Clint_Eastwood

Clint Eastwood
Eastwood in May 2008
Born	Clinton Eastwood, Jr. May 31, 1930 (1930-05-31) (age 79) San Francisco, California, United States
Occupation	Actor, film director, film producer, composer
Years active	1954–present
Spouse(s)	Maggie Johnson (1953–1978) Dina Ruiz (1996–present)
Domestic partner(s)	Sondra Locke (1975–1989) Frances Fisher (1990–1995)

Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer and composer. He has received five Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and five People's Choice Awards—including one for Favorite All-Time Motion Picture Star.

Eastwood is primarily known for his alienated, morally ambiguous, anti-hero acting roles in violent action and western films, particularly in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Following his role on the long-running television series Rawhide, he went on to star as the Man With No Name in the Dollars trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns and as Inspector Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry film series. These roles have made him an enduring icon of masculinity.^[1] Eastwood is also known for his comedic efforts in Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980), his two highest-grossing films after adjustment for inflation.

For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director, producer of the Best Picture and received nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others such as Play Misty for Me (1971), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and Gran Torino (2008) have all received great critical acclaim and commercial success. He has directed most of his star vehicles as well as films he has not acted in, such as Mystic River (2003) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations.

He also served as the non-partisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California from 1986–1988, tending to support small business interests on the one hand and environmental protection on the other.

Early life

Eastwood was born in San Francisco, California, to Clinton Eastwood Sr. (1906-1970), a steelworker and migrant worker, and Margaret Ruth Runner (1909-2006), a factory worker. He was a large baby (12 pounds and 6 ounces) and was named "Samson" by the nurses in the hospital.^[2][3] Eastwood has English, Scottish, Dutch and Irish ancestry^[4] and was raised in a "middle class Protestant home".^[5] His family moved often, as his father worked at different jobs along the West Coast.^[6] The family settled in Piedmont, California, where Eastwood attended Piedmont Junior High School and Piedmont Senior High School. Later he transferred to Oakland Technical High School, where the drama teachers encouraged him to take part in school plays, but he was not interested.

After high school, Eastwood intended to enter Seattle University and major in music, but in 1950, during the Korean War, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was stationed at Fort Ord where his certificate as a lifeguard got him appointed as a life-saving and swimming instructor.

He later moved down to Los Angeles and began a romance with a girl named Maggie Johnson and during this time he worked managing an apartment house in Beverly Hills by day (into which he then moved) and worked at a Signal Oil gas station by night.^[7] He signed up to study at Los Angeles City College and quickly became engaged to Maggie; they married shortly before Christmas 1953 in South Pasadena and honeymooned in Carmel.^[7][8]

Film career

Early work:1950s

Becoming an actor

According to the CBS press release for Rawhide, Universal (known then as Universal-International) film company happened to be shooting in Fort Ord and an enterprising assistant spotted Eastwood and invited him to meet the director.^[9] However, the key figure, according to his official biography was a man named Chuck Hill, who was stationed in Fort Ord and had contacts in Hollywood.^[9] While in Los Angeles, Hill had reacquainted with Eastwood and managed to succeed in sneaking Eastwood into a Universal studio and showed him to cameraman Irving Glassberg.^[9] Glassberg was impressed with his appearance and stature and believed him to be, "the sort of good looking young man that has traditionally done well in the movies".^[9]

Glassberg arranged for director Arthur Lubin to meet Eastwood at the gas station where he was working in the evenings in Los Angeles.^[9] Lubin, like Glassberg was highly impressed and swiftly arranged for Eastwood's first audition. However he was a little less enthusiastic of his first audition, remarking, "He was quite amateurish. He didn't know which way to turn or which way to go or do anything".^[10] Neverless, he told Eastwood not to give up, and suggested he attend drama classes, and later arranged for an initial contract for Eastwood in April 1954 at $100 a week.^[10] Some people in Hollywood, including his wife Maggie, were suspicious of Lubin's intentions towards Eastwood; he was homosexual and maintained a close friendship with Eastwood in the years that followed.^[11] After signing, Eastwood was initially criticised for his speech and awkward manner; he was soft-spoken and in performing in front of people was cold, stiff and awkward.^[12] Fellow talent school actor John Saxon, described Eastwood as, "being like a kind of hayseed.. Thin, rural, with a prominent Adam's Apple, very laconic and slow speechwise."^[13]

