Following his six-year run on the television series Rawhide (1959–65), Eastwood starred as the laconic Man With No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s, and as Inspector Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films of the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, and several others as tough-talking, no-nonsense police officers, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. While in Los Angeles, Hill became reacquainted with Eastwood and managed to sneak Eastwood into a Universal studio, where he showed him to cameraman Irving Glassberg. Glassberg arranged for an audition under Arthur Lubin, who, although very impressed with Clint's appearance and stature at 6'4" (193 cm), After signing, Eastwood was initially criticized for his stiff manner and hissing his lines through his teeth, a life-long trademark, along with his squint. Eastwood had a minor uncredited role as a ranch hand (his first western film) in June 1956 with Law Man. In 1957, Eastwood played a cadet in the West Point television series and portrayed a suicidal gold prospector in Death Valley Days. Eastwood had a small part as an aviator in the French picture Lafayette Escadrille and played a major role as an ex-renegade of the Confederacy in Ambush at Cimarron Pass, a film which Eastwood viewed disastrously and professes to be the lowest point of his career.

The Dollars trilogy was not shown in the United States until 1967. A Fistful of Dollars opened in January, For a Few Dollars More in May, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in December 1967. However, all three films received generally bad reviews from critics and marked the beginning of Eastwood's battle to win the respect of American film critics. and Renata Adler of The New York Times remarked that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was "the most expensive, pious and repellent movie in the history of its peculiar genre",

Stardom brought more roles in the "tough guy" mold. Eastwood signed for the American revisionist western Hang 'Em High (1968), which featured him alongside Inger Stevens, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Ed Begley, Bruce Dern, and James MacArthur. He plays a man who seeks revenge after being lynched by vigilantes and left for dead. Jennings Lang arranged for Eastwood to meet Don Siegel, a Universal contract director who would soon become one of Eastwood's close friends, forming a close partnership which would last more than ten years. In the winter of 1969–70, Eastwood and Siegel began planning his next film, The Beguiled, the tale of a wounded Union soldier held captive by the sexually repressed matron of a southern girls' school. }}

1971 proved to be a turning point in Eastwood's career.

In 1974, Eastwood teamed up with Jeff Bridges and George Kennedy in the buddy action caper Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The film is a road movie about a veteran bank robber, Thunderbolt (Eastwood), and a young con man drifter, Lightfoot (Bridges). On release in spring 1974, the film was praised for its offbeat comedy mixed with high suspense and tragedy but was only a modest success at the box office, earning $32.4 million (US$}} in dollars). Eastwood decided to make a third Dirty Harry film, The Enforcer, which had Harry working with a new female partner (Tyne Daly) in which they face a San Francisco Bay area group resembling the Symbionese Liberation Army, culminating in a shootout on Alcatraz island. The film became another box office success and was among the top five highest-grossing films of the year.

In 1982, Eastwood directed and starred in Honkytonk Man alongside his son Kyle, based on Clancy Carlile's novel set during the Great Depression. about an aspiring country music singer named Red Stovall. The film received only one good review in the United States, from Time, with most reviewers criticizing its blend of muted humor and tragedy.

The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact, shot in the spring and summer of 1983, is widely considered to be the darkest and most violent of the series.

In 1992, Eastwood revisited the western genre in the self-directed film Unforgiven, where he played an aging ex-gunfighter long past his prime opposite Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris, and then girlfriend Frances Fisher. Scripts existed as early as 1976 for the film, but Eastwood delayed the project, partly because he wanted to wait until he was old enough to play his character and to savor it as the last of his western films. By re-envisioning established genre conventions in a more ambiguous and unromantic light, the picture laid the groundwork for later westerns such as Deadwood. Unforgiven was a major commercial and critical success and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, As the vice chairman of this commission, with chairman Bobby Shriver, in 2005 he led an opposition movement to a six-lane extension of California State Route 241, a toll road that would cut through San Onofre State Beach. Eastwood and Shriver supported a 2006 lawsuit to block the toll road and urged the California Coastal Commission to reject the project, which it did, in February 2008. the Natural Resources Defense Council (NDRC) asked for a legislative investigation into the decision. According to biographers Marc Eliot and Patrick McGilligan, Eastwood always had a strong sexual appetite, particularly in the 1970s, and had affairs with many women, including actresses Catherine Deneuve, Jean Seberg, Peggy Lipton, Kay Lenz, Jamie Rose, Inger Stevens, Jo Ann Harris, Jane Brolin, Jill Banner, script analyst Megan Rose, and swimming champion Anita Lhoest. Jazz has played an important role in Eastwood's life from a young age and although he was never successful as a musician, he passed on the influence to his son Kyle Eastwood, a successful jazz bassist and composer. Eastwood has his own Warner Bros. Records-distributed imprint, Malpaso Records, as part of his deal with Warner Brothers which has released all of the scores of Eastwood's films from The Bridges of Madison County onward. Eastwood co-wrote "Why Should I Care" with Linda Thompson and Carole Bayer Sager, which was recorded by Diana Krall. Eastwood was a licensed pilot and often flew his helicopter to the studios to avoid traffic.

Awards and honors

Filmography

Discography

Notes

Bibliography and further reading

External links

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Life

He writes for Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, and The Virginia Quarterly Review, where he is a contributing editor. While much of Bissell's magazine writing could be considered travel writing, his articles are more concerned with politics, history, and autobiography than tourism. As a journalist he traveled to Iraq, and Afghanistan during wartime. While Bissell has been critical of neo-conservatism, the Bush administration, and American unilateralism, his politics often don't fit within established categories of American liberalism and conservatism. Much of his work is concerned with the legacy of the Soviet Union and Communism.

His book in collaboration with Jeff Alexander, "Speak, Commentary," is a collection of fake DVD commentaries for popular films by political figures and pundits such as Noam Chomsky, Dinesh D'Souza and Ann Coulter. His other books have won several prizes, including the Rome Prize, the Anna Akhmatova Prize, and the Best Travel Writing Award from Peace Corps Writers. His short stories and journalism have also been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Science Writing. He is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review.

Bissell's father served in the Marines during the Vietnam War, alongside author and journalist Philip Caputo. The two remained friends during Bissell's childhood and Caputo read and encouraged him in his early writing efforts. He has cited Caputo as a major influence, along with Michigan writers Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane.

While much of Bissell's writing is concerned with issues of international relations and literary criticism, he frequently mentions Star Wars, J.R.R. Tolkien, and video games as well. The video game Gears of War 2, the first version of which Bissell wrote about for The New Yorker, contains a character named Hank Bissell, an apparent nod to him. In a March 2010 Observer article, he wrote about the appeal of games like Grand Theft Auto IV and his own simultaneous struggles with addiction to video games and cocaine.

Awards

Selected publications

References

External links

Category:1974 births Category:Living people Category:People from Escanaba, Michigan Category:Michigan State University alumni Category:The New Yorker people

Shibani Bathija is an Indian screenwriter.

Bahija studied English at DePauw University and Communications at San Francisco State. She served as screenwriter for two 2006 releases, Fanaa and Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. Her upcoming films included Sanjay Gadhvi's Kidnap and Karan Johar's My Name Is Khan.

References

External links