Five legendary actors who turned down the lead role in ‘Dirty Harry’: “A pretty lame excuse”
It’s not exactly a movie that anyone would associate with Christmas, but Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry nonetheless lured audiences to the multiplex over the festive season after hitting theatres on December 23rd, 1971, going on to recoup its budget nine times over at the box office to become a bona fide hit.
As the titular police officer with a penchant for operating in the grey areas and bending the rule of law to suit his own agenda, Clint Eastwood secured the second iconic role of his big-screen career after bringing the ‘Man with No Name’ to indelible life in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy, cementing his stardom.
The classic cop thriller spawned four sequels, gave rise to several soundbites that entered the pop culture lexicon, and endures over half a century later as arguably the definitive performance of the four-time Academy Award-winning actor and filmmaker’s career, which isn’t a bad return considering he wasn’t the first choice for the part.
Some critics, most notably Pauline Kael, raged against Dirty Harry‘s perceived socio-political leanings, something Eastwood always vehemently denied. However, it was enough to swear at least a couple of legendary actors off taking the job, although they each had their own reasons for knocking it back.
Five iconic actors who turned down Dirty Harry:
Robert Mitchum
It’s not impossible to imagine Robert Mitchum as Harry Callahan, based entirely on his face. That’s intended as a compliment, since the ‘Golden Age’ favourite looked like the kind of guy who wouldn’t need to try too hard to convince audiences that he’s a renegade cop.
Mitchum also happened to excel when playing characters who held positions of either military or law enforcement authority, and his no-nonsense style would have made him a decent fit for the gig. However, he wasn’t interested when the script came his way, but the family was still represented after his brother, John, was cast as Frank DiGiorgio.
Steve McQueen
Having recently played a hard-boiled cop in an action-packed genre film, Steve McQueen decided that it was too soon after Peter Yates’ Bullitt to return to the well, convincing the ‘King of Cool’ that Dirty Harry would be returning too soon to ground that was too familiar.
He didn’t regret it, although he did fancy making a version of his own. Or, to be more accurate, the complete opposite, at least in terms of tone and violence. In his final film role, The Hunter, he played a character who was Harry Callahan’s opposite in almost every way, leading him to remark, “They shoulda called me Clean Harry.”
Frank Sinatra
Clint Eastwood was the biggest beneficiary of Frank Sinatra dropping out of the lead role in Dirty Harry, which didn’t stop him from having a little dig in the direction of ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ after catching wind of his reasons for pulling the plug.
Sinatra was in his mid-50s when attached to the film, and after suffering a wrist injury that required surgery, he didn’t feel up to the task of wielding the soon-to-be iconic .44 Magnum in his recovering shooting hand. When Eastwood got the call informing him of Sinatra’s reasons for dropping out, he thought, “That sounded like a pretty lame excuse,” not that he cared in the long run.
Paul Newman
In a sign of things to come after the movie’s release, Paul Newman rejected the overtures of Dirty Harry after finding himself in direct opposition to the picture’s perceived politics, something Eastwood disagreed with once he’d made the role his own.
Newman was one of Hollywood’s highest-profile liberals, and he didn’t want to be associated with the right-leaning instincts of the action thriller, even if the filmmakers denied they even existed. According to Eastwood, he “thought the character was sort of a radical guy on the right, so politically he couldn’t do it.” The star didn’t see it that way, and he was happy to sign on.
John Wayne
Of all the people who turned down Dirty Harry before Eastwood secured the part, John Wayne was the only one who made a movie out of spite and regret in an attempt to try and seize the lightning Siegel and Eastwood had created and try to stuff it into a completely different bottle.
The actor confessed that he regretted dismissing the project when it came his way, and his main reason for agreeing to headline the suspiciously similar crime flick, McQ, was that he wanted a Dirty Harry of his own. “I thought I could be Dirty Duke,” he admitted, with the end result illustrating that he could not.
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