Universal Studios: Training and development

Eastwood at the Universal talent school in 1954

In May 1954, Eastwood made his first real audition, trying out for a part in Six Bridges to Cross, a film about the Brinks robbery that would mark the debut of actor Sal Mineo. Director Joseph Pevney was not impressed by his acting and rejected him for any role.^[13] Later he tried out for Brigadoon, The Constant Nymph, Bengal Brigade and The Seven Year Itch in May 1954, Sign of the Pagan (June), Smoke Signal (August) and Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (September), all without success.^[13] Eastwood was eventually given a minor role by director Jack Arnold in the film Revenge of the Creature, a film set in the Amazon jungle, which was the sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon which had been released just months earlier.^[14]

In September 1954, Eastwood worked for three weeks on Arthur Lubin's Lady Godiva of Coventry in which he donned a medieval costume, and then in February 1955, won a role playing "Jonesy", a sailor in Francis in the Navy and his salary was raised to $300 a week for the four weeks of shooting.^[15] He again appeared in a Jack Arnold film, Tarantula, with a small role as a squadron pilot, again uncredited.^[16] In May 1955, Eastwood put four hours work into the film Never Say Goodbye, in which he again plays a white coated technician uttering a single line and again had a minor uncredited role as a ranch hand (his first western film) in August 1955 with Law Man, also known as Stars in the Dust.^[17] He gained experience behind the set, watching productions and dubbing and editing sessions of other films at Universal Studios, notably the Montgomery Clift film A Place in the Sun.^[17] Universal presented him with his first TV role with a small television debut on NBC's Allen in Movieland on July 2, 1955, starring actors such as Tony Curtis and Benny Goodman.^[18] Although his records at Universal revealed his development, Universal terminated his contract on October 25, 1955, leaving Eastwood gutted and blaming casting director Robert Palmer, on whom he would exact revenge years later when Palmer came looking for employment at his Malpaso Company. Eastwood rejected him.^[19]

No Man's Land: 1956–1958

On the recommendation of Betty Jane Howarth, Eastwood soon joined new publicity representatives, the Marsh Agency, who had represented actors such as Adam West and Richard Long.^[11] Althought Eastwood's contract with Lubin had ended, he was important in landing Eastwood his biggest role to date; a featured role in the Ginger Rogers - Carol Channing western comedy, The First Travelling Saleslady.^[20] Eastwood played a recruitment officer for Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. He would also play a pilot in another of Lubin's productions, Escapade in Japan and would make several TV appearances under Lubin even into the early 1960s.^[20] As Eastwood grew in success, he never spoke to Lubin again until 1992, shortly after winning his Oscar for Unforgiven, when Eastwood promised a lunch that never happened.^[20]

Without the contract of Lubin in the meantime, however, Eastwood was struggling.^[20] He was advised by Irving Leonard financially and under his influence changed talent agencies in rapid succession, the Kumin-Olenick Agency in 1956, and Mitchell Gertz in 1957. He landed a small role as temperamental army officer for a segment of ABC's Reader's Digest series, broadcast in January 1956, and later that year, a motorcycle gang member on a Highway Patrol episode.^[20] In 1957, Eastwood played a cadet who becomes involved in a skiing search and rescue in the 'White Fury' installment of the West Point series. He also appeared in an episode of the prime time series Wagon Train and a suicidal gold prospector in Death Valley Days.^[21] In 1958 he played a Navy lieutenant in a segment of Navy Log and in early 1959 made a notable guest appearance as a cowardly villain, intent on marrying a rich girl for money, in Maverick.^[21]

Eastwood was credited for his roles in several more films. He auditioned for the film The Spirit of St. Louis, a Billy Wilder biopic about aviator Charles Lindbergh. He was rejected and the role in the end went to Jimmy Stewart who just put on makeup to make him look younger. He did however have a small part as an aviator in the French picture Lafayette Escadrille, and played an ex-renegade in the Confederacy in Ambush at Cimarron Pass, his biggest screen role to date opposite Scott Brady. His part was shot in nine days for Regal Films Inc. Out of frustration, he said after watching it at the premiere, "It was sooo bad. I just kept sinking lower and lower in my seat and just wanted to quit".^[22] Around the time the film was released Eastwood described himself as feeling "really depressed" and regards it as the lowest point in his career and a point when he seriously considered quitting the acting profession.^[22]

Rawhide (1959–1964)

