Clint Eastwood Biography Page 2
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SPECIALS:
Clint Eastwood in The Man with No Name Trilogy
Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry Movies
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Never one to stay with an unchallenging job too long, Clint left the lifeguard position and found work with the Boeing plant, near Seattle. Here, he was assigned to the parts department, where he spent most of his time filling out forms-hardly the type of work that would seem enticing to the future Dirty Harry.
In 1949, Eastwood determined that he should return to school to major in-of all things-music. (This may seem a surprising interest for Clint, but one must remember that even during his career in show business, his little-talked-about love for music was shown more than once. In Paint Your Wagon, he made his big-screen singing debut, and Clint actually cut a record for a small recording company during the years he was filming the Rawhide television series. He recalls an occasion in which he was sent on tour to promote the record-called "Unknown Girl"-while wearing a ridiculous "cool" outfit provided by the record company. "The pants they gave me to wear were not pants; they were leotards. To rebel, I sometimes showed up wearing my western costume, smelling of cow manure. The record-promotion company didn't like it, but the teenagers did." Twenty years later, Clint had a hit record of "Barroom Buddies," which he sang with Merle Haggard in Bronco Billy.)
Eastwood's plan to return to school was thwarted when he was drafted into the army. He reported to Fort Ord, California, for basic training. Soon after the army accepted him, the Korean conflict erupted. But Eastwood's swimming prowess would once again prove quite valuable. He explained to Arthur Knight in an interview for Playboy in 1974,
They needed a couple of guys to help out at the pool there. So I got up and went into my act as a Johnny Weismuller type. ... I told them I was absolutely the greatest swimmer going, things like that, and 1 ended up getting the job. When we started out, there was this buddy of mine and I, and a master sergeant and four sergeants over us, and a lieutenant over them. Everybody got shipped to Korea except me; my name just didn't come up. So I figured I'd make the best of it and went and talked to the captain. I said, "Look, I'm only a private, but I think I can handle this swimming-pool thing," and he said, "Well, I don't even know how to swim, so go ahead and run it. You're wearing a sweat shirt; nobody will know you're just a private." So I stayed there and hired four other guys to work for me. We had a pretty good swimming-instruction program going, got quite a few excellent ratings-like four-star movie reviews. I even lived down at the pool; it was a terrific deal, for being in the service.
Eastwood was able to use his spare time to raise more money for himself by working in jobs outside the base. One such job was at the Spreck-les Sugar Refining Company, where he worked on a loading dock. He felt the money was worth giving up his spare time for, because his salary from the army amounted to a whopping $67 a month. Eventually, however, the government demanded that Eastwood resign from his part-time jobs and save his strength for the army.
Eastwood's strength was much needed for one incident that nearly cost him his life. One of Clint's friends, a pilot on a navy bomber, suggested that Eastwood use a weekend pass and accompany him on a routine flight to San Francisco. Clint agreed, even though he had to ride in the rear compartment above the bombbay.
No sooner was the plane over open water, than for some inexplicable reason, the bombbay door fell open. The air pressure was so tremendous that Eastwood had to use all his strength to prevent being sucked out into the sea. Somehow, he managed to close the bombbay door.
Screaming for help over the intercom, he found that it had gone dead between the bombing compartment and the cockpit. In addition to these troubles, the plane began to lose both altitude and oxygen. The pilot had to make a dramatic crash landing in the open sea.
With waves pounding him, and darkness settling in, Eastwood and his friend began the seemingly endless swim toward shore. To add to his worries, he encountered a school of jellyfish, which caused him great pain. He remembers, "I thought I might die. But then I thought, Other people have made it through these things before. I kept my eyes on the lights on shore and kept swimming." Fortunately, both men made it to safety. Characteristic of his nature, all these hardships didn't bother Eastwood as much as did the five-mile walk to a highway in wet clothes.
During his army years, Eastwood first met his future wife, Maggie Johnson. One of Clint's friends had arranged for him to meet her through a blind double-date. Their relationship grew gradually. Clint escorted Maggie on many modestly budgeted dates, which grew more and more frequent. Eventually, he would spend all his free time with her. Eastwood claimed that he was attracted not only by Maggie's good looks, but also by her independence and ability to profess her own opinions. At the time of their first meeting, Maggie was a student at the University of California at Berkeley.
With his army career coming to an end and his relationship with Maggie heading toward possible marriage, Eastwood contemplated what he would do with his life. Several of his army buddies, including Martin Milner and the late David Janssen, had been actors trying to make it big in civilian life. They constantly harassed Clint to try his hand at acting, and although he seemed to take the idea more seriously than he ever had in the past, he decided instead to go a more practical route. When he was discharged from the army, he enrolled in Los Angeles City College to major in business administration. This decision he later attributed more to self-pressure to choose a good-paying career, than to any real interest in the business world.
During his school semesters, Eastwood again found part-time employment. He worked as an attendant in a gas station and later took on the responsibilities of being a janitor in an apartment building.
