Clint Eastwood names the greatest comedy actor of all time: “The only man who could make me laugh when I didn’t want to”
Comedy and Clint Eastwood have never made for the easiest or most comfortable of bedfellows, but there was one actor who was always guaranteed to crack the actor’s iconic thousand-yard stare and leave him in stitches.
Some folks aren’t cut out for comedy, and you could argue that Eastwood is one of them. Sure, he’s made a few pictures that have comedic elements, and some of them are even good, but as a performer who always ensured they did the most with as little as possible, chewing on the scenery wasn’t his forte.
The mental image of the four-time Academy Award winner becoming utterly creased at Tropic Thunder takes some hard work to conjure, but that’s the audience’s fault. After all, viewers have spent 60 years being conditioned by the blank-faced, grizzled Eastwood who’d rather say one line than ten and get the same point across, even those unfortunate enough to have seen Paint Your Wagon or Pink Cadillac.
That doesn’t mean he’s an entirely impenetrable fortress of a man, though, with a one-time co-star and long-time friend having the gift of guaranteeing a laugh out of cinema’s most stoic veteran. He spent decades honing it, too, with some of his most vicious put-downs separated by almost 30 years.
While there are at least two generations who recognise him best as the voice of Mr Potato Head in the Toy Story franchise, Don Rickles was one of the greats. His signature style was about being as vicious as possible, and his verbal vitriol was at its best when he was aiming it at Hollywood’s good and great, which placed Eastwood on the receiving end more than once.
They shared the screen in 1970’s ensemble caper Kelly’s Heroes, and when he was being presented with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996, who better to stand up, say a few words, and eviscerate the ‘Man with No Name’ in a few soundbites than Rickles?
“Clint, I’ll say it, nobody else has said it, and I say it from the heart,” he opined. “You’re a lousy actor.” That was him just getting started, too. Rickles added that “Clint’s idea of a good time is sitting on a pickup truck watching his dog bark,” before telling him that he had so much dirt on him that if he spilled it to the audience, “You’re gonna end up back on Rawhide.”
Eastwood’s seriousness earned him the nickname of ‘Mr Personality’ from Rickles on the Kelly’s Heroes set, with the latter insisting that “someone tell him his face won’t break if he smiles.” That’s how he was with everyone, but it earned some serious praise from the Dirty Harry frontman, who called Rickles “the only man who could make me laugh when I didn’t want to.”
Rickles’ acerbic style and mastery of the withering put-down earned him the moniker of ‘The Merchant of Venom’, but he was one of the most celebrated and influential comics of his era, and the only person who could transform Eastwood’s stone-faced grimace into a beaming grin.
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