Eastwood as Rowdy Yates in Rawhide

Eastwood learned from Bill Shiffrin that CBS were casting an hour-long Western series and arranged for a screen test. With screenwriter Charles Marquis Warren overlooking, Eastwood had to recite one of Henry Fonda's monologues from the William Wellman western, The Ox-Bow Incident in his audition.^[23] A week later, Shiffrin rang Eastwood and informed him he had won the part of Rowdy Yates in Rawhide. He had successfully beaten competition such as Bing Russell and had got the break he had been looking for.^[23]

Filming began in Arizona in the summer of 1958. Although Eastwood was finally pleased with the direction of his career, he was not especially happy with the nature of his Rowdy Yates character. At this time, Eastwood was 30, and Rowdy was too young and too cloddish for Clint to feel comfortable with the part, privately describing Yates as "the idiot of the plains"^[24]

It took just three weeks for Rawhide to reach the top 20 in the TV ratings and soon rescheduled the timeslot half an hour earlier from 7.30 -8.30 pm every Friday, guaranteeing more of a family audience.^[25] For several years it was a major success, and reached its peak as number 6 in the ratings between October 1960 and April 1961.^[25] However, success was not without its price. The Rawhide years were undoubtedly the most gruelling of his life, and at first, from July until April, they filmed six days a week for an average of twelve hours a day.^[25] Although it never won Emmy stature, Rawhide earned critical acclaim and won the American Heritage Award as the best Western series on TV and it was nominated several times for best episode by the Writer's and Director's Guilds.^[25] Eastwood received some criticism during this period and was considered too laid back and lazy by some directors who believed he relied on his looks and just didn't work hard enough.^[26]

Eastwood appeared in a western comedy series Maverick, in which he fought James Garner in the "Duel at Sundown" episode. Although Rawhide continued to attract notable actors such as Lon Chaney Jr, Mary Astor , Ralph Bellamy, Burgess Meredith, Dean Martin and Barbara Stanwyck, by late 1963 Rawhide was beginning to decline in popularity and lacked freshness in the script and would scrapped by early 1966.^[27]

1964–1969

Eastwood as the Man With No Name

In late 1963, an offer was made to Eastwood's co-star Eric Fleming on Rawhide to star in an Italian made western (A Fistful of Dollars), originally named The Magnificent Stranger, to be directed in a remote region of Spain by a relative unknown at the time, Sergio Leone. However, the money was not much, and Fleming always set his sights high on Hollywood stardom, and rejected the offer immediately.^[28] A variety of actors, including Charles Bronson, Steve Reeves, Richard Harrison, Frank Wolfe, Henry Fonda, James Coburn and Ty Hardin^[29] were considered for the main part in the film.^[30]Harrison had suggested Clint Eastwood, whom he knew could play a cowboy convincingly. Harrison later said: "Maybe my greatest contribution to cinema was not doing Fistful of Dollars, and recommending Clint for the part."^[31]

Through Irving Leonard, the offer was made to Eastwood, who saw it as an opportunity to escape Rawhide and the states and saw it as a paid vacation. He signed the contract for $15,000 in wages for eleven weeks work and which also threw in a bonus of a Mercedes automobile upon completion,^[32] and arrived in Rome in May 1964.^[32] Eastwood was instrumental in creating the Man With No Name character's distinctive visual style that would appear throughout the Dollars trilogy. He had brought with him the black jeans he had purchased from a shop on Hollywood Boulevard which he had bleached out and roughened up, the hat from a Santa Monica wardrobe firm, a leather bracelet and two Indian leather cases with dual serpents,^[33][34] and the trademark black cigars came from a Beverly Hills shop, though Eastwood himself is a non-smoker and hated the smell of cigar smoke.^[35] Leone decided to use them in the film and heavily emphasised the "look" of the mysterious stranger to appear in the film. Leone commented, "The truth is that I needed a mask more than an actor, and Eastwood at the time only had two facial expressions: one with the hat, and one without it."^[34][36] Eastwood said about playing the Man With No Name character in the film,

"I wanted to play it with an economy of words and create this whole feeling through attitude and movement. It was just the kind of character I had envisioned for a long time, keep to the mystery and allude to what happened in the past. It came about after the frustration of doing Rawhide for so long. I felt the less he said the stronger he became and the more he grew in the imagination of the audience.^[37]

The first interiors for the film were shot at the Cinecittà studio on the outskirts of Rome, before quickly moving to a small village in Andalucia, Spain in an area which had also been used for filming Lawrence of Arabia (1962) just a few years earlier.^[38] A Fistful of Dollars would become a benchmark in the development of the spaghetti westerns, and Leone would successfully create a new icon of a western hero, depicting a more lawless and desolate world than in traditional westerns. The trilogy would also redefine the stereotypical American image of a western hero and cowboy, creating a character gunslinger and bounty hunter which was more of an anti hero than a hero and with a distinct moral ambiguity, unlike traditional heroes of western cinema in the United States such as John Wayne.

