Oscar Profile #238: Clint Eastwood

Born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, California to a factory worker mother and a steelworker father, Clinton Eastwood Jr. attended Los Angeles City College but dropped out before graduating. Drafted into the U.S. Army, he served as lifeguard at Fort Ord on the Monterey Peninsula where he was discovered by Universal. On screen in bit parts from 1955, he became a household name in 1959 as co-star of the long-running TV series, Rawhide. The series ended in 1965. While on hiatus before the start of the series’ final season he went to Italy to film A Fistful of Dollars which was released all over the world before its U.S. debut in January, 1867. By that time two other so-called spaghetti westerns, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly had also met with international success. They would debut in the U.S. in May, 1967 and January, 1968, respectively.

Eastwood’s first three Hollywood starrers, Hang ‘Em High, Coogan’s Bluff and Where Eagles Dare, all major box-office hits, were all released later in 1968. In 1969 he co-starred with Lee Marvin and Jean Seberg in the overblown but not uninteresting film version of Lerner & Loewe’s 1951 Broadway musical, Paint Your Wagon.

More successes followed including Two Mules for Sister Sara and Kelly’s Heroes in 1970 and The Beguiled early in 1971. He had two major successes later that year with Play Misty for Me, his first film as a director, and Dirty Harry, the first of five films made sporadically through 1983 in which he played the iconic San Francisco detective Harry Callahan.

Among Eastwood’s many successes as director/star have been 1973’s High Plains Drifter, 1976’s The Outlaw Josey Wales, 1977’s The Gaunlet, 1982’s Firefox, 1985’s Heartbreak Ridge and 1988’s Bird for which he won a Golden Globe for his direction . He entered the Oscar sweepstakes at the age of 62 with 1992’s Unforgiven for which he was nominated for Best Picture, Director and Actor, winning for both Best Picture and Director. Two years later he received the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award as a producer.

Eastwood was an actor for hire in 1993’s In the Line of Fire, but otherwise his post-Unforgiven successes have all been self-directed. Among them have been 1993’s A Perfect World, 1995’s The Bridges of Madison County, 2000’s Space Cowboys, 2002’s Blood Work, 2004’s Million Dollar Baby (three more personal Oscar nominations and two more personal wins), 2008’s Gran Torino and 2012’s Trouble With the Curve. He also directed, but didn’t act in nine more films including 2003’s Mystic River, 2006’s Letters From Iwo Jima and 2014’s American Sniper, all of which earned him Oscar nominations for Best Picture, the first two of which also earned him nominations for Best Director.

The actor was also the mayor of his hometown, California’s Carmel-by-the-Sea from 1986 to 1988. Although he was only married twice, Eastwood has eight children by six different women. He is still going strong at 85.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1971)

Sixteen years before Glenn Close stalked and menaced Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction, Jessica Walter as an obsessed radio fan did the same to Eastwood as a Carmel disc jockey in Play Misty for Me. Eastwood directed his first film in Carmel-by-the-Sea, the city he would later become mayor of, and other locales within California’s fabled Monterey Peninsula.

Roberta Flack’s recording of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” from her first album released in 1969 was played over the soundtrack during Eastwood and Donna Mills’ long walk and tryst on the beach. Its success caused the song to be released as a single in 1late 1971 which in turn caused the film to enjoy a second wind at the box office. Flack later won a Grammy for Record of the Year for the song.

UNFORGIVEN (1992)

This ultra-violent western, filled with irony, was so good that Eastwood never made another one.
Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play two retired gunslingers that team up with a near-sighted kid (Jaimz Woolvett) in the pursuit of two cowboys with a price on their head for disfiguring a prostitute. Gene Hackman is the sadistic sheriff who is the real villain of the piece.

The film was seen as the first more or less traditional western to win a Best Picture Oscar, which the previous two to win were not. 1931’s Cimarron was seen as a multi-generational soap opera set in the burgeoning Oklahoma Territory. 1990’s Dances With Wolves was seen as a new age revisionist western. Eastwood himself won two Oscars, one for Best Picture and one for Best Director. He had also been nominated for Best Actor. Hackman, a previous Best Actor winner for The French Connection won his second Oscar for Best Supporting Actor this time around.

MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004)

History repeated itself as Eastwood was once again nominated for Best Picture, Director and Actor and took home Oscars for Best Picture and Director. Hillary Swank, who had won the 1999 Oscar for Best Actress, took home her second Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of a female prizefighter trained by Eastwood and Morgan Freeman. Freeman won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

The film, which had not been expected to be released until 2005, was rush released at the end of 2004 to qualify for year-end awards, setting a pattern for future Eastwood releases.

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS/LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (2006)

Like Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima was not scheduled for release until the following year but was rush released by Warner Bros. to take advantage of year-end awards.

Letters, like Flags of Our Father, was based on the real-life stories of participants in the battle of the United States vs. Japan during World War II. Flags traced the lives of the six men who raised the flag on the island in the iconic Life Magazine photograph. Starring Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach among many others, it was nominated for Oscars for Best Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. The highly humanistic Letters, which was based on letters written by Japanese participants told the story of the battle from the Japanese perspective. Starring Ken Watanabe, the film was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Sound Editing, winning for the latter.

AMERICAN SNIPER (2014)

Eastwood took over the reins of the project when Steven Spielberg dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. The early 2015 box-office smash was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture and Actor (Bradley Cooper), but not Best Director. Like Letters for Iwo Jima, it won just for Best Sound Editing.

The biography of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle employs Eastwood’s typical style of just telling a story without taking sides. Originally intended as a film about Kyle’s time in Iraq where he is credited with having saved hundreds of lives while racking up 160 pinpoint kills. After Kyle’s early 2013 murder by a veteran he was trying to help, the screenplay was rewritten with input from his widow to give more insight into his down time at home between his four tours of duty. Both Cooper and Sienna Miller turn in memorable performances under Eastwood’s astute direction.