HG Spotlight on
Clint Eastwood
| Clint Eastwood was born on 30th May, 1930 in San Francisco, California. In his early years the family moved a lot due to the fact that Clint's father, Clinton Eastwood, was unable to find a permanent job. Clint's younger sister Jean and mother Ruth were of course obliged to make company. Later Clint studied at the Oakland Technical High School and graduated 1948. At that time Clint was not at all interested in an acting career and had completely different aspects for his future life. |
| Some of Clint's friends had in the course of years eagerly recommended Clint an acting career. He decided finally to give it a try and went to Universal Studios without any high hopes. Clint was hired and given quite a good salary. His first assignment was to play a bit part in a minor horror film titled The Revenge of The Creature (the sequel to the cult movie Creature from the Blue Lagoon). Clint's next appointments were small roles in such movies as Tarantula and Lady Godiva. After signing the acting contract, and thus ensuring regular income, Clint married Maggie Johnson on 19th December, 1953. |  |
| Clint Eastwood was far from an instant movie star and his career has not been mere success. Universal Studios dropped his contract because they felt they didn't have any use for him at all. Clint moved to a B-Movie studio, called RKO, where he starred in movies entitled The First Travelling Saleslady and Escapade in Japan. These movies had no great success and after a while the studio was out of business. |  |
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| In early 1964, during a pause in the shooting of Rawhide, Clint was offered a role in a movie titled The Magnificent Stranger, a German-Italian-Spanish production with an Italian director, Sergio Leone. At first he was not very interested, as he didn't believe that a European studio could manage to produce a successful and realistic American western, but after reading the script he was more than willing to accept the role. He also got a chance to see Europe with his wife Maggie on this expense-paid trip. The film was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's (a Japanese movie-maker) Yojimbo. Clint had great liberty in creating the personality of his character, The Man With No Name. Clint's role in Rawhide was at the moment quite sheepish, and that’s said to be the reason why The Man With No Name turned out to be completely the opposite - "a laconic, and fearless gunfighter". Clint Eastwood didn't initially have high hopes concerning the success of the film. His surprise was enormous when it later turned out that they had renamed the movie A Fistful of Dollars, and that it was a real hit in Europe. |  |
| Eastwood started to encounter demand also in his home-country. He had become a name in the western genre and in 1968 he starred in a western called Hang 'Em High. The film was once again lynched by the critics. The film showed profit and Clint was really getting forward on his career. 1968 turned out to be a really hectic year for him. He founded Malpaso, a production company of his own. It has been involved in every Clint Eastwood movie ever since with good success. The main idea behind the founding of this company was that Clint thought that the big companies were wasting far too much money on everything. He believed that he could produce first-rate films efficiently, with minimum costs. In the 1970s, when the company began to work at full gear, it turned out to be true. |  |
| Dirty Harry (1971), directed by Don Siegel, was the biggest hit of Clint's career up to that time. In this famous action movie Clint plays the role of policeman Harry Callahan, who is trying to catch the vicious murderer Scorpio, who is extorting a whole city. The success of this Dirty Harry movie was a clear indication that it would get sequels. Magnum Force was released in 1973, The Enforcer in 1976, Sudden Impact in 1983 and The Dead Pool 1988. |  |
| All of the Dirty Harry movies were loved by the audience and got great publicity from all except the critics. After the extremely successful Sudden Impact 1983 Clint said that it would be the last of this series. For some reason, probably money, Eastwood was unable to resist the temptation of adding one more film to the series. Despite the fact that Clint was already quite old to be a field police, The Dead Pool was filmed in 1988. Harry Callahan is a character to remember, even though he assumably won’t return to duty anymore. His expressions like "Do you feel lucky, punk ?" and "Go ahead, make my day!" have been exported as quotations to the daily life of the English-speaking, and people will probably continue to use them. |  |
| The 1970s was overall a good time for Clint Eastwood. He was able to reach the top, and didn't have to be concerned about digging swimming pools anymore. In order to keep abreast with the market, and to make good profits, Clint constantly made movies. The same pace continued in the 1980s. The scripts that Clint touched had the odd nature of being transformed into pure gold. Clint Eastwood wanted to develop as an actor and decided to star in a "broad slapstick comedy" Every Which Way but Loose (1978). This film was a great success and made more money than he could ever have dreamt about. Despite being quite aged Clint is still considered quite handsome by many women and he even seems to have a social life. Clint Eastwood and Diana Ruiz, a 30-year-old news reporter, were pronounced husband and wife March 31st, 1995. |  |
Filmography
Francis in the Navy (1955)
Lady Godiva (1955)
Revenge of the Creature (1955)
Tarantula (1955)
Away All Boats (1956)
The First Traveling Saleslady (1956)
Never Say Goodbye (1956)
Star in the Dust (1956)
Escapade in Japan (1957)
Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958) 
Lafayette Escadrille (1958)
"Rawhide" (1959)
Fistful of Dollars (1964)
For a Few Dollars More (1965)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967)
Hang 'em High (1967)
Coogan's Bluff (1968)
Paint Your Wagon (1969)
Two Mules for Sister Sara (1969)
Where Eagles Dare (1969)
The Witches (1969)
Kelly's Heroes (1970)
Beguiled, The (1971)
Dirty Harry (1971)
Play Misty for Me (1971)
High Plains Drifter (1972)
Joe Kidd (1972)
Magnum Force (1973)
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
The Gauntlet (1977)
Every Which Way But Loose (1978)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979)
Any Which Way You Can (1980)
Bronco Billy (1980)
Firefox (1982)
Honkytonk Man (1982)
City Heat (1984)
Tightrope (1984)
Pale Rider (1985)
Heartbreak Ridge (1986) 
James Stewart: A Wonderful Life (1987)
The Dead Pool (1988)
Pink Cadillac (1989)
The Rookie (1990)
White Hunter, Black Heart (1990)
Gary Cooper: American Life, American Legend (1991)
Unforgiven (1992)
In the Line of Fire (1993)
A Perfect World (1993)
A Century of Cinema (1994)
Don't Pave Main Street: Carmel's Heritage (1994)
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Casper (1995)
A Salute to Clint Eastwood (1996)
Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1996)
Absolute Power (1997)
Big Guns Talk: The Story of the Western (1997)
Eastwood on Eastwood (1997)
A Salute to Martin Scorsese (1997)
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (1998)
True Crime (1999)
Listening with the Eyes (2000)
Space Cowboys (2000)
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Clint Trivia
Birth Name: Clint Eastwood Jr. Birthdate and Place: May 31, 1930; San Francisco California The role of Dirty Harry was turned down by both Frank Sinatra and Paul Newman before Clint got it. Clint wore the same poncho, without ever having washed it, in all three of his "man with no name" western movies. Elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA in 1986. Got his first acting role in Rawhide while visiting a friend at the CBS lot when a studio exec spotted him because he "looked like a cowboy." Personal quote -- "A man's got to know his limitations." |