Houses on the set, seen in A Few Dollars More.

Leone hired Eastwood to star in his second film of what would become a trilogy, For a Few Dollars More (1965). Screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni was brought in to write the script which he wrote in nine days; two bounty hunters (Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef) pursuing a drug-addicted criminal (Volontè), planning to rob an impregnable bank.^[39]For a Few Dollars More was shot in the spring and summer of 1965 and again interiors of the film were shot at the Cinecittà studio in Rome before they moved to Spain again. Screenwriter Vincenzoni was very important in bringing the films to the states, given that he was fluent in English and accompanied Leone to a cinema in Rome to show the new film after completion to United Artist executives Arthur Krim and Arnold Picker. He sold the rights to the film and the third film (which was yet to be written let alone made) in advance in the states for $900,000, advancing $500,000 up front and the right to half of the profits.^[40][41]

Set of The Good, Bad and the Ugly in Almeria today

In January 1966, Eastwood met with producer Dino De Laurentiis in New York City and agreed to star in a non-Western five-part anthology production named Le streghe or The Witches opposite his wife, actress Silvana Mangano.^[42] Eastwood's nineteen minute installment only took a few days to shoot and was not met well with critics, who described it as "no other performance of his is quite so 'un-Clintlike' ", with the New York Times disparaging it as a "throwaway De Sica".^[43]

Two months after his De Sica shoot, Eastwood began working on the third Dollars film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, in which he again played the mysterious Man With No Name character. Lee Van Cleef was brought in again to play a ruthless fortune seeker, while Eli Wallach, a character actor noted for his appearance in The Magnificent Seven (1960), was hired to play the cunning Mexican bandit "Tuco", although the role was originally written for Volontè, who passed on working with Leone again.^[44] The three become involved in a search for a buried cache of confederate gold buried in a cemetery by a man named Jackson, in hiding as Bill Carson. Eastwood was not initially pleased with the script and was concerned he might be upstaged by Wallach, and said to Leone, "In the first film I was alone. In the second, we were two. Here we are three. If it goes on this way, in the next one I will be starring with the American cavalry".^[44]

Eastwood wearing the poncho and hat in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

Filming began at the Cinecittà studio in Rome again in mid-May 1966, including the opening scene between Clint and Wallach when The Man With No Name captures Tuco for the first time and sends him to jail.^[45] The production then moved on to Spain's plateau region near Burgos in the north, which would double for the extreme deep south of the United States, and again shot the western scenes in Almeria in the south.^[46] This time the production required more elaborate sets, including a town under cannon fire, an extensive prison camp and an American Civil War battlefield; and for the climax, several hundred Spanish soldiers were employed to build a cemetery with several thousand grave stones to resemble an ancient Roman circus.^[46]

The Dollars trilogy was not shown in the United States until 1967. A Fistful of Dollars opened in January, For a Few Dollars More in May and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in December 1967.^[48]The trilogy was publicised as James Bond -type entertainment and all films were successful in American cinemas and turned Eastwood into a major film star in 1967, particularly the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly which eventually collected $8 million in rental earnings.^[48] However, upon release, all three were generally given bad reviews by critics (despite the select few American critics who had seen the films in Italy previously having a positive outlook) and marked the beginning of Eastwood's battle to win the respect of American film critics.^[49] Judith Crist described A Fistful of Dollars as "cheapjack" while Newsweek described For a Few Dollars More as "excruciatingly dopey" and Renata Adler of the New York Times describing it as "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre".^[49] However while Time highlighted the wooden acting, especially Eastwood's, critics such as Vincent Canby and Bosley Crowther of the New York Times were highly praising of Eastwood's coolness playing the tall, lone stranger; and Leone's unique style of cinematography was widely acclaimed, even by some critics who disliked the acting.^[49]

