Did Clint Eastwood really make a movie based on a novel by a KKK leader?
In the early 1970s, Clint Eastwood was in his office one day when a mysterious unsolicited submission arrived.
In his hands was a novel written in 1972, its author had clearly hand-picked the Dirty Harry star as the perfect man to adapt it for the big screen. So, he chanced his arm by sending it directly to Eastwood’s base of operations, in full knowledge that most submissions like this usually find their way into the nearest bin.
This time, though, Eastwood’s producing partner Robert Daley must have been in a good mood, because he read the book and quickly realised the writer was correct. To Daley, it was crystal clear that The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales really would make a perfect Eastwood film. The star soon agreed, and his production company, Malpaso, optioned the novel, written by the Cherokee scribe Forrest Carter. Amazingly, Josey Wales was Carter’s first book, making the film adaptation a true Cinderella story – until it wasn’t.
You see, Eastwood and Daley had no idea that Carter wasn’t who he appeared to be. To their horror, they wouldn’t discover his true identity until the rest of the world did in ‘76, after The Outlaw Josey Wales had already conquered the box office and united critics in declaring it an “iconic” role for the taciturn star. When an article entitled ‘Is Forrest Carter Really Asa Carter? Only Josey Wales May Know for Sure’ was published on August 26th in The New York Times, though, Eastwood went white as a ghost.
Suddenly, the awful truth became clear: one of his greatest films had been based on the work of a despicable former KKK leader named Asa Earl Carter, a staunch segregationist who formed the ultra-violent, militant offshoot known as the ‘Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy’ in the ‘50s.
It’s not worth going through Carter’s entire rap sheet as an opponent of the civil rights movement in his native Alabama, nor the time he spent writing hateful speeches for that state’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, in the ‘60s. It’s also not worth spending too much time on the disgusting violence perpetrated by six members of his paramilitary Klan group in ‘57, except to note they brutally attacked and nearly killed a Black handyman named Judge Edward Aaron. Suffice it to say, Carter was a bad man, and his rhetoric encouraged similar men to do his dirty work.
A year later, Carter walked away from the Klan group he had spearheaded, after being charged with shooting and killing two of his own men in an argument over money. For some reason, these charges were dropped. Fast-forward to 1970, and this alleged murderer was able to run for governor of Alabama on a platform of white supremacy. Thankfully, his campaign was a disaster, and he was last seen in public as ‘Asa Carter’ in ‘71.
Following this dismal failure, Carter moved to Abilene, Texas, and tried to act like everything he’d done as ‘Asa Carter’ could be forgotten about. He distanced himself from his racist past, renamed himself Forrest, and began to claim that he had distant Native American blood from his mother’s side of the family. However, proving that you can take the boy out of the KKK, but you can’t take the KKK out of the boy, Carter reportedly borrowed the name ‘Forrest’ from the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the KKK. Incidentally, ‘Grand wizard’. What a joke.
Somehow, this vicious man was able to pull the wool over the world’s eyes by adopting his alias, and Eastwood was unwittingly roped into his orbit. When his identity was exposed by the Times, he had the gall to deny being Asa Carter, despite the newspaper showing proof that the address he used when copywriting The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales was the same one Carter used while running for Alabama’s governorship. Naturally, his Cherokee ancestry was also proved to be a complete fabrication.
Thankfully for Eastwood, Josey Wales’ association with Carter never held it back from being hailed as a classic. It must still stick in his craw if he ever thinks about it, though, as it’s a black spot on his career. As for Carter, he died on June 7th, 1979, with the official cause of death being heart failure. However, one of the ambulance drivers claimed he actually died after getting into a drunken physical altercation with his own son, during which he fell and choked to death on his own vomit. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
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