The only director who thinks Clint Eastwood and Marilyn Monroe sound exactly the same
Even though they feel like icons from completely different eras, and you can make the case that’s exactly what they are, Clint Eastwood and Marilyn Monroe were much closer to being peers than you might think.
The four-time Academy Award-winning actor and filmmaker is less than four years younger than the ‘Golden Age’ bombshell, but the reason why they feel so separated by time and distance is simple: when Monroe died, Eastwood was still a nobody in the grand scheme of things.
He was best known as the guy from Rawhide, while she was one of the most effortlessly magnetic stars in cinema history, one who tried her hardest to get better at her craft, even if her inability to master even the simplest dialogue scenes without dozens of takes drove many of her collaborators up the wall.
They almost did, with Eastwood auditioning for a role in 1956’s Bus Stop, just a year after his feature debut in Revenge of the Creature, but he didn’t get the part. In hindsight, he was glad he didn’t, with the famously economical auteur admitting that Monroe’s penchant for burning through celluloid like it was going out of fashion would have sent him insane.
One thing they have in common is that, for opposite reasons, they’ve got two of the most distinctive voices in silver-screen history. Monroe’s breathy, smouldering whisper became one of her trademarks, while Eastwood’s grizzled, gargled threats helped define him as an action hero for the ages.
In no way whatsoever do they sound the same, although James Gunn would disagree. The Troma-trained schlock merchant who ended up co-running a movie studio cast Karen Gillan against type as a slap-headed, vengeful alien assassin in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and in developing her villainous voice, the star revealed that she’s aimed for “an impression of Marilyn Monroe and Clint Eastwood.”
To clarify, she meant both of them, put through a vocal meat grinder, and then applied to her character, Nebula. Or, as she put it, “merged.” If you’ve seen Guardians of the Galaxy, or any of her other superhero work, you may not have been able to guess that, but it sounds like Gunn didn’t think they needed much merging anyway.
“I just turned up on set, and I had these ideas for the character, and it was very villainy,” Gillan explained. “And he was like, ‘OK, let’s just switch it up. Why don’t you just do an impression of Marilyn Monroe? She has a very similar voice to Clint Eastwood.'” Does she, though? Common sense says no, and a hypothetical experiment would prove it.
Let’s say, for talking’s sake, that Monroe gave Eastwood’s “Do you feel lucky, punk?” speech from Dirty Harry, and let’s say that Eastwood sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to John F Kennedy. If you listened to both of those recordings, would you think they were the same person? Would you fuck.
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.