Eastwood spent much of late 1966 and 1967 dubbing for the English-language version of the films and being interviewed, something which left him feeling angry and frustrated.^[50] Stardom brought more roles in the "tough guy" mold and Irving Leornard (who would later pass away at Christmas 1969) gave him a script to a new film, the American revisionist western Hang 'Em High, a cross between Rawhide and Leone's westerns, written by Mel Goldberg and produced by Leonard Freeman.^[50] Eastwood signed for the film with a salary of $400,000 and 25% of the net earnings to the film, playing the character of Cooper, a man accused by vigilantes of a cow baron's murder and lynched and left for dead and later seeks revenge.^[51] With the wealth generated by the Dollars trilogy, Leonard helped set up a new production company for Eastwood, Malpaso Productions, something he had long yearned for and was named after a river on Eastwood's property in Monterey County.^[52] Leonard became the company's president and arranged for Hang 'Em High to be a joint production with United Artists.^[52] Inger Stevens of The Farmer's Daughter fame was cast to play the role of Rachel Warren with a supporting cast which included Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Ed Begley, Bruce Dern and James MacArthur. Filming began in June 1967 in the Las Cruces area of New Mexico, and additional scenes were shot at White Sands and in the interiors were shot in MGM studios.^[53] The film became a major success after release in July 1968 and with an opening day revenue of $5,241 in Baltimore alone, it became the biggest United Artists opening in history, exceeding all of the James Bond films at that time.^[54] It debuted at number five on Variety's weekly survey of top films and had made its money back within two weeks of screening.^[54] It was widely praised by critics including Arthur Winsten of the New York Post who described Hang 'Em High as "A Western of quality, courage, danger and excitement".^[55]

Meanwhile, before Hang 'Em High had been released, Eastwood had set to work on Coogan's Bluff, a project which saw him reunite with Universal Studios after an offer of $1 million, more than doubling his previous salary.^[54] Jennings Lang was responsible for the deal, a former agent of a director called Don Siegel, a Universal contract director who was invited to direct Eastwood's second major American film. Eastwood was not familiar with Siegel's work but Lang arranged for them to meet at Clint's residence in Carmel. Eastwood had now seen three of Siegel's earlier films and was impressed with his directing and the two became natural friends, forming a close partnership in the years that followed.^[56] The idea for Coogan's Bluff originated in early 1967 as a TV series and the first draft was drawn up by Herman Miller and Jack Laird, screenwriters for Rawhide.^[57] It is about a character called Sheriff Walt Coogan, a lonely deputy sheriff working in New York City. After Siegel and Eastwood had agreed to work together, Howard Rodman and three other writers were hired to devise a new script as the new team scouted for locations including New York and the Mojave Desert.^[56] However, Eastwood surprised the team one day by calling an abrupt meeting and professed that he strongly disliked the script, which by now had gone through seven drafts, preferring Herman Miller's original concept.^[56] This experience would also shape Eastwood's distaste for redrafting scripts in his later career.^[56] Eastwood and Siegel decided to hire a new writer, Dean Riesner, who had written for Siegel in the Henry Fonda TV film Stranger on the Run some years previously. Don Stroud was cast as the psychopathic criminal Coogan is chasing, Lee J. Cobb as the disagreeable New York City Police Department lieutenant, Susan Clark as a probation officer who falls for Coogan and Tisha Sterling playing the drug addicted lover of Don Stroud's character.^[58] Filming began in November 1967 even before the full script had been finalized.^[58] The film was controversial for its portrayal of violence, but it had launched a collaboration between Eastwood and Siegel that lasted more than ten years, and set the prototype for the macho hero that Eastwood would play in the Dirty Harry films.

Eastwood was paid $850,000 in 1968 for the war epic Where Eagles Dare opposite Richard Burton.^[59] However, Eastwood initially expressed that the script drawn up by Alistair Mclean was "terrible" and was "all exposition and complications".^[59] The film was about a World War II squad parachuting into a Gestapo stronghold in the mountains, reachable only by cable car, with Burton playing the squad's commander and Eastwood his right-hand man. He was also cast as Two-Face in the Batman television series, but the series was cancelled before he played the part.

In 1969, Eastwood branched out by starring in his only musical, Paint Your Wagon. He and fellow non-singer Lee Marvin played gold miners who share the same wife (played by Jean Seberg). Production for the film was plagued with bad weather and delays and the future of the director's career (Joshua Logan) was in doubt.^[60] It was extremely high budget for this period and eventually exceeded $20 million.^[60] Although the film received mixed reviews, it was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.

