There are few American actors more iconic than Clint Eastwood. His iconic “Man With No Name” character is the face of the American West for a generation of men. Dirty Harry is perhaps the most recognizable fictional police officer in American history. And the man who played them? Well, he spent some time as a small-town mayor in California.

A Star Is Born

Clint Eastwood was born in San Francisco, California in 1930. The nurses quickly took to calling him “Samson” because he was over 11 pounds at birth. The Mayflower-descended family moved around California, settling first in Sacramento, then in Piedmont. The family was comfortable because Eastwood’s father was a manufacturing executive and his mother worked as clerical support at IBM.

It’s unclear if Eastwood ever graduated high school. Records are sealed, contemporary reports from friends are unclear and Eastwood has never commented on the subject. We do, however, know that he was expelled from school for obscene graffiti and burning an effigy on top of the school. He then transferred to a technical high school, which was his final formal schooling whether he graduated or not.

After leaving high school, Eastwood worked a number of odd jobs, including a stint in the United States Army during the Korean War, though he did not serve in combat. Eastwood survived a plane crash back from a rendezvous with an officer’s wife and paddled to shore on a life raft.

Clint Eastwood in Hollywood

After the Army, Eastwood bummed around some more before going to Hollywood and becoming as close to an instant star as exists. Eastwood claimed that he was discovered by an assistant and brought to meet a casting director. While they were not terribly impressed with his acting, they were very impressed by the fact that he was 6’4” tall.

So they sent him to acting class, where they hoped to break him of his wooden movements and habit of talking through his teeth. Despite the fact that these are big “no nos” in the world of acting, they soon became Eastwood’s trademark. Eastwood floundered about in small and sometimes uncredited roles before landing the role that would make him famous: playing Rowdy Yates on CBS’ Rawhide.

Eastwood was a breakout character, though he disliked the role, believing himself too old to play the character. He directed some of the trailers for the series but was never able to successfully command an entire episode. In 1958, when he started the show, he was paid $750 an episode. When the show was canceled Eastwood was given $119,000 severance pay.

Richard Harrison introduced Sergio Leone to Clint Eastwood after his Rawhide co-star Eric Fleming declined to work with the director. What would result was one of the most fruitful partnerships of Eastwood’s career, making the so-called “Dollars Trilogy”: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good The Bad and the Ugly.

The last of these is widely regarded as one of, if not the, greatest film ever made. Eastwood played “The Man With No Name,” a more morally ambiguous character than the one that he played on Rawhide. Along with John Ford’s The Searchers, it touched off a period of much more thoughtful and serious Western films known as “revisionist Westerns.” Eastwood would revisit the character in two of his own films, High Plains Drifter, a gritty, psychedelic take on the character and Pale Rider, a spiritual take on the character. Both Eastwood-directed films put the Man With No Name into the role of the grateful dead.

Eastwood continued to work primarily in the Western idiom for the balance of the 1960s. And while it might be hard to believe now, most people still didn’t know who he was, because the genre was on the decline, appealing to a smaller and smaller niche of the general action film genre. This all changed with Hang ‘Em High, which catapulted Eastwood to international stardom as the lead in United Artists’ biggest opening weekend at the time.

At the dawn of the 1970s, Eastwood starred in his other iconic role, that of Detective Harry Callahan, also known as “Dirty Harry.” The eponymous first film was released in 1971 and followed by Magnum Force in 1973, The Enforcer in 1975, Sudden Impact in 1983, and The Dead Pool in 1988, the last of which features Guns ‘N’ Roses as Jim Carrey’s band.

The character allowed Eastwood to explore his conservative political views on camera. While the leftist media tends to portray Harry as some kind of warning against “killer cops,” the character is a clear endorsement of law and order in a society gone mad.

Eastwood the Director

While virtually every American knows who Clint Eastwood is today, far fewer know that he directs his own films these days. He debuted in Play Misty For Me, an erotic thriller that remains controversial to this day among critics. While Eastwood spent the balance of the 1970s occasionally directing a film, such as High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and The Gauntlet, it was not until the 1980s that he leaped into his roles in earnest.

