Sara Anson Vaux Ph.D. - Clint Eastwood: A Biography

CLINT EASTWOOD

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A Biography

Sara Anson Vaux

GREENWOOD BIOGRAPHIES

Copyright 2014 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vaux, Sara Anson.
Clint Eastwood: a biography / Sara Anson Vaux.
pages cm (Greenwood biographies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4408-2997-0 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-4408-2998-7 (ebook)
1. Eastwood, Clint, 1930- 2. Motion picture actors and actressesUnited StatesBiography. 3. Motion picture producers and directorsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
PN2287.E37V38 2014
791.4302'8092dc23
[B] 2014017772

ISBN: 978-1-4408-2997-0
EISBN: 978-1-4408-2998-7

18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5

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Until I saw Unforgiven when it first appeared in theaters, I only knew Clint Eastwood through snatches of movies I caught while my boys were watching them on TV. The first one I remember is Firefox. When I commented upon the dark screen and the strange persona of the protagonist played by Eastwood, I received a long lecture from my sons about the actors contributions to the mythology of the American (male) hero. With Unforgiven, I realized that as a director (and as an actor who plays it low), Eastwood was a sage cultural analyst who was not afraid to challenge myths of a pure West for just conquerors or to expose the devastations that ecological disasters and economic greed have visited upon men, women, and children.

Apart from Christopher Frayling, Laurence Knapp, and Kent Jones, American Eastwood analysts have focused largely upon his depiction of the American male, his private life, or the plot details of his many movies. French critics, writing from a broad film background that includes classical American cinema (including Westerns), approach his films from a philosophical and humanistic as well as a cinematic perspective. Michael Henry Wilsons astute interviews, Nol Simso los art-centered approach, and recently, essays in the French journal NUNC that look at Eastwood as deeply invested in the social, political, and ethical health of American society, grasp the foundational agenda of a sophisticated director. My book The Ethical Vision of Clint Eastwood (Eerdmans, 2012) offers an up-to-date analysis of Eastwoods most probing movies from an ethical and religious perspective little encountered by American audiences (although when I finished it, Hereafter was not available for study and J. Edgar had not yet reached theaters).

In the current Greenwood Biographies series, I have presented far more information on Eastwoods personal lifethe origins of his love for music, particularly jazz; his major television role in Rawhide; his breakthrough role as the Man with No Name in the Spaghetti Westerns; the establishment of his studio Malpaso, which allowed him creative freedom for his projects; the cultural shock of his role in Dirty Harry; his rise to superstardom; his romantic adventures; and, gradually, the shaping of a cinematic artist who is almost universally recognized as one of Americas finest directors.

My analysis of Eastwoods iconic movies (that is, those that mark his identity as a major director) arises at key moments as his life story unfolds. As Chicago filmmaker and critic Michael Smith writes on his blog whitecitycinema.com , I claim that Eastwoods body of work is highly unified even though he has never had a hand in writing scripts and is notorious for shooting his screenplays without rewrites.

The director himself has insisted since the first Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971) appeared that he works with stories, not from a political agenda. Nonetheless, the spectator should regard authors protestations about their own work with a good deal of caution. Certain stories, certain ways of filming, elicit thoughtful responses. For instance, as I have studied four decades of Eastwood movies, I have observed that he consistently engages with the social fabric of American society: the (false) myths of cultural superiority that permeate a large portion of Hollywood movies; the marginalization of increasing numbers of nonwhite, non-rich persons; and the moral dilemmas in which everyday people find themselves. He could have made other choices for cinematography, music, and casting. He could have sanitized his Westerns, as literally thousands of movie and TV directors did before him. But he did not.