1970s

In 1970, Eastwood starred in the western, Two Mules for Sister Sara with Shirley MacLaine. The film, directed by Siegel, is a story about an American mercenary who gets mixed up with a whore disguised as a nun and aid a group of Juarista rebels during the puppet reign of Emperor Maximilian in Mexico. The film saw Eastwood embody the tall mysterious stranger once more, although the film was considerably less crude and more sardonic than those of Leone.^[61]The film, which took four months to shoot and cost around $4 million to make,^[62] received mixed reviews, and Roger Greenspun of the New York Times reported, I'm not sure it is a great movie, but it is very good and it stays and grows on the mind the way only movies of exceptional narrative intelligence do".^[63]

Later in 1970 he appeared in the World War II movie, Kelly's Heroes with Donald Sutherland and Telly Savalas. The film, which stars Eastwood as one of a group of Americans who steal a fortune in bullion from the Nazis, combined tough-guy action with offbeat humor. It was last non-Malpaso film that Clint agreed to appear in.^[64] The filming commenced in July 1969 and was shot on location in Yugoslavia and London.^[62] Directed by Brian G. Hutton, the film involved hundreds of extras and dangerous special effects. The climax to the film echoes that of his Dollars films when he advances in lockstep on a German tiger tank on the street of a small European town, with a Morricone-esque soundtrack by Lalo Schifrin.^[62] The film received mostly a positive reception and its anti-war sentiments were recognized.^[64] The film has a respectable 83% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[65]

In the winter of 1969-70, Eastwood and Siegel began planning his next film, The Beguiled. Jennings Lang was inspired by the 1966 novel by Thomas Cullinan and in passing the book to Eastwood he was engrossed throughout the night in reading the tale of a wounded Union soldier held captive by the sexually repressed matron of a southern girls' school.^[66] This was the first of several films where Eastwood has agreed to storylines where he is the centre of female attention, including minors.^[66] The film, according to Siegel, deals with the themes of sex, violence and vengeance and was based around, "the basic desire of women to castrate men".^[67]The film later received major recognition in France and is considered one of Eastwood's finest works by the French.^[68]However, although the film reached number two on Variety's chart of top grossing films, it was poorly marketed and in the end grossed less than $1 million. According to Eastwood and Jennings Lang, the film, aside from being poorly publicized, flopped due to Clint being "emasculated in the film".^[69]

1971 proved to be a professional turning point in Eastwood's career.^[70] Before Irving Leonard had died, the last film they had discussed at Malpaso was to give Eastwood the artistic control that he desired and make his directorial debut in Play Misty for Me.^[71] The script was originally thought of by Jo Heims, about a jazz disc jockey named Dave (Eastwood) who has a casual affair with Evelyn (Jessica Walter), one of his listeners who had been calling the radio station repeatedly at night asking him to play her favourite song, Erroll Garner's Misty. When Dave ends their relationship the female fan becomes possessive and then violent, turning into a crazed murderess.^[72] Filming commenced in Monterey in September 1970, with Eastwood obtaining the rights to Misty after meeting Garner at the Concord Music Festival in 1970 and paying $2,000 for the use of the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack.^[73] The film was highly acclaimed by critics, with critics such as Jay Cocks in Time, Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice and Archer Winsten in the New York Post all praising Eastwood's directorial skills and the film, including his performance in the scenes with Walter.^[74]

Eastwood as Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry

The script to Dirty Harry was originally written by Harry Julian and Rita M. Fink, a story about a hard-edged New York City police inspector Harry Callahan, determined to stop a psychotic killer by any means at his disposal.^[75] Dirty Harry is arguably Eastwood's most memorable character and the lines that Callahan utters when addressing a wounded bank robber are often cited amongst the most memorable in cinematic history (see box). The film has been credited with inventing the "loose-cannon cop genre" that is imitated to this day. Eastwood's tough, no-nonsense portrayal of Dirty Harry touched a cultural nerve with many who were fed up with crime in the streets and at a time when there were prevalent reports of local and federal police committing atrocities and overstepping their authority by entrapment and obstruction of justice.^[76]After release in December 1971, Dirty Harry proved a phenonemal success which would be go on to become Siegel's highest grossing film and the start of a series of films which is arguably Eastwood's signature role, with fans demanding more. Although a number of critics such as Jay Cocks of Time praised his performance as Dirty Harry, describing him as "giving his best performance so far, tense, tough, full of implicit identification with his character",^[77] the film was widely criticized and accused of fascism through Eastwood's portrayal of the ruthless cop. Feminists in particular were outraged by the film and at the Oscars for 1971 protested outside holding up banners which read messages such as "Dirty Harry is a Rotten Pig".^[78]

