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Born 5/31/30 in San Francisco, Clint Eastwood has starred in 59 films (23 of which he has directed), most of them profitable. Johnathan Last writes in the Wall Street Journal 8/16/02: Patrick McGilligan's "Clint" (St. Martin's, 612 pages, $35) is the second major biography of Mr. Eastwood, and it spends a good deal of its energy attempting to refute the first, Richard Schickle's authorized, well-sourced and adoring "Clint Eastwood" (1996). Mr. McGilligan's book, which is unauthorized, refers to the Schickle dozens of times -- and nastily. It is clearly meant to take Mr. Eastwood down a few pegs. Beginning as a contract player for Universal, Eastwood appeared for years in films like "Tarantula!" He became known with the TV series "Rawhide." In 1964, he starred in Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars." An accomplished director, Eastwood's films almost always come in on budget and do well at the box office. The screenwriter William Goldman says Eastwood is the most durable movie star in the history of film. McGilligan claims Eastwood beat his first wife. He says Eastwood went gay for pay to further his career. He intimates that Mr. Eastwood's vanity caused the death of a crew member during the filming of "The Eiger Sanction." McGillan claims that Mr. Eastwood suffers from a "Don Juanism," that he cheated on his wife and cheated on the women he was cheating on his wife with. "Clint" spends page after page detailing affairs and rendezvous. Much of McGillan's material that is noted in "Clint" is based on the testimony of actress Sondra Locke, with whom Mr. Eastwood had a long-standing affair that ended badly. She later wrote "The Good, the Bad and the Very Ugly." |