Eastwood’s films have always enjoyed critical acclaim and accolades, but it was not until 1992’s Unforgiven that he began to receive awards as well. It was this year that Eastwood was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director. This is when Eastwood began to be recognized as something other than simply an actor who was getting too big for his britches -- he was a talented director in his own right, whose films look a bit like his acting; terse and wooden but with lots of character.

He was able to win Oscar gold again in 2004 for Billion Dollar Baby, for which he once again received the award for Best Picture and Best Director. He was also nominated for awards for Mystic River, Letters From Iwo Jima, and American Sniper.

Eastwood the Politician

Clint Eastwood is also something of a politician. He was elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, but this was a largely ceremonial position coming with a “lavish” $200 a month salary, which Eastwood donated to the local youth center. Some of his accomplishments as mayor were helping to pass a new law making it legal to eat ice cream on the streets, public restrooms at the public beach, and a new annex for the city library. After his stint as mayor, he served on the California State Park and Recreation Commission at the appointment of Democratic California Governor Gray Davis.

He has been a member of both the Republican and Libertarian Parties and has been an independent, as well as voting for political candidates from both sides of the aisle.

Clint Eastwood is still around and kicking, continuing to produce films well into his 90s.

Clint Eastwood: The Spaghetti Western Star Who Defined a Generation originally appeared on Ammo.com

I remember watching him on black and white TV in Rawhide as a kid.
One of my favorite actors, both on and off the screen.

That made my day...

Nicely done. Did not know all of that.

flashguy

I grew up on Rawhide and the westerns but Dirty Harry really knocked it out of the park. Still one of favorites, it will be a sad day when he passes.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
That made my day...

Mine too.

quote:

Originally posted by ammodotcom:
It’s unclear if Eastwood ever graduated high school. Records are sealed, contemporary reports from friends are unclear and Eastwood has never commented on the subject. We do, however, know that he was expelled from school for obscene graffiti and burning an effigy on top of the school. He then transferred to a technical high school, which was his final formal schooling whether he graduated or not.

A few points of order.

1. Eastwood graduated from High School, and the school was Oakland Technical High School

2. Oakland Technical High School, in spite of the name, is not a technical school, it's a normal, conventional High School, but it did offer classes in Aircraft maintenance and auto shop classes as well.

I know these things because I'm also a graduate of that High School for various reasons, and the school is proud of him being a graduate from Tech (as it's known by people who went there). They made a big deal of it in the awards area of the school and mentioned it from time to time in Newsletters.

Here's a link to some better info about that:

Prior to being drafted, Eastwood graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1949 where he found success in aircraft maintenance, according to Marc Eliot's "American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood" (via Oakland Tech). However, this came after Eastwood was expelled from his previous high school.

Read More: https://www.thelist.com/626051...l/?utm_campaign=clip

Prior to being drafted, Eastwood graduated from Oakland Technical High School in 1949 where he found success in aircraft maintenance, according to Marc Eliot's "American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood" (via Oakland Tech). However, this came after Eastwood was expelled from his previous high school.

One of the most interesting things to me about Eastwood is how he became a star with his first Spaghetti western, "A Fistful Of Dollars"

https://outsider.com/entertain...rs-made-italy-spain/

Clint Eastwood: Why His Early Westerns Like ‘Fistful of Dollars’ Were Made in Italy and Spain

Back in the 1960s, Hollywood star Clint Eastwood traveled to Europe to star in A Fistful of Dollars, which was a breakthrough role for the actor.

After numerous bit roles on television and in movies, he earned his first major television role on Rawhide in 1958. As character Rowdy Yates, Eastwood and the rest of the cast had years of success with the show. However, the actor grew to despise his character’s clean-cut persona, and he wanted to branch out.

Enter Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone, who in the early ’60s was a relatively unknown director. He signed Eastwood to be the star of his upcoming movie for $15,000 for 11 weeks of filming. In addition, Eastwood would earn a Mercedes-Benz car upon completion of filming. Eastwood later spoke about his transition from a popular western on TV 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 recalled.