Eastwood next starred in the loner Western Joe Kidd, released in 1972. Originally called The Sinola Courthouse Raid, it was about a character inspired by Reies Lopez Tijerina, an ardent supporter of Robert F. Kennedy, known for storming a courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico in an incident in June 1967, taking hostages and demanding that the Hispanic people be granted their ancestral lands back to them. Under the director's helm of John Sturges, who had directed acclaimed westerns such as The Magnificent Seven (1960), filming began in Old Tucson in November 1971, overlapping with another film production, John Huston's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, which was just wrapping up shooting.^[79] Outdoor sequences to the film were shot near June Lake, east of the Yosemite National Park.^[79]

Old Tucson Studios

Eastwood was also far from in perfect health during the film and suffered symptoms that relayed the possibility of a bronchial infection and suffered several panic attacks, falsely reported in the media as him having an allergy to horses.^[81]Joe Kidd received a mixed reception. For instance Roger Greenspunof the The New York Times thought the film overall was nothing remarkable and had foolish symbolism and what he suspected was sloppy editing, but praised Eastwood's performance (see box).

Mono Lake

1973 proved another benchmark to Eastwood when he directed his first western, High Plains Drifter. It involves the story of a tall, mysterious stranger arriving in a brooding Western town where the people share a guilty secret. They hire the stranger to defend the town against three felons soon to be released but fail to recognise that they once killed this stranger in a brutal whipping and that his reappearance is supernatural. The ghostly stranger forces the people to paint the town red and names it "Hell" and seeks revenge. Holes in the plot were filled in with black humor and allegory, influenced by Sergio Leone.^[82]The revisionist film received a mixed reception from critics but was a major box office success. A number of critics thought Eastwood's directing was as a derivative as it was expressive with Arthur Knight in Saturday Review remarking that Clint had "absorbed the approaches of Siegel and Leone and fused them with his own paranoid vision of society".^[83] Jon Landau of Rolling Stone concurred, remarking that it is his thematic shallowness and verbal archness which is where the film fell apart, yet he expressed approval of the dramatic scenery and cinematography.^[83]

Eastwood turned his attention towards a script written by Jo Heims about a love blossoming between a middle-aged man and a teenage girl, Breezy. During casting for the film, Eastwood met Sondra Locke for the first time, an actress who would play a major role in many of his films for the next ten years and an important figure in his life.^[84] However, Locke, who was 26 at this time was considered too old for the Breezy part and after much auditioning, a young dark-haired actress named Kay Lenz, who had recently appeared in American Graffiti, was cast. Filming for Breezy began in the November of 1972 in Los Angeles. With Surtees occupied elsewhere, Frank Stanley was brought in the shoot the picture, the first of four films he would shoot for Malpaso.^[85] The film was shot very quickly and efficiently and in the end went $1 million under budget and finished three days before schedule.^[85] The film was not a major critical or commerical success, it barely reached the Top 50 before disappearing and was only made available on video in 1998.^[86]

After the filming of Breezy had finished, Warner Brothers announced that Eastwood had agreed to reprise his role as Detective Harry Callahan in a sequel to Dirty Harry, running under the title, Vigilance but later changed to Magnum Force given its gun theme. Writer John Milius came up with a storyline in which a group of rogue young officers in the San Francisco Police Force systematically exterminate the city's worst criminals, portraying the idea that there are worse cops than Dirty Harry.^[87]Filming commenced in late April 1973, and during filming Eastwood encountered numerous disputes with director Ted Post, scarring their relationship for several years.^[88] Although the film was a major success after release, grossing $58.1 million dollars in the United States alone, a new record for Eastwood, it was not a critical success.^[89] New York Times critics such as Nora Sayre criticised the often contradictory moral themes of the film and Frank Rich believed it "was the same old stuff".^[89]

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Jeff Bridges was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role opposite Eastwood. The mountainous terrain of Montana can be seen in the background

