American Rebel

by Marc Eliot

  As Sparks and Warren continued their search for an actor who could support Fleming, Shiffrin believed there might be something in Rawhide for his new client, Clint Eastwood. Unknown to him, Clint was already on the trail of the show via a young woman he’d known from back in his Universal days. Sonia Chernus was a former script reader for Arthur Lubin who now did that same job for him at CBS. She was one of the few women Clint associated with during that period who became a friend rather than a lover. She had met and become friends with Maggie as well.

  Perhaps Clint was aware of Rawhide through Lubin; perhaps Chernus heard about it and thought of him; or perhaps Clint had been sniffing around Lubin’s new production setup at the network, where Lubin had made it clear Clint was always welcome, in the hopes of finding some acting work. Whatever the actual details were (no one, including Clint, seems to remember exactly), Chernus managed to convince Sparks—who had seen hundreds of actors and was frustrated at not being able to find a costar for Rawhide—to at least see Clint for a few minutes.

  The meeting, spontaneous and casual, took place in the CBS hallway, with Chernus standing between the two men as they briefly spoke. Sparks asked Clint what specifically he had done. Clint mentioned a few projects, including Ambush at Cimarron Pass. He was relieved when Sparks said he hadn’t seen it but worried when Sparks said he would take a look at it as soon as possible.

  Sparks casually asked Clint how tall he was, and Clint told him he was six foot four. Sparks then invited him into his office, while Chernus remained outside. Sparks introduced Clint to Charles Warren. They talked for a while about Rawhide and how they saw it with two leads, one younger, one older. When the meeting ended, both Sparks and Warren promised to take a look at Ambush at Cimarron Pass (something that could not have made Clint happy) and get in touch with his agent, Shiffrin, sometime that week. Chernus, who was waiting outside in the hallway, walked Clint back outside to his car and told him to relax, hang loose, that she would let him know as soon as she heard something.

  Later that same day Clint received a call from Shiffrin saying he had heard from Sparks and Warren. They weren’t interested in screening the film but did want to screen-test him for the younger lead, Rowdy Yates, as soon as possible. The next day Clint found himself back at CBS. He was sent to wardrobe to be outfitted in western garb, introduced to Fleming, and given a scene to study.

  After Clint left, Sparks and Warren watched the screen test dozens of times. Warren liked the similarities he saw in Clint’s audition to Clift’s performance in Red River. Sparks, however, was less impressed and was leaning toward another actor, Bing Russell. CBS executive Hubbell Robinson, in charge of all the network’s programming, had been sent from New York City by Paley specifically to sit in on all the casting decisions for Rawhide; he had the final say and sided with Warren, believing Clint was the right actor to play Rowdy Yates.*

  A week later he got the phone call telling him the good news. Just like that, Clint had landed a starring role in a major network TV series. The first episode of Rawhide, “Incident of the Tumbleweed Wagon,” aired at eight o’clock on Friday night, January 9, 1959, sandwiched between two of CBS’s biggest winners, the enormously popular Hit Parade and The Phil Silvers Show.

  Rawhide proved a smash in its first season. For the next seven years it was a staple of American weekly television viewing* and along the way made cathode-cowboy stars out of its two male leads.

  *Year of release. Unless otherwise indicated, all dates of films are release rather than production dates.

  †Aka 21st Century Lady Godiva.

  *It was a remake of This Love of Ours (1945), directed by William Dieterle and starring Claude Rains in the role now handed to Hudson.

  *The eight films were Has Anybody Seen My Gal?, Taza, Son of Cochise (aka Son of Cochise) (1954), Magnificent Obsession (1954), Captain Lightfoot (1955), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Never Say Goodbye (1956; Sirk was uncredited, Hopper was listed as the official director), Battle Hymn (1957), and The Tarnished Angels. After Imitation of Life (1959) Sirk retired under circumstances that remain unclear and permanently moved to Switzerland.

  *Clint received $750 for the film.

  *Aka C’est la Guerre, aka Hell Bent for Glory (UK), aka With You in My Arms.

