Clint Eastwood

• 1. Introduction

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  Clinton Eastwood Jr. entered the world at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco on the 31st of May, 1930, weighing 11 pounds 6 ounces. The nurses at the hospital nicknamed him "Samson." Nobody in that delivery room could have imagined that this oversized baby from Oakland's Lake Merritt neighborhood would one day be standing before a French president to receive the Legion of Honour, or that a single line he delivered in a coffee shop scene would be quoted by a sitting American president to Congress.

  By the time Clint Eastwood was done, he had directed more than thirty films, won four Academy Awards, served as a mayor, tried and failed to make it as a singer, and created at least two characters so deeply embedded in American culture that film historians treat them as archetypes rather than roles. How did a kid who was held back at Piedmont Middle School and expelled from Piedmont High School for burning an effigy on the lawn get there? And what does his particular brand of lean, efficient storytelling reveal about the culture that embraced him so completely?

• 2. An Unlikely Apprenticeship

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  Arthur Lubin was genuinely impressed when he first laid eyes on Clint Eastwood at a Universal studio audition arranged by cameraman Irving Glassberg. At 6 feet 4 inches, Eastwood had the physical presence Lubin was looking for. The verdict on the acting was less kind. "He was quite amateurish," Lubin said. "He didn't know which way to turn or which way to go or do anything." Lubin arranged Eastwood's first contract anyway, in April 1954, at $100 per week.

  The path to that audition had been circuitous. Before films, Eastwood had worked as a lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy. He had tried to enroll at Seattle University in 1951 but was drafted into the Army during the Korean War instead. During his service, he was a passenger on a Douglas AD bomber that ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean near Point Reyes. He and the pilot used a life raft and swam two miles to safety. Eastwood was discharged in February 1953.

  Universal terminated his contract on the 23rd of October, 1955, after a series of minor and uncredited roles. He spent the next few years grinding through small television parts, playing a temperamental army officer, a motorcycle gang member, a cadet, and a suicidal gold prospector. He was cast as an ex-renegade of the Confederacy in Ambush at Cimarron Pass in 1958, which he later described as the low point of his career. That same year, he landed the role of Rowdy Yates in the CBS western Rawhide, the break he had been chasing. In Rawhide's first season, Eastwood earned $750 an episode. By the time the show was canceled in the middle of the 1965-66 season, he was receiving $119,000 an episode as severance pay.

• 3. Leone's Mask, Eastwood's Face

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  In late 1963, Rawhide co-star Eric Fleming turned down an offer to star in an Italian-made western called A Fistful of Dollars. Richard Harrison suggested Eastwood to director Sergio Leone, reasoning that Eastwood could convincingly play a cowboy. Eastwood signed for $15,000 in wages across eleven weeks' work, with a Mercedes-Benz promised upon completion.

  Leone was candid about what he was after. "I needed a mask more than an actor," he later explained. "And back then Eastwood had only two facial expressions: with the hat and without the hat." Eastwood was a nonsmoker, but Leone insisted on the cigars as part of the character's visual identity. Eastwood embraced the logic of restraint. "I wanted to play it with an economy of words and create this whole feeling through attitude and movement," he said. "I felt the less he said, the stronger he became and the more he grew in the imagination of the audience."

  A Fistful of Dollars made Eastwood a major star in Italy. Through screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni's efforts, the rights to For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly were sold to United Artists for roughly $900,000. The trilogy was not released in the United States until 1967. American critics were not kind. Judith Crist called A Fistful of Dollars "cheapjack." Newsweek called For a Few Dollars More "excruciatingly dopey." Renata Adler of The New York Times described The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre." The Good, the Bad and the Ugly eventually earned $8 million in rental earnings and placed Eastwood fifth on Quigley's Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll in 1968, his first appearance on that list.

• 4. The Loose-Cannon Archetype

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  Dirty Harry arrived in December 1971, written by Harry and Rita Fink. The film centers on San Francisco police inspector Harry Callahan, a hard-edged cop determined to stop a psychotic killer by any means. Director Don Siegel, whom Eastwood had first met through Universal, had already forged a close partnership with him across several films. Dirty Harry earned $22 million in the United States and Canada, making it Siegel's highest-grossing film.

  Author Eric Lichtenfeld argued that Eastwood's portrayal established the "first true archetype" of the action film genre. Firearms historians Garry James and Richard Venola credited Harry Callahan's famous lines about his .44 Magnum with driving ownership of the Smith & Wesson Model 29 to new heights across the United States. The film was also widely criticized as fascistic, a charge that followed the character through its four sequels.

