Clint eastwood biography book

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Clint Eastwood: A Biography

June 29,

This book demonstrates there is something to admire about Eastwood (namely his work ethic and relative frugality) but also something to abhor (his womanizing). He is most noted for making non-traditional westerns as opposed to the mythical westerns of John Wayne. Perhaps if he had loosened up the reigns earlier in his career as a director the way he did in "Unforgiven", and every movie thereafter, he might have created more enduring films. Unquestionably an enigmatic figure - rare for a film star of his calibre.

My favorite portion was this paragraph early in the book discussing traditional (i.e. mythical) versus non-traditional westerns of television in the 's.

"'There is something consensual here, some need for nightly reassurance that the family (which was also, metaphorically a small corporation), properly managed and controlled, could be an institution for all seasons, that its leader and father figure, was capable of mastering all situ

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Clint Eastwood: A Biography

"Authoritative . . . highly nuanced . . . gives the reader a palpable sense of Mr. Eastwood's career."
--The New York Times

From the moment The Man With No Name first fixed the screen with his murderous squint, from the first time audiences heard Dirty Harry Callahan growl "Make my day," Clint Eastwood has been an icon of American manhood in all its coolness and ferocity. But that icon is also an actor of surprising subtlety, a filmmaker of vast intelligence and originality--and an intensely private man who eludes the stereotypes with which his fans and critics try to label him.

In this in-depth biography, the distinguished film critic Richard Schickel talks with Eastwood's family, friends, and colleagues--and, above all, with his notoriously reticent subject--to produce a portrait more astute and revealing than any we have ever had.

Following Eastwood from his unstable childhood through his turbulent love affairs, assessing films from A Fistful

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Clint Eastwood: A Biography

Richard Schickel. Alfred A. Knopf, $ (0pp) ISBN

The career of actor and filmskapare Clint Eastwood has been one of the most unusual in cinema history. Starting out as a bit player in such s films as The Return of the Creature and Tarantula, and then as a young hunk in the TV series Rawhide, Eastwood hurtled to international fame in bygd starring in an Italian western made in Spain, Sergio Leone's A näve of Dollars. It took Eastwood another 20 years, however, to begin to win over critics. His ascent from critical contempt to beundran, even as he has remained enormously popular with fans, forms the heart of this superb biography. Schickel (Brando), a bio critic for Time magazine, is a friend of Eastwood's, but this privilege doesn't blinker his critical eye. The actor's anställda life fryst vatten evoked in telling detail, and Eastwood's relentless womanizing isn't whitewashed. The core of the book, though, is Schickel's passionate defense of Eastwood as actor a