  *Neil “Bing” Russell, the father of actor Kurt Russell, was later cast as Deputy Clem Foster in Bonanza, a role he played from 1961 until the series ended a decade later.

  *In its first full season the show was moved up to 7:30. In 1963 it was moved to Thursdays at 8:00. In 1964 it moved back to Fridays at 7:30. In 1965 it was moved to Tuesdays at 7:30.

  FOUR

  As Rowdy Yates in Rawhide

  I was set to direct a segment of Rawhide once in those days but it never came about. I think some other actor had tried and run way over budget so they wouldn’t let me try.

  —Clint Eastwood

  When Clint got his first look at the advance fall 1958 schedule of TV shows and didn’t see Rawhide anywhere on it, he broke out in hives. Filming the first episodes had been a difficult and awkward process; everybody was just beginning to get to know one another, and the kinks were still being worked out of the characters and scripts. Worse, even after production began, the network couldn’t make up its mind whether the show should be an hour or a half hour or even on the air at all. Warren had wanted a full hour and a half, which Paley might have actually gone for if Phil Silvers wasn’t doing as well as he was in the coveted Friday-night prime-time nine o’clock slot.

  In 1958, in what was supposed to have been Rawhide’s first season, a little less than one-third of all prime-time network TV shows (30 out of 108) were westerns; that was a problem. Advertisers felt the market was oversaturated and preferred a new genre of shows that was about to break big, crime and law-and-order programs. Nine one-hour episodes had been completed (the producers figured on the middle ground; one hour could easily be cut down to a half hour or expanded to ninety minutes); the network had spent a fortune shooting on location in Arizona; Warren had hired his old friend Andrew V. McLaglen (veteran film actor Victor McLaglen’s son) to come in and direct a couple of episodes on a play-or-pay basis; and some of Hollywood’s biggest, if slightly over-the-hill, movie stars, including Dan Duryea, Troy Donahue, Brian Donlevy, and Margaret O’Brien, appeared in guest roles. Yet the network remained divided over the fate of Rawhide.

  Weeks of delay passed into months. Clint became notably frustrated as his big break seemed to be slipping away, and at times he was visibly angry. He’d be in a restaurant and in the middle of a conversation might clear the table with his arm, sending everything on it crashing to the ground. One night he had such a severe anxiety attack that ambulances came screaming up Ventura Boulevard to his home. When they arrived, they gave him a bag to breathe into until he was able to regain his equilibrium.

  Other programs were offering Clint small parts, most of them arranged by Lubin, and he could have taken at least one major film role.* But by contract, he could not accept any other work on television or in the movies that CBS did not first approve, and they were stingy with their potential star-in-the-making. When the Broadway team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse offered him the starring role in a big-screen adaptation of the novel Tall Story, the network forced him to turn it down. The role went instead to Tony Perkins.

  For Christmas 1958 Clint and Maggie decided to take a train to Piedmont, to visit friends and his family who had moved back from Seattle. Clint was looking forward to the peace and quiet of the scenic ride, hoping to get away from everything. On the way, while on board the train, a telegram arrived for him stating that Rawhide had been put on the January replacement schedule and that on the first day of the new year he was to report for the resumption of production. Paley had overridden everyone else and insisted the show be added in a one-hour version to the midseason schedule. Clint whooped when he read the news, and then ordered a bottle of champagne for himself and Maggie. The celebration lasted the rest of the way
to Piedmont.

  On January 1 Clint joined the cast in Arizona, where the show’s permanent outdoor set had been erected. Besides Rowdy Yates and Gil Favor, the series’s other regular characters included an Indian scout, a cook, his helper, and some “grizzled” cowhands, as the production notes describe them. The scout was played by Sheb Wooley, an actor/country singer who had made an indelible impression as one of Frank Miller’s gang of killers in Fred Zinnemann’s iconic 1952 western High Noon. Wooley had worked for Warren before, and the two had become friends. Warren had insisted Wooley be given his part on the show. For the cook, Wishbone, intended as comic relief, Warren turned to Paul Brinegar, and as the cook’s helper, Mushy, James Murdock. Steve Raines and Rocky Shahan became, respectively, cowhands Jim Quince and Joe Scarlett.

