“Well, actually”: Clint Eastwood set the record straight on the urban legend that plagued him for 50 years
He doesn’t give off the impression that he’d be troubled by rumours, speculation, or scuttlebutt, but Clint Eastwood still sought to clear up an urban legend that followed him for over half a century.
There aren’t many tales about the legendary actor and director that are apocryphal, since A Fistful of Dollars was legally proven to have ripped off Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, and he did instigate an industry-wide rule change by firing the director of The Outlaw Josey Wales and appointing himself as the replacement.
He also definitely fathered some children as a result of extramarital affairs, so there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of dirty laundry or skeletons in his closet that haven’t been aired. However, when it comes to one of his most famous movies, Eastwood doesn’t want you to believe the half-truths.
It’s become ingrained in Hollywood legend that the four-time Academy Award winner only ended up with the part of ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan in Don Siegel’s classic crime thriller because nobody else wanted to play it, with a slew of big-name stars all being above Eastwood in the pecking order.
Paul Newman confirmed that he’d turned it down because he thought the concept was “shit,” while Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, and Burt Lancaster also said no, with Frank Sinatra agreeing to headline Dirty Harry until he claimed he needed to bail because of an injury that left him unable to wield the rogue cop’s signature .44 Magnum.
Then there’s John Wayne, who confessed that he regretted turning down the picture so much that he eagerly signed up for McQ to try and position himself as ‘Dirty Duke’, only to make a terrible genre flick that did a stellar job of convincing everyone that he was wrong for the iconic part to begin with.
That puts Eastwood at least sixth on the list, but he said it’s all bullshit. “Well, actually, I was the first choice,” he responded. “Warner Bros had been taken over, and it was a new administration. They needed product, and I said, ‘Sure, ‘I’ll do it, but you’ve got to wait six months because I’m directing my first film, and I’m not giving up this opportunity.'”
Refusing to wait for him to wrap up Play Misty for Me, the studio “tried to get other people,” as he recalled. Several of them said no, Sinatra said yes, and when he dropped out, Eastwood was back in the frame. “They called me back,” he added. “And said, ‘Are you still interested in doing it?'”
He was, obviously, and Dirty Harry finally had its leading man. He took the long way round to signing on the dotted line, but Eastwood would rather that everyone knew the truth, or his version of it: from the very beginning, he was the first choice for the gig, it just happened to be a full-circle thing.
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