it sure seems buried pretty deep. Perhaps, along with Clint's appearance on the Mr. Ed show, this is one he would like to obliterate from history. As a person who has an interest in Visconti, I would like to see it. Also, it would be interested to see Clint in his forgotten fourth Italian film.
It's a good trivia question: name four Italian films Clint Eastwood starred in.
No disrespect but I saw it once and that was enough. I don't blame Clint Eastwood for doing it since at that time $20,000 was quite a bit of money and he also got a Ferrari. He probably enhanced his career with insiders by doing it too.
shareHe probably enhanced his career with insiders by doing it too.
Thank you. This has enlightened me. He has certainly made history as an actor and director. I also never knew that he got this part over Sean Connery. Connery also liked to take parts that stretched his acting range too.
After Gran Torino, I think his fan were ready to bid him well on his apparent retirement from acting but I hope he continues directing for as long as he wants to and is able to.
I hope he continues directing for as long as he wants to and is able to.
Thank you for this valuable information. I find it very enlightening. I remember seeing the previews of The Beguiled and it was marketed as a western so I think that is one reason it failed. I think it was more of a gothic drama. It was set in the western era but it was no western in my opinion. I read that Eastwood turned down a part in another very successful western called McKenna's Gold with Gregory Peck. That would have been an interesting combination. I may be on a bunny trail but I read that he and Charleton Heston wanted to do a remake of Ride The High Country but it did not come together. I think Clint Eastwood had usually chosen wisely for his projects and he success in his career has reflected it.
One more thing, his co-star of Rawhide (Eric Fleming) died tragically in Peru at a point during this time when it looked like his career was starting to take off. It would have really been fantastic if Fleming has not chosen to do the movie in Peru, which shut down when he drowned, where his career would have gone. I have read on some of the sites that he gave thought to going to Europe too so his career may have followed parallel of Eastwood's. Fleming was just past 40 but it would not be the first time an actor after paying his dues finally hit the big time at that stage of life.
It seems that Eastwood is reluctant to discuss Eric Fleming but it appears that he had a deep respect for him and considered him a mentor and maybe a friend. It looks like American Sniper is going to be a runaway hit and seems to have the respect of the Hollywood establishment which usually does not like war movies or moves that put American soldiers in a good light. Good job, Mr. Eastwood.
Yes, Mackenna's Gold constituted one of the first, if not the first, American scripts offered to Eastwood for a starring role, during those early months of 1967. The offer was actually for the lead character eventually played by Peck; when Eastwood turned it down, the studio (Columbia) then went to Peck. (I have also read that Steve McQueen rejected the offer. I'm not exactly sure where McQueen fit into the sequence, but his rejection probably came before Eastwood's.) So had Eastwood taken the part, Peck actually would not have been in the film. Eastwood's agent and business manager badly wanted him to accept the role, because Mackenna's Gold was a big-budget Western that would feature an All-Star cast and that was written by the acclaimed Carl Foreman, who was doubling as the producer and who had approached Eastwood. Additionally, the acclaimed J. Lee Thompson would direct the movie. But Eastwood never cared for the script or the character, he deemed the project "just an extension of Rawhide"), and thus he passed. Instead, he chose to star in Hang 'Em High, which he judged more challenging, thought-provoking, and socially substantive.
By the standards of most Westerns, Mackenna's Gold would have amounted to a box office success (albeit a smaller success than all of Eastwood's Westerns). However, because the budget proved so large, the film actually lost quite a bit of money.
As for a remake of Ride the High Country with Heston, I'm skeptical because Eastwood really used the Western to break new ground or provide some new interpretation or dynamic; he was never interested in simply reusing the form, or remaking someone else's traditional Western (at least without adding some modernist or progressive elements). But I would not be surprised if someone (Heston?) proposed the idea to Eastwood, or if some studio harbored the fantasy, or if some rumor swirled around to that effect, even if it was not credible.
As for Eric Fleming, I doubt that he would have become a star on Eastwood's level, just because Eastwood emerged as one of the most popular and successful stars on the planet. But I do think that, on a lower level, Fleming could have gone to Europe and paralleled Eastwood to a modest extent. As you probably know, European production companies cranked out hundreds of Westerns in wake of the Leone-Eastwood collaborations. Almost none of them remotely approached the level of the Leone-Eastwood films, but for American actors with some notoriety within the Western form, such as Fleming, there was often work to be had in European Westerns.
Fleming and Eastwood were never close friends, and I don't think that the latter viewed the former as a mentor, but they did become respectful and congenial colleagues, and Fleming's death indeed hit Eastwood hard. He actually sees Fleming's death as the close of that chapter in his own life, and I would not be surprised if it caused Eastwood to treat every opportunity even more preciously, now knowing how suddenly and whimsically everything could come to an end.
Ironically, when Rawhide's new executive producer, Ben Brady, fired Fleming in 1965, and promoted Eastwood to the role of full-time lead, Eastwood was not happy. He told Brady to fire him instead, as with Eastwood's burgeoning stardom in Europe, he knew that bigger and better opportunities were in store for him.
The box-office performance of American Sniper has been absolutely mind-boggling, and the six Academy Award nominations render it a major contender at the Oscars. But I'm very frustrated and disappointed that Eastwood did not receive a nomination for Best Director. The film is complex; rather than reflecting traditional or simple heroism, it examines the physical, mental, and social costs of war and killing on the people who bear that burden, and the picture—while respectful—is not pretty. American Sniper is stunningly downbeat, tragic, and fatalistic, which might make its box office receipts even more impressive. I guess that there is an appetite for something real, and I think that American Sniper is the defining war movie of our time. Decades from now, when people want to understand the Iraq War (not as a narrowly political matter, but as an experience, especially for the comparatively few who served and their families), I believe that they will look to this film. I would compare it to Apocalypse Now in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, except that that movie functions on a mythic level. American Sniper, on the other hand, is very personal and intimate, deconstructs the mythology that it toys with, and focuses on the home front as well as the war theater. I would also analogize the film to Eastwood's Mystic River (2003), which reflects the shattering effects of child abuse and sexual abuse.
Here's another note on Eastwood and Fleming.
In the early 1960s, Eastwood sought to direct an episode of Rawhide. One might think that Fleming would have resisted being directed by his junior co-star, especially since the balance of power might then seem to be tipping to that junior co-star. But when Eastwood raised the issue with Fleming, the older actor endorsed the idea.
Ultimately, CBS did not allow Eastwood to direct the episode (another actor had recently directed an episode of another CBS television series and had exceeded the budget, causing the network to issue an edict barring actors from directing episodes of their own shows). CBS placated Eastwood by giving him some trailers to direct, and the frustrated actor eventually dropped the matter before rekindling his interest in directing while working with Sergio Leone in Europe.