  But perhaps the biggest single ingredient in making the show a hit was Dimitri Tiomkin’s Rawhide theme. In the 1950s and 1960s, every TV show had to have identifiable theme music that opened and closed it under the credits. Many of these signature show themes went on to become pop-culture classics—I Love Lucy’s bouncing Latin-tinged theme, the whistle at the beginning of The Andy Griffith Show, the brassy horns of The Dick Van Dyke Show, the thunderous theme of Bonanza, the high-stringed opening of The Fugitive, and the pulse-pounding Lalo Schifrin theme for Mission Impossible. Tiomkin’s theme song for High Noon had won him and his writing partner Ned Washington a Best Song Oscar (while he won a solo Oscar for Best Score); now he reteamed with Washington to create the Rawhide theme, with its unforgettable “Roll ‘em, roll ‘em, roll ‘em, keep those dogies rollin’… Rawhiiide …,” sung by Frankie Laine, sounding as if he were being dragged to the electric chair. The song was so energetically catchy, it became a hit single and helped make Rawhide a welcome weekly guest in living rooms across the country.

  In the beginning, Rawhide was unquestionably Fleming’s show. He was the star, hero, leader of the herders, narrator, and main interest of the story lines of many early episodes. Clint, meanwhile, played his mostly silent (at first) sidekick, rough, tough, cute, and slim, with a fast gun and faster fists. But as soon as the executives at CBS, especially William Paley, saw the first show, they knew they had found something special in their new leading man—not Fleming but Clint—who brought something to Rawhide that Fleming didn’t, or couldn’t: youthful appeal, in the new culture that had grown up in the aftermath of Brando, James Dean, and Elvis Presley. Young boys and girls quickly became the main demographic of the show, and Clint, not Fleming, was the reason. By the end of the first year his $600-a-week salary was doubled, and by the end of the show’s run he was making six figures annually.

  After his second season on Rawhide, Clint felt secure enough in CBS’s projection of a long run that he bought a house in Sherman Oaks near Beverly Glen Boulevard—a vast improvement in neighborhood and living quarters, and with a pool all his own. Maggie retired from her various jobs and devoted herself to turning their new house into a real home. But even with paintings, photos, and furniture, one essential of their new life was missing for her. Married seven years now, Maggie was, at her husband’s insistence, still childless.

  At least one reason may have been psychological. Clint told biographer Richard Schickel that the lingering insecurity of being a Depression baby, of having to watch his parents struggle to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs, had affected all the Eastwoods. The sentiments sound genuine, but his star was on the rise, and money, fame, and stability tend to allow one to conquer one’s childhood fears and rages. While Clint’s fears may have been so deeply embedded that physical security could never adequately make up for what he lacked in childhood (a childhood that wasn’t all that bad, considering the times), more likely, something was fundamentally wrong with the marriage.

  Despite his newfound fame, money, and home, Clint’s sexual appetites remained unchecked and unclassifiable; the only measure of morality he understood or was willing (or perhaps able) to respect was discretion. In a February 1974 Playboy magazine interview, Clint indirectly alluded to an understanding between him and “Mags” (or “Mag” as he sometimes called her) about the special openness of their marriage. The Playboy interviewer, film critic Arthur Knight, asked Clint about his “fairly open relationship with Mag,” to which he replied, “Sure. Oh, yeah, we’ve always had—I’d hate to say I’m a pioneer with women’s lib or whatever, but we’ve always had an agreement that she could enter any kind of business she wanted to. We never had that thing about staying home and taking care of the house. There’s always a certain respect for the individual in our relationship; we’re not one person. She’s an individual, I’m an individual, and we’re friends … I’m not shooting orders to her on where she’s supposed to be every five minutes, and I don’t expect her to shoot them at me.” When asked if he preferred blondes like Maggie, Clint replied, “For marriage, no. For fooling around, sure, fooling around a little, hanky-panky, you know, sitting in the saloon with that old patter, ‘Do you come here often’ … I think friendship is important. Everybody talks about love in marriage, but it’s just as important to be friends.”