  The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact, arrived in 1983 and contained the line "Go ahead, make my day," which President Ronald Reagan quoted in a speech to Congress and which was deployed again during the 1984 presidential elections. Eastwood directed that film himself and received 60 percent of all profits from films he starred in and directed. Sudden Impact was the second-most commercially successful entry in the series, earning $70 million. The fifth and final film, The Dead Pool, arrived in 1988 and grossed nearly $38 million, the series' lowest receipts.

• 5. Director as Craftsman

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  Play Misty for Me, which commenced filming in Monterey in September 1970, marked Eastwood's directorial debut. The idea had originated before his financial advisor Irving Leonard died; Leonard and Eastwood had discussed giving Eastwood the artistic control he desired. Critics including Jay Cocks in Time, Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice, and Archer Winsten in the New York Post all praised both the film and Eastwood's directorial skills.

  From the earliest days of his career, Eastwood had been frustrated by directors who insisted on multiple takes and extensive reshoots. When he took over the chair himself, he built a practice around efficiency: no storyboards, minimal rehearsal, a preference for completing most scenes on the first take. Life magazine summarized the approach bluntly: "Eastwood's style is to shoot first and act afterward. He etches his characters virtually without words." Interviewers Richard Thompson and Tim Hunter noted that his films are "superbly paced: unhurried; cool; and give a strong sense of real time, regardless of the speed of the narrative."

  The New Yorker's David Denby observed that the actors Eastwood resembled in terms of stardom, men like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, and Sean Connery, never directed a feature film. John Wayne directed only twice, and badly. Eastwood's production company, Malpaso Productions, named after Malpaso Creek on his property in Monterey County, has produced all but four of his American films since 1967. The company's first major triumph came with Hang 'Em High in 1968, which opened in August of that year and had the largest opening weekend in United Artists' history.

• 6. The Academy and Unforgiven

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  Scripts for Unforgiven had existed as early as 1976, circulating under titles such as The Cut-Whore Killings and The William Munny Killings. Eastwood deliberately delayed the project. He wanted to wait until he was old enough to play the aging ex-gunfighter at its center, and he wanted to savor it as the last of his western films.

  When it finally arrived in 1992, Jack Methews of the Los Angeles Times called it "the finest classical western to come along since perhaps John Ford's 1956 The Searchers." The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Eastwood and Best Original Screenplay for David Webb Peoples. It won four, including Best Picture and Best Director. In 2008, Unforgiven was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth-best American western, behind Shane, High Noon, and The Searchers.

  The follow-up in 2004 was Million Dollar Baby, a boxing drama that won four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress for Hilary Swank, and Best Supporting Actor for Morgan Freeman. At age 74, Eastwood became the oldest of eighteen directors to have directed two or more Best Picture winners. His daughter Kathryn presented him with his Golden Globe for Best Director at the 2005 ceremony, where she served as Miss Golden Globe. A.O. Scott of The New York Times called the film a "masterpiece" and the best film of the year.

• 7. Politics, Music, and the Man

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  Eastwood won election as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, in April 1986. The salary was $200 per month, which he donated to the Carmel Youth Center. During his two years in office, he helped make it legal to eat ice cream on city streets, added public restrooms to the public beach, and oversaw the construction of a city library annex. He declined to seek a second term.

  His political affiliations have shifted across the decades. A former Republican who is now a registered Libertarian, he endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012 and then delivered a primetime address at the 2012 Republican National Convention, where a speech he gave to an empty chair representing President Barack Obama drew wide attention. He later said he regretted that moment. In February 2020, he announced he would endorse Democrat Michael Bloomberg for the presidency.

  Music had been Eastwood's first love before the camera entered the picture. He had originally intended to study for a music theory degree after high school. In late 1959, he produced the album Cowboy Favorites on the Cameo label, featuring Bob Wills's "San Antonio Rose" and Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In." Despite a promotional tour, the album never reached the Billboard Hot 100. Cameo producer Kal Mann told him in 1963 that "he would never make it big as a singer." He kept at it anyway; during breaks in the Rawhide shooting schedule, Eastwood and co-star Paul Brinegar toured rodeos, state fairs, and festivals. In 1962 their act, billed as Amusement Business Cavalcade of Fairs, earned as much as $15,000 per performance. France honored him twice: with the Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1994, and the Legion of Honour in 2007.