Clint Eastwood’s affair with a co-star nearly ended in a real-life duel: “She was madly in love”
Clint Eastwood is many things to many people. He is one of the most beloved leading men in Hollywood history, a celebrated director, a cultural icon of rugged masculinity, and a man of steadfast, if controversial, political beliefs.
Over his seven decades in the public eye, though, he’s also always been someone whose views on monogamy are fluid, at best, and one of his on-set dalliances almost landed him in a genuine duel. Thankfully, or perhaps regrettably for those of you who wish to hear of Eastwood firing off shots, the death decider never took place.
In 1968, Eastwood signed up to star in the western musical Paint Your Wagon. His star was on the rise at the time thanks to his breakthrough role as the “Man With No Name” in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, which popularised the spaghetti western. He followed those movies up with quickfire parts in Hang ‘Em High, Coogan’s Bluff, and Where Eagles Dare before deciding to subvert his tough guy image with Paint Your Wagon.
Eastwood was ostensibly happily married to fitness instructor Margaret Neville Johnson during this period. However, their relationship was known to be open, and while they were together, he had liaisons with other women, resulting in the births of daughters Laurie and Kimber in 1954 and 1964. He also had a son with Johnson, Kyle, who was born the same year the infamous Paint Your Wagon was released.
When the musical’s shoot began near Baker City, Oregon, it’s believed Eastwood already had two mistresses on the go, and then he took a shine to co-star Jean Seberg. Seberg very much reciprocated this shine, and they began a torrid on-set love affair. However, while Eastwood’s wife had long ago made her peace with his philandering, the same couldn’t be said for Seberg’s husband, Romain Gary, a French writer.
French writers may be top of your list of most passionate people in culture, and Gary took the slight on his marriage personally. The actor had stepped over the line, even beyond any sort of casual relationship. You see, it’s alleged that Seberg didn’t just see her relationship with Eastwood as a fling.
Instead, she had fallen in love with him, and she supposedly told her husband that her heart now lay with another man. When Gary figured out the other man in question was Eastwood, which can’t have been too hard a case to crack, he reportedly challenged the star to a duel. Yes, a duel like in so many of Eastwood’s westerns. Unfortunately for Gary, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, it never came to pass, and his chance to sling some lead with one of Hollywood’s greatest cowboys was lost to a machismo pipedream.
Karina Longworth lifted the lid on the supposed confrontation in an episode of her You Must Remember This podcast. The host claimed, “They never went through with it, and instead Romain left, and Jean called her publicist to confess she was madly in love with Clint Eastwood, and she needed help announcing she was getting a divorce.”
Seberg’s grand plans for a future with Eastwood would never materialise, though, as he reportedly acted like nothing had happened between them when they finished shooting the movie. In Played Out, Seberg’s biographer David Richards wrote, “Once they got back to Paramount, it was as if Clint didn’t know who she was. Jean couldn’t believe that he could be that indifferent to her after everything that had gone on in Baker. She was a very vulnerable woman, and it was a terrible trauma for her.”
The movie is not exactly the best work Eastwood ever produced. The musical was lambasted by those who felt the western genre was being manipulated beyond enjoyment with its musical twist. John Waybne was a vocal member of the disquiet. But perhaps those critics would have felt differently if they had known that off-screen but on set, the Hollywood equivalent of a barroom brawl was taking place behind the scenes.
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