  If this sounded a bit disingenuous, it’s because Clint was fairly certain Mags would never talk in public about such things. Instead, a combination of denial and rationale served as her survival mechanism. At least part of the problem was that his new success allowed Clint to slide into the saddle of the emerging sexual zeitgeist of the 1960s, while Maggie remained firmly planted in the uptight culture of the 1950s. Nonetheless, each satisfied some need in the other that allowed them, despite Clint’s indiscretions, to continue to operate as a couple, as parents without children, as friends, or perhaps more accurately, as parents to each other.

  As Clint’s star continued to rise, one relationship that he had no interest or need in maintaining was with Bill Shiffrin. Once Clint had gotten what he wanted from Shiffrin, as with Lubin, he simply—some might say coldly—moved on. After all, Shiffrin had benefited from Clint’s being hired to play Rowdy Yates rather than actually causing it to happen. Clint replaced him with Lester Salkow, an agent with a strong relationship to Universal, where Clint hoped eventually to move back into feature films.

  But Salkow quickly proved to be more a figurehead than a power agent. Clint soon discovered where the real power lay in Hollywood’s emerging post-studio era: the entertainment lawyers, who were increasingly playing the role of both manager and agent for their clients. Soon enough Clint attached Frank Wells to his expanding team of representatives. Both Leonard and Wells were up-and-coming Hollywood-based lawyers, and as soon as they connected with Clint, they edged out Salkow and took over virtually every aspect of his career. They financially restructured his income so that he could legally keep considerably more money for himself and pay less in taxes. They arranged salary deferments and the purchase of extensive and still relatively cheap land in Northern California, mostly in Monterey County, including land in Carmel, a still underpopulated area that Clint especially liked.

  Leonard was primarily the moneyman, while Wells handled career decisions. Leonard arranged to have all of Clint’s income sent directly to him; he then dispensed what was needed for expenses, mostly to Maggie, who had taken over full-time management of the Eastwood household. Having retired from her “career,” such as it was, and having to deal with Clint’s increasingly long absences, it was a bit of a relief for her. She also developed an intense interest in tennis. To accommodate Clint, Leonard reportedly kept two sets of books, one for the IRS and one for Maggie, so she would remain unaware of how much money Clint spent pursuing other women.

  Meanwhile Clint’s fame was growing. He appeared on the cover of TV Guide several times, a sure sign of his entrance into the pantheon of TV royalty, sometimes alone and sometimes with Eric Fleming. Clint was always happy when he didn’t have to share the cover with Fleming, with whom it was widely believed he did not get along particularly well. They were never close, never buddies, did not travel in the same social circles, and
did not share the same off-screen interests. Moreover, Fleming was fighting his career’s downward slope, even as its highlight was Rawhide. Clint, on the other hand, was on the way up, which did not sit well with Fleming.

  Adding to their strained relationship, series television then, as now, was and is a grind, rather like baseball’s endless summers. No matter how much money he made, or how much extracurricular freedom it allowed him, Clint was still tied to a long workweek. Each season’s production schedule commenced in late July and did not finish until April, with frequent location trips. And playing the same character week after week, season after season, year after year, was unavoidably tedious.

  After a long run in a series, audiences, as well as performers, tend to get trapped in a syndrome of expectations difficult to break. Clint instinctively understood this trap and was constantly trying to stretch the relatively rigid parameters of the character of Rowdy Yates; at the same time Frank Wells was hard at work trying to convince Universal to let Clint appear in movies during the show’s off-season. The network, however, continually turned all offers down, not wanting to have audiences see Clint Eastwood as anyone but Rowdy Yates.

  The network was loath to tinker with the show’s successful formula and kept its brand-name characters and the actors who played them on a tight rein. They also saw to it that no one director became too valuable to the series (meaning too expensive). So the producers regularly chose from an informal team of TV (and occasional movie) journeymen that they kept in a steady rotation. They believed this system further diminished the chance of any stylistic flourishes and therefore potentially damaging digressions. Each director was given a shooting script with pre-directions written into it—when to cut, when to pan, when to push in, when to pull out. Rather than creative directors, they were, in effect, formulaic technicians, required to closely follow the formula and the format.