They don’t make ’em like Clint Eastwood anymore, a silver-screen legend still at the peak of his creative powers as he nears his 80th birthday.
“American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood,” by Marc Eliot, fleshes out the actor’s journey from TV star to film icon and, years later, Oscar-certified auteur.
Eliot, who previously wrote “Reagan: The Hollywood Years” and “Cary Grant: A Biography,” delivers a brisk read that should satiate the actor’s admirers.
He shares no small number of tasty anecdotes, from the legendary tale of how a young Eastwood and Burt Reynolds were told they would never make it in Hollywood to Eastwood’s ambition to bring ice cream cones back to the streets of Carmel, Calif.
But there’s precious little “Life” in this biography, and Eastwood’s stunning transformation from critic’s punching bag to Oscar darling gets short shrift.
Eastwood’s early years were spent moseying from one California town to the next, his father chasing the few remaining jobs in Depression-era America. Young Eastwood didn’t seek out a career in film, but a minor Hollywood player noticed his marquee-worthy mug and suggested he give acting a try.
That introduction led to “Rawhide,” the TV Western that introduced audiences to the lanky Californian. Most actors would have been grateful for the steady paychecks. Eastwood wanted more. He tried in vain to direct an episode of the show, all the while taking mental notes about how a successful series came to be each week.
Eliot paints Eastwood’s early years as deeply informing the movie man he would become — quick with his fists, eager to learn and fast on the draw. It’s hardly a stretch to see how the series’ lean operation and morally upright narratives influenced his brand of movie making.
The actor broke free from the show long enough to shoot “A Fistful of Dollars” overseas, a spare spaghetti Western by Italian director Sergio Leone.
The Man with No Name was born, as was a film career like few others.
Eastwood became a movie star once “Dollars,” and its two sequels, reached American shores. The actor traded on the trilogy’s hallmarks — minimal dialogue, maximum action — for his first few U.S. film projects. But Eastwood kept expanding his range to suit his evolving tastes, doing so just gradually enough so his audience — and the Hollywood system — could acclimate.
The actor emerges here as a cold, calculating figure, a man who shrewdly worked the system in order to get his way time and again.
That bare-knuckled approach extended to his personal life, one teeming with affairs, out-of- wedlock children and a romance that nearly crushed his well-manicured image. Eliot gives ample time to the Sondra Locke years, the one Eastwood paramour who wouldn’t be relegated to the romantic scrap heap without a fight.
Eastwood’s own voice makes cameo appearances throughout the book via past interviews. The actor has never been one to wax poetic about his own life and times, and Eliot doesn’t fill in the necessary blanks. The book spends more time chronicling Eastwood’s sexual appetites than addressing key aspects of personality.
“American Rebel” does provide some insights, like Eastwood’s preoccupation with aging after hitting 40 and the ego clashes that made the 1984 film “City Heat” a disaster both on and off screen.
Eastwood fans will find plenty of gaps in this life story. The actor/director’s transformation from populist entertainer to auteur is treated superficially, as is his repudiation of screen violence cemented by his Oscar-winning film “Unforgiven.”
It’s here where the lack of access to Eastwood hurts the most.
Film writer Richard Schickel previously wrote an Eastwood biography with the actor’s consent. But the last 10-plus years have been remarkably busy for Eastwood, flush with more Oscar wins (“Million Dollar Baby”) and box office smashes (“Gran Torino,” “Mystic River”).
But Eliot pays far little attention to the icon’s last decade. Perhaps the lack of affairs is to blame. The actor appears comfortably ensconced in his second marriage to anchorwoman Dina Ruiz.
“American Rebel” offers a surface-level biography of a Hollywood legend, but it can’t bring Eastwood the man to life.
Christian Toto is a freelance writer in Denver.
NONFICTION
American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood
by Marc Eliot
$25.95
