Clinton Eastwood Jr. achieved fame and fortune as the personification of old-fashioned American male bravado playing a taciturn gunslinger in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western Dollars trilogy in the 1960s. He kept on acting through the years and decades, jumping from genre to genre, as he also became an Academy Award-winning director and an outspoken political figure. Here are some facts about Eastwood that may or may not make your day.
1. HE WAS A SWIMMING INSTRUCTOR IN THE U.S. ARMY.
After graduating high school, Eastwood has said he worked as a lumberjack and forest firefighter in Oregon, and a steelworker in Texas. He was drafted during the war in Korea and sent to Fort Ord on Monterey Bay in California for basic training. He was never deployed for combat; he stuck around as a swimming instructor, and spent his nights and weekends working as a bouncer at the NCO club.
2. HE SURVIVED AN EMERGENCY PLANE WATER LANDING.
Returning to Fort Ord from Seattle following a weekend leave in the fall of 1951, Eastwood ran into some trouble. “On the way back, they had one plane, a Douglas AD, sort of a torpedo bomber of the World War II vintage, and I thought I’d hitch on that,” Eastwood recalled. “Everything went wrong. Radios went out. Oxygen ran out. And finally we ran out of fuel up around Point Reyes, California, and went in the ocean. So we went swimming. It was late October, November. Very cold water. [I] found out many years later that it was a white shark breeding ground, but I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time or I’d have just died.”
3. HE DESPERATELY WANTED TO PLAY CHARLES LINDBERGH IN THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS, SO HE WROTE BILLY WILDER A LETTER.
Eastwood was still looking to make his movie debut on October 26, 1954 when he wrote a letter to Oscar-winning moviemaker Billy Wilder, thanking the director for taking the time to meet with him the previous week and warning him that the one video Universal could provide of him was a “difficult” interview where he was “not very good, even though I was given a contract on the strength of it. When the time comes for casting, I would appreciate so much your letting me talk with you rather than seeing this test, for I have improved in every way since that time. I feel the qualities you might be seeking can better be found in a personal interview.” Wilder cast Jimmy Stewart in the role.
4. EASTWOOD WAS FIRED AS A CONTRACT PLAYER AT UNIVERSAL PICTURES BECAUSE OF HIS LOOKS.
Eastwood and Burt Reynolds were both contract players at Universal, and both were fired in 1959. According to Reynolds, Eastwood “was fired because his Adam’s apple stuck out too far. He talked too slow. And he had a chipped tooth and he wouldn’t get it fixed. And I said, ‘Why are you firing me?’ And they said, ‘You can’t act.’ … I said to Clint, ‘You know, you are really screwed, because I can learn how to act. You can’t get rid of that Adam’s apple.’” Reynolds then added with a laugh: “And it’s held him back. It’s held him back.”
5. HE HAS JAMES COBURN AND CHARLES BRONSON TO THANK FOR GETTING THE LEAD IN A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS.
James Coburn (The Great Escape) wanted $25,000 to star in the movie, which was more than the producers could afford. Charles Bronson might have taken the role if he didn’t think the script was “just about the worst I’d ever seen.” Eastwood agreed to star for $15,000.
6. HE NEVER WASHED THE MAN WITH NO NAME’S PONCHO.
When asked whether it was true that he wore the same poncho in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)—and never washed it—Eastwood said yes, and explained that, “If you washed it, it would fall apart.” Eastwood still has the poncho, too.
7. THE NAME OF HIS PRODUCTION COMPANY COMES FROM HIS AGENT’S BAD ADVICE.
FILE – In this Jan. 3, 2020 file photo, Clint Eastwood arrives at the AFI Awards in Los Angeles. Eastwood turns 90 on Sunday, May 31. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)
Eastwood’s agent told him that appearing in Leone’s trilogy would be a “bad step” for his career. “Bad step” in Spanish is Malpaso. Since Malpaso Creek is also a body of water located south of Carmel-of-the-Sea, California, where Eastwood makes his home, he named his company Malpaso Productions.