When these jobs came to an end, Clint found employment digging foundations for swimming pools. On this job, an incident occurred that well illustrates Eastwood's allegiance to old friends and just how far he is willing to carry his fierce loyalty. While on the job one day, Eastwood and an old buddy found themselves in a verbal altercation with the foreman. The incident flared to the point where Eastwood's friend was fired. Suddenly, Clint also put down his shovel and began to walk. The foreman asked increduously why he was leaving. Eastwood replied, "This man is my friend. If he doesn't work here, neither do I."
To this day, most of Eastwood's inner circle of friends go back to his days as a struggling actor, if not before. While he has kept company with some of the people in the movie industry, he refuses to "go Hollywood" and attend parties and functions simply to get more publicity. In the company of old friends, he finds himself more relaxed and doesn't have to be pretentious in order to be accepted.
Eastwood continued to hear from friends that he was definitely suited for the movies. More out of desperation than interest, he reluctantly went to Universal Studios to attempt to make an appointment for a screen test. At the time the major studios were still using contract players, which meant that an aspiring young actor or actress would be hired by the studio to play small parts in various films. Each contract guaranteed the player a specified salary for a certain number of weeks, after which the studio could renew or drop the actor's contract. In addition to having steady work and receiving monetary benefits, the contract players were also required to attend classes on filmmaking. This, coupled with experience on the set, was often more valuable to the aspiring thes-pians than their salaries.
Eastwood's gamble on securing a screen test was a success. The studio brought him into a well-lighted room, sat him down, and interviewed him in an informal, rambling conversation. It soon became apparent that the studio was not the least bit interested in what Eastwood was saying. Rather, this was just a test to see whether he photographed well enough to decorate the background as an extra. Apparently he did, and much to his surprise, he was signed for a contract that guaranteed him forty weeks' work at seventy-five dollars per week.
Astounded by his success, Eastwood decided to give acting his fullest effort. With his steady income supplemented by Maggie's part-time work as a bathing-suit model for a swimwear company, the couple felt the time was right to get married. On December 19, 1953, Maggie Johnson became Maggie Eastwood.
Eastwood's first assignment in motion pictures was a small role in a minor horror film titled Revenge of the Creature. His appearance was brief and completely forgettable, not only for audiences, but for himself as well. Other films followed in rapid succession. He appeared in such "epics" as Tarantula, Francis in the Navy (with old friend Martin Milner), Lady Godwa, and Never Say Goodbye. All the roles offered him in these films were far too brief for Clint to make an impression; yet the employment was steady, and his salary had increased to a hundred dollars per week.
At this time, however, Eastwood was nearly faced with a tragedy. Maggie contracted a severe case of hepatitis, and for several days her prospects for survival looked grim. Eastwood kept working in order to pay the doctor bills, but finances were becoming strained with Maggie out of work and in poor health. Fortunately, she eventually overcame her sickness and managed to return to work to supplement the couple's income. Eastwood was relieved enough, now that he could stop worrying about his wife's health, to concentrate on his upcoming new contract with Universal.
The studio brass were to give Eastwood a raise to $125 per week, but for some reason they had a change of heart. The studio informed him that if he wanted to continue with Universal, it would have to be at the present rate of $100 a week. Eastwood swallowed his pride and accepted the offer, only to allow him more time to gain acting experience. After six months, however, the studio decided they had no use for him at all and dropped his contract.
Shocked by this latest blow to his ego, Clint went to RKO, at that time the haven of the B movie. RKO saw great promise in his acting abilities and signed him for a Ginger Rogers comedy titled The First Traveling Saleslady.
Despite high hopes, the film was a failure with the public and quickly vanished from sight. However, the studio rapidly signed Eastwood for a bit role in another comedy, this one titled Escapade in Japan, in which he played a sailor with the memorable name of Dumbo.
Before this film could be released, RKO was sold, and the studio went out of business shortly thereafter, Ironically, Escapade in Japan was purchased for distribution by Universal Pictures. Not surprisingly, this undistinguished little feature also failed to light any fires with the movie-going public. Eastwood knew that Universal would have no interest in him, since they had just fired him a few months before.
Eastwood landed a job as a co-star in a 20th Century-Fox western called Ambush at Cimmarron Pass. Although the film offered him his largest role to date, Eastwood would later describe the movie as "maybe the worst film ever made."
By 1958, Clint found himself digging swimming pools once again. His brief love affair with acting was beginning to fade rapidly, and he had begun to wonder if his dreams of success hadn't been foolish. He continued to accept parts wherever they were offered, and he did manage to secure a few unimpressive roles in short-lived TV series like Navy Log and Men of Annapolis. An appearance on Highway Patrol garnered him his first piece of fan mail.
His TV work was followed by a seemingly promising war film, Lafayette EscadriUe, which starred heartthrob Tab Hunter. The director was the distinguished William Wellman, and for a moment Clint's optimism was reawakened. Unfortunately, Lafayette went the way of Clint's other films-it died at the box office.
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