The one director Clint Eastwood swore he’d never work with: “I just didn’t want to see that face”
The director that Clint Eastwood has worked with the most is, obviously, Clint Eastwood, and it’s been a long time since he’s felt the need to step in front of the camera for anyone else.
The only exception since 1993’s In the Line of Fire came when he played a supporting role in 2012’s Trouble with the Curve, and he only did that because the film’s first-time director, Robert Lorenz, was a protégé who’d worked on over a dozen Malpaso productions, so he was still keeping it in the family.
He’s been a big enough star for a long enough time that he can work with whoever he wants on whatever he wants, because if any filmmaker gets a call from Clint Eastwood, it’s not like they’ll turn him down. He made multiple pictures with Don Siegel, Sergio Leone, and Buddy Van Horn at the helm, to name just three, but there was one director who held a permanent place on his shit list.
This was long before he became a household name, which only went to show that the four-time Academy Award winner knows how to hold a grudge. Rawhide was his big break, even if his plans to make his directorial debut on the show went up in smoke, and once it proved itself in the ratings, he gained an extra bit of clout behind the scenes.
In his very first movie, 1955’s Revenge of the Creature, Eastwood had a hard time dealing with director Jack Arnold, who almost cut his only scene. The two made their peace, though, and they eventually reunited. “I joked with Jack about it years later when he came on and did some Rawhides,” he reminisced. “It wasn’t a bad deal like Abner Biberman, or something.”
Biberman was an actor who’d segued behind the camera, and he’d also been a mentor of sorts in the talent programme at Universal Studios, which helped usher in a new generation of actors and taught them the basics of their craft. When he was auditioning for the 1955 crime flick, Running Wild, a fresh-faced Eastwood was one of many performers who read lines.
He barely got a word in before he was dismissed, which he found highly unprofessional. Biberman had made Eastwood feel like “a punk kid, hanging around” after waving him away. The Unforgiven and Dirty Harry icon remembered that slight, and it came back to haunt his nemesis when he was a fairly prolific television director in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Rawhide was at the peak of its popularity.
Sure, he’d helmed episodes of some notable series, but he pissed Eastwood off, so he wasn’t interested in collaborating. When he was loitering in a producer’s office, he spied Biberman’s name on a list of potential Rawhide directors, so he did what any spiteful sort would do, and drew a line through it. “I’m not a vindictive person,” he claimed. “But I just didn’t want to see that face on the set.”
His mind was made up; he never wanted to see Biberman again in a professional capacity, especially not on a film or television set, and he didn’t.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Clint Eastwood Newsletter
All the latest stories about Clint Eastwood from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.