The 1958 movie that left Clint Eastwood at his wit’s end: “I’m really going to quit”
Clint Eastwood might’ve started his career as an actor, rising to particular prominence in the 1960s with performances in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, but he soon became one of the most prolific directors in Hollywood.
While Eastwood of course continued to act throughout his career, it seemed like he’d found his true calling as a director, most often opting to act when he also had the freedom to direct… He made his directorial debut in 1971 with Play Misty for Me, leading him to a filmmaking career that would see him scoop up two ‘Best Director’ Oscars and two ‘Best Picture’ wins for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, which was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to Eastwood’s decades-spanning success.
Interestingly, though, there was a time before all of this, before Eastwood landed his role in the Dollars trilogy and before he made his directorial debut, when he contemplated throwing in the towel – back in 1958, he appeared in a movie so disastrous that he wondered if he was cut out for acting after all. Perhaps he wasn’t really meant to be a star of the silver screen?
Of course, he’d soon prove to be a pretty iconic figure of the western and crime genres in the end, but when an early film role came knocking, it only had the effect of making Eastwood question everything. He’d had a few small roles over the previous years, with his debut coming with an uncredited part as a lab technician in the 3D monster movie Revenge of the Creature, but by 1958, he’d landed a proper credited role in the film Ambush at Cimarron Pass.
Appearing alongside Scott Brady and Margia Dean, the movie, directed by Jodie Copelan, was a huge failure, but no one disliked it more than Eastwood himself. The western just didn’t do anything special, and it was a far cry from the part he’d come to play as ‘The Man With No Name’ a few years later.
When Eastwood watched the movie for the first time, he was outraged by how awful it was, and he considered giving up altogether… His career had hardly started, but this already felt like the final straw.
“The film was made in eight days. So it was really el speedo grande,” he once told The Hollywood Reporter. “It was probably the worst film ever made.” Eastwood’s words might seem harsh, but the movie really wasn’t great.
He added, “It was sooo bad I just kept sinking lower and lower in my seat. I said to my wife, ‘I’m going to quit, I’m really going to quit. I gotta go back to school. I got to start doing something with my life.'”
In the end, Eastwood bagged his role in the TV series Rawhide, which would see him play Rowdy Yates across 217 episodes. He wouldn’t appear in a film for another six years after the disaster that was Ambush at Cimarron Pass, but his cinematic comeback, so to speak, happened to be A Fistful of Dollars, which marked the start of a truly successful acting career.
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