In 1974, Eastwood teamed with Jeff Bridges in the buddy action caper Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The film is a road movie about an ex Korean War veteran turned bank robber Thunderbolt (Eastwood) who teams with a young con man drifter, Lightfoot (Bridges) who try to stay ahead of the vengeful ex-members of his gang (George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis) in the search for a cash deposit abandoned from an old heist. Shot in Great Falls area of Montana, filming for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot was shot between July and September 1973.^[90] On release in spring 1974, the film was praised for its offbeat comedy mixed with high suspense and tragedy and Eastwood's acting performance was noted by critics but was overshadowed by Jeff Bridges who stole the show in his performance as Lightfoot. When Bridges was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Eastwood was reportedly fuming at his own lack of Academy Award recognition.^[91] Despite critical acclaim, however, the film was only a modest success at the box office, earning $32.4 million.^[92] Eastwood was unhappy with the way that United Artists had produced the film and swore "he would never work for United Artists again", and the scheduled two film deal between Malpaso and UA was cancelled.^[92]

The The Eiger Sanction was based on a critically acclaimed spy novel by Trevanian. The rights to the film were bought by Universal as early as 1972, soon after the book was published, and was originally a Richard Zanuck and David Brown production.^[92] Paul Newman was intended to the role of Jonathan Hemlock (Eastwood), an assassin turned college art professor who decides to return to his former profession for one last sanction in return for a rare Picasso painting; he must climb the Eiger face in Switzerland and perform the deed under perilous conditions. After reading the script, Newman declined, because he believed the film was too violent.^[92]Mike Hoover, an Academy Award nominated professional mountaineer from Jackson, Wyoming was hired to serve as a mountaineering cinematographer and technical adviser during the shoot. He taught Eastwood how to climb over some weeks of preparation in the summer of 1974 in Yosemite. Filming commenced in Grindelwald, Switzerland on August 12, 1974 with an extensive team of professional climbing experts and advisers on board from America, England, Germany, Switzerland and Canada.^[93]

The Eiger

Despite prior warnings of the perils of the Eiger, the filming crew suffered a number of accidents. A 27-year old English climber David Knowles, who was acting as body double and photographer was tragically killed during filming, with Hoover narrowly escaping.^[94] Eastwood continued to insist on doing all his own climbing and stunts, despite potentially being just seconds from instant death. Upon its release in May 1975, The Eiger Sanction was a a commercial failure, receiving only $23.8 million at the box office and was panned by most critics,^[95]with Joy Gould Boyum of the Wall Street Journal remarking that, "the film situates villainy in homosexuals, and physically disabled men".^[95] Eastwood blamed Universal Studios for the films poor promotion and turned his back on them, forming a long-lasting agreement with Warner Brothers through Frank Wells that would transcend over 35 years of cinema and remain intact to this day.^[96]

Pahreah site in Utah, filming location of The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

The story to The Outlaw Josey Wales was inspired by a 1972 novel by an apparent Native Indian uneducated writer Forrest Carter, originally titled Gone to Texas and later retitled The Rebel Outlaw:Josey Wales. Later it would be revealed that Forrest Carter's identity was fake, and that the real author was Asa Carter, a onetime racist and supporter of Ku Klux Klan school of politics.^[97] It would be a Western, and the lead character, Josey Wales, is a rebel southerner who refuses to surrender his arms after the American Civil War and is chased across the old southwest by a group of enforcers. The characters of Wales, the Cherokee chief, Navajo squaw and the old settler woman and her daughter all appeared in the novel.^[98]Director Philip Kaufman cast Chief Dan George, who had been nominated for an Academy Award for Supporting Actor in Little Big Man as the old Cherokee Lone Watie. Sondra Locke, also a previous Academy Award nominee was cast by Eastwood against Kaufman's wishes,^[99] as the daughter of the old settler woman, Laura Lee. This marked the beginning of a close relationship between Eastwood and Locke that would last six films and the beginning of a raging romance that would last into the late 1980s. The film also featured his real-life seven-year old son Kyle Eastwood.

Eastwood's eventual truce with the Native Indians in the finale was seen as an iconic one in relation to the nation's heritage and history

Principal photography for The Outlaw Josey Wales began in mid-October 1975.^[99] A rift between Eastwood and Kaufman developed during the filming and soon after filming moved to Kanab, Utah on October 24, 1975, Kaufman was notoriously fired under Eastwood's command by producer Bob Daley.^[100] The sacking caused an outrage amongst the Directors Guild of America and other important Hollywood executives and resulted in a fine, reported to be around $60,000 for the violation.^[100]It resulted in the Director's Guild passing new legislation which reserved the right to impose a major fine on a producer for discharging a director and replacing him with himself.^[100] From then on the film was directed by Eastwood himself with Daley second in command, but with Kaufman's planning already in place, the team were able to finish making the film efficiently.