It’s easy for audiences to connect or disconnect with a movie they see on the big screen. To make it there, the script has been written, re-written, edited, tweaked and fine-tuned. The cast has been calculated, emotions and angles directed, and the movie produced, soundtracked, and looked over. After all of that, all we have to do is watch and enjoy. In essence, it’s easy for us to decide whether or not we like a film, but for an actor to read a script before so much has happened and recognise it’s going to be a hit, that’s something else entirely.
While Clint Eastwood was playing Rowdy Yates on Rawhide, he was doing relatively well and becoming a recognisable face. He seemed quite happy with this quality of life, as when he was sent the script for a movie during the show’s off-season, he refused to even read it, saying he was more focused on playing golf. His agent insisted, and it was a good job, too.
Nobody was prepared for the heights of fame that Clint Eastwood would reach in his career, not even the man himself. And though there are a number of factors that contribute to success, such as talent, timing, judgement (and a little bit of luck), if you were to triangulate Eastwood’s rise to fame and zone in on one particular movie responsible for it, it would have to be Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars.
“I was heading for the annual between-season layoff of Rawhide last year when my agent sent me this script,” said Eastwood, reflecting on the moment the first drafts of the movie were given to him. “I told him on the phone I wasn’t interested. I wanted to work on my golf game.”
Before the actor had even opened the pages, he was slightly sold on the idea, as a trip to Europe was included with the role. “He said, ‘Look, it would give you a chance to go to Europe.’ I’d never been to Europe, so I said, ‘Okay, I’d read the script’.” It didn’t take long after that for Eastwood to be sold on the movie, “The minute I read it, I liked it,” he said.
The actor’s attitude was reflected by audiences worldwide, too, as the film was an immediate success, one that saw him elevated throughout Italy from a nobody to one of the biggest actors in the country. “The first time I went to Italy, I just sneaked in,” he remembers, “I had a beard, but it didn’t matter. Nobody knew me anyway. And no one paid me any attention… But this [second] time, I was mobbed. I’d walk down the Via Veneto, and people would come up and ask for my autograph. I was wined and dined and treated like a king.”
It’s interesting that even though so much more goes into a movie than just the script, the classics jump off the page. This was the case with Eastwood and A Fistful of Dollars, as despite not being interested at first, all it took was a quick read-through and a flight to Europe to change his mind and recognise the film for its potential. How different life would have been if he had insisted on playing golf.
