The film that showed Clint Eastwood on the road to Hollywood
(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
He may have only been in his twenties when he landed his breakout screen role, but Clint Eastwood wasn’t always convinced that his future lay solely in acting.
The star was on the cusp of turning 30 when Rawhide It premiered in 1959, but his filmography was hardly bare at that point. However, he was restricted almost entirely to uncredited parts in feature films and one-episode guest spots on television before he was cast in the role of Rudy Yates, which lit up the touch sheet on the rise that would eventually see him go down in history as one of the All-Americans. The greatest icons of cinema.
Before that, Eastwood worked a number of odd jobs that included bagging groceries, delivering newspapers, carrying caddy on golf courses, and working as a lifeguard. Stardom was not at the forefront of his thoughts during this period, especially when one of his first trips to the movies left him convinced that a career in Hollywood was too far-fetched as a realistic goal.
As he explained to Michael Parkinson, watching the biggest film of the year with his father opened his eyes for the first time to what cinema really was. “One of the first movies I went to — I went with my father because my mother didn’t want to go to a war movie — was… Sergeant York,” he said. His father was already fascinated by World War I hero Alvin C. York, but for the young Eastwood, that had a much greater influence.
“That was when I first became aware of films, who made them, who was involved in them,” he continued, but it didn’t quite spark his imagination and convince him that was where the fame and fortune lay. At the time, he believed that pursuing these films as a career “seemed to be beyond anyone’s reach”, as his interpretation of the films was their entertainment value, “and you didn’t dissect them much further.”
Co-written by John Huston and directed by the legendary Howard Hawks. Sergeant York It was the highest-grossing release of the year and the most successful awards season. Nominated for 11 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, the wartime biographical drama saw Gary Cooper take home the award for Best Actor, while also winning Best Editing “.
Eastwood had only recently turned 11 years old Sergeant York Making his big screen debut, it would be nearly a decade and a half before he made his screen debut in the uncredited part of a lab technician named Jennings in the 1955 3D-enhanced monster movie. Revenge the creatureBut it nonetheless opened his eyes to the names, faces and processes involved in bringing a film to the screen.
Of course, this is something he’s become more familiar with than most given his remarkable longevity, and it’s an added bonus that his life-changing experience came from watching a very cold classic.
