Why Clint Eastwood found himself laughing at Donald Sutherland’s brush with death
It seems as though near-death experiences were scarily inevitable in the golden era of Hollywood, with stunt doubles and actors performing dangerous scenes that everyone was weirdly nonchalant about. In the business of filmmaking, these things were brushed off, and people merely continued with the shoot as though nothing happened. With disastrous productions such as Apocalypse Now and The Exorcist, cast and crew members became accustomed to a low level of chaos that ran through each day, from injured extras, A-list actors with permanent back injuries and sometimes, even close brushes with death.
But while you might associate these kinds of antics with action-fuelled films and the kinds of projects that Daniel Craig and Tom Cruise might make, there was one actor who found himself in a near-death situation after suddenly falling ill during the middle of the production, something that his co-star strangely found very amusing.
Clint Eastwood is one of the ultimate veterans of the film industry, with decades of experience shooting everything from Westerns to courtroom dramas and independent projects, working on all sides of the camera as both an actor and director. Despite his age, he continues to work and push himself to share great stories, showcasing his true love for the medium while many others would happily retire and pack up shop.
But while he might have an undying passion for cinema, this was about the only thing he shared in common with former co-star Donald Sutherland, with the pair starring alongside each other in the 1970 film Kelly’s Heroes.
Directed by Brian G Hutton, the film follows a misfit group of WW2 soldiers who run amok to rob a bank behind German lines. The cast and crew travelled to Yugoslavia to film the picture, which already forms the basis of a strong bonding experience given how far away from home they were, but things were hiked up a notch after Sutherland found himself in a life-or-death situation.
The actor played Sergeant Oddball, who found himself suffering from spinal meningitis during the middle of the shoot, leading him to be placed in a coma and nearly losing his life. When describing this, Sutherland said, “I came to Yugoslavia for a day’s filming and I was out for six weeks. They took me to hospital – I had spinal meningitis. They didn’t have the antibiotics, so I went into a coma, and they tell me that for a few seconds, I died. I saw the blue tunnel, and I started going down it. I saw the white light. I dug my feet in. I didn’t want to go – but it was incredibly tempting. You just go: ‘Aw, s**t man, why not?’.”
However, the aspect that really tickled Eastwood was that after being informed of her husband’s state, Sutherland’s wife Shirley Douglas then tried to make her way to Yugoslavia but was thwarted after being arrested for her involvement in the political group Friends of the Black Panthers, with Douglas being caught for trying to buy hand grenades in Los Angeles from an undercover FBI agent.
Eastwood was given the task of breaking the news to Sutherland, with the actor finding it so hilarious that he kept breaking down and fell to the ground from laughing too much. Eastwood is famously conservative, and so perhaps he was amused by the differences in their political views and the extreme nature of the situation. Alas, Sutherland recovered and the film was made, but not without quite a scare for everyone involved.
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