Neither the director nor his star actor could’ve envisioned the success of the film. Each of their careers took off after its release. Additionally, Clint Eastwood broke out of his television mold, just like he wanted to. In fact, Eastwood played an important part in creating his mysterious antihero character’s distinctive visual style.

The movie became a defining film of what came to be known as Italian Westerns or Spaghetti Westerns. Eastwood became a huge star in Italy, and Leone rehired the actor to lead two more films that would make up The Man With No Name trilogy. They include A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966).

The Reason Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood and the Rest of the Cast Filmed in Italy and Spain
Most of the Italian Westerns filmed in the ’60s and ’70s were created on extremely low budgets. To aid in keeping the costs at a minimum, directors utilized Cinecittà studios for filming – a huge 99-acre film studio in Rome, Italy. They also used geographic regions in Europe that mirrored those of the western United States. This was key considering that’s where the western-themed movies were supposed to take place.

Instead of shipping the cast and crew overseas, Italian Western filmmakers used various locations in southern Italy and Spain. Most of the films take place in dry landscapes and deserts of the American Southwest and Northern Mexico.

Therefore, Leone filmed Clint Eastwood and the rest of the cast in Spain for most outdoor scenes. The Tabernas Desert in the Province of Almería in southeastern Spain was the perfect alternative for their trilogy. Not only did it parallel the western settings, but it saved tons of money, which was often scarce to begin with.

By the time the trilogy of films reached America in 1967, all three movies became a box office hit. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly alone made more than $25 million and Clint Eastwood officially became a major film star.

The success of Leone’s movies created a whole new subgenre of westerns, which were heavily copied around that time. The popularity of the films allowed the director to finally create his magnum opus: Once Upon a Time in the West. With a much larger budget, and a star-studded cast (Eastwood not included), Leone’s epic 1968 masterpiece was the peak of Italian Western filmmaking.

By the mid-1970s, the subgenre had faded away almost as quickly as it came about. However, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood’s work still impacts filmmakers to this very day. Look no further than Quentin Tarantino’s body of work, and Italian Westerns’ influence on modern cinema is clearly still prominent.

quote:

The Tabernas Desert in the Province of Almería in southeastern Spain was the perfect alternative for their trilogy. Not only did it parallel the western settings, but it saved tons of money, which was often scarce to begin with

It's been kept as a movie location by the government and tourist area. I'd like to visit it myself...

Link

I wish movie stuff was in the Lair.

Don’t forget that the famous serape he wore in the trilogy was personally procured by Mr Eastwood. He is an amazing artist, painting with color, texture, emotion, story, and of course, those eyes.

In one episode of "Highway Patrol", 1955, Eastwood got a part of a motorcycle club member, and riding a motorcycle.

Oh man, I get nervous when I see a Clint post. Whew. I found a double DVD of Unforgiven with the making of the movie. Clint has had the same crew around him for decades.

I was nervous when I read the title
I dreaded even opening the discussion

I love so many of his movies

Pale Rider
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Unforgiven
The Dirty Harry Series
Kellys Heroes
The Rookie with charlie Sheen
A Perfect World
Heartbreak Ridge

To name just a few.

I read his biography earlier this year. Interesting life. The title of the book is American Rebel.

I saw a movie on the 50th anniversary of the Sad Hill Cemetery (the graveyard in the good the bad and the ugly). They show how someone found the site and began restoring it before the anniversary. I can’t remember where I saw it. But it was cool.

If you have not seen Play Misty For Me, check it out. Great movie!

quote:

Originally posted by hberttmank:
I grew up on Rawhide and the westerns but Dirty Harry really knocked it out of the park. Still one of favorites, it will be a sad day when he passes.

Don't even suggest such a thing could happen.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
I saw a movie on the 50th anniversary of the Sad Hill Cemetery (the graveyard in the good the bad and the ugly). They show how someone found the site and began restoring it before the anniversary. I can’t remember where I saw it. But it was cool.

Was it this?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6997426/
Sad Hill Unearthed
Original title: Desenterrando Sad Hill
2017 IMDb RATING 7.4

A documentary following film fans working to restore the set of the climatic graveyard scene from the iconic spaghetti western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.