. During the filming of a scene in which a bridge was blown up, Eastwood urged Wallach to retreat to a hilltop. "I know about these things", he said. "Stay as far away from special effects and explosives as you can." Minutes later, confusion among the crew over the word "Vaya!" resulted in a premature explosion that could have killed Wallach.
The Dollars trilogy was not released in the United States until 1967, when A Fistful of Dollars opened on January 18, followed by For a Few Dollars More on May 10, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on December 29. All three were commercially successful, particularly The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which eventually earned $8 million in rental earnings and turned Eastwood into a major film star being ranked for the first time on Quigley's Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll in 1968 in fifth place. All three received poor reviews, and marked the beginning of a battle for Eastwood to win American film critics' respect. Judith Crist described A Fistful of Dollars as "cheapjack", while Newsweek called For a Few Dollars More "excruciatingly dopey". Renata Adler of The New York Times said The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre". Time drew attention to the film's wooden acting, especially Eastwood's, though a few critics such as Vincent Canby and Bosley Crowther of The New York Times praised his coolness. Leone's cinematography was widely acclaimed, even by critics who disparaged the acting.
Stardom brought Eastwood more roles. He signed to star in the American revisionist western Hang 'Em High alongside Inger Stevens, Pat Hingle, Ed Begley, playing a man who takes up a marshal's badge and seeks revenge as a lawman after being lynched by vigilantes and left for dead. The film earned Eastwood $400,000 and 25% of its net box office. Using money earned from the Dollars trilogy, Eastwood's advisor Irving Leonard helped establish Eastwood's own production company, Malpaso Productions, named after Malpaso Creek on Eastwood's property in Monterey County, California. The 38-year-old actor was still relatively unknown as late as a month prior to the film's release, as evidenced by a July 1968 news item by syndicated columnist Dorothy Manners: "The proverbial man in the street is still asking, 'Who's Clint Eastwood? Leonard arranged for Hang 'Em High to be a joint production with United Artists; when it opened in August, it had the largest opening weekend in United Artists' history. Hang 'Em High was widely praised by critics, including Archer Winsten of the New York Post, who called it "a western of quality, courage, danger and excitement".
Before Hang 'Em Highs release, Eastwood had already begun working on Coogan's Bluff, about an Arizona deputy sheriff tracking a wanted psychopathic criminal through New York City. He was reunited with Universal Studios for it after receiving an offer of $1 millionmore than double his previous salary. Jennings Lang arranged for Eastwood to meet Don Siegel, a Universal contract director who later became Eastwood's close friend, forming a partnership that would last more than ten years and produce five films. Shooting began in November 1967, before the script had been finalized. The film was controversial for its portrayal of violence. Coogan's Bluff also became the first collaboration with Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin, who scored several Eastwood films in the 1970s and 1980s, including the Dirty Harry films.
Eastwood was paid $750,000 for the war epic Where Eagles Dare, about a World War II squad parachuting into a Gestapo stronghold in the Alps. Richard Burton played the squad's commander, with Eastwood as his right-hand man. Eastwood was also cast as Two-Face in the Batman television show, but the series was canceled before filming began.
Eastwood then branched out to co-star in a musical, Paint Your Wagon. Eastwood and Lee Marvin play gold miners who buy a Mormon settler's less favored wife at an auction. Bad weather and delays plagued the production, and the film's budget eventually exceeded $20 million, which was high for the time. The film was not a critical or commercial success, but was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.