Saturdays with the Stars: Clint Eastwood

Each month of 2023 we are taking a look at a star who made their name in westerns, rustling cattle & riding horses during the brief time when cowboys ruled Hollywood.  Last month, we talked about Franco Nero, whose role in the spaghetti western Django led to an unusual & eclectic cross-genre career in Hollywood.  This month, we're going to focus on another mainstay of spaghetti westerns, and a figure that, save for John Wayne, is more associated with the Hollywood western to modern audiences than any other figure.  From playing a rough-and-tumble cowboy to becoming one of Tinseltown's most successful (and lauded) directors, he's basically the definition of a movie icon.  This month's star is Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood was born in San Francisco, the son of a manufacturing executive, and the descendant of William Bradford, one of the passengers on the Mayflower (yes, Eastwood's bonafides as an "All-American movie star" are come by honestly).  He was drafted into the military (though he never saw active duty), and was discovered by a talent scout though a bad audition led him to acting school.  Eventually, he started to get work in cheap horror movies and guest spots on television.  All of this might've been the end of it had he not gotten cast on the CBS western series Rawhide, which got him on the radar of major moviemakers in Italy who would put him in a series of iconic spaghetti westerns, several of which we'll get to this month.

The rest, as they say, is history.  Eastwood has had a career that is wide-and-varied enough that a month full of Saturday's couldn't get to all of his career waves, from television to spaghetti westerns to eventually gaining massive success as an Oscar-winning filmmaker.  He's also had dalliances in music, including an ill-fated musical, Paint Your Wagon (which we sadly won't have time for), and a successful foray into politics.  Eastwood is a somewhat controversial star, but one that's impossible to deny his endurance, and an actor whose best work as a performer I've never really seen (I'll be honest, I generally like Clint Eastwood even if his film's politics can be a bit much).  We'll correct all of that this month as we look at five films (all westerns) starring the former mayor of Carmel.