Dateline: 17th October 1961, West Coast premiere of Breakfast at Tiffany's. Both Clint and his wife Maggie attended the evening event which was held at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, California. The star Gala was an invitational event only and held shortly before the film went on general release.
By 1961, Clint had become well established to TV viewers. Rawhide had just begun its fourth season and the episode The Long Shakedown had just been broadcast a few days earlier.
There are very few photos from this event, which seems rather strange – most photos cover either the Rome, New York or London premieres. Thankfully, among the few that have emerged are these couple of great shots of Clint and his wife Maggie arriving at the event. I can’t believe there isn’t any newsreel footage locked away somewhere. These events were always a big affair and local news reporters would often cover these glitzy gatherings. In fact, one of the images appears to show Clint and Maggie being interviewed on their arrival. Crowds would often turn out in the hope of catching a glimpse of their favourite stars of the day.
Below: A packed Hollywood Boulevard welcomes special guests for the Gala premiere
Summer ’64: A welcome home party after shooting The Magnificent Stranger
We do love little pieces such as this – early cuttings that reference A Fistful of Dollars when it was still humbly known as The Magnificent Stranger. We have absolutely no idea from where this cutting materialised from.
All we can do is take from the clues given. The piece states that Clint had just returned from Italy and Spain after 10 weeks shooting. We know that Clint arrived in Italy in the April of 1964, so we can safely say this party was held in the Summer of ’64. Eastwood is still credited as living in Sherman Oaks as were his friends Bill Williams and his wife Barbara Hale. Both Williams and Hale appeared together on the TV series Perry Mason where Hale played Della Street.
Also pictured in the cutting is actress / singer Rhonda Fleming who was no stranger herself to many westerns on both the cinema and TV screens. Around this time, she had just finished appearing as a guest star in the long running TV series The Virginian – a show that starred Clint’s old friend Doug McClure.
Of course, The Magnificent Stranger soon became A Fistful of Dollars and it wasn’t too long before Clint was back on a plane and return to Europe to film For a Few Dollars More – he did pretty well from there on…
*The original cutting does not contain the production shot from the film set, I’ve inserted this simply for illustrative purposes.
Below: Bill Williams and his wife Barbara Hale in their Sherman Oaks home.
Below: Clint visits Barbara Hale on the set of Perry Mason in 1962
My thanks to Davy Triumph for finding the original cutting
I thought it was about time to visit a Rawhide episode here on the Archive. Aside from the dedicated Rawhide page, we don’t really get too many opportunities to remind ourselves of where it all really began.
Picking an episode to feature here is a tough one, so I selfishly (perhaps) decided upon ‘Incident at Rojo Canyon,’ the Season 3 opening episode which aired on September 30th, 1960. Why? Well, as a long-time admirer of the smouldering actress / singer Julie London, it felt like a good enough reason as any!
Julie London made a guest (and memorable) appearance as Anne Danvers in the episode, and we got to see her perform the song, ‘perfect love’ which to my knowledge, never appeared on any of her studio albums. As well as featuring the full episode here, I also had a couple of nice behind the scenes colour photos on file which were taken during the filming – so it’s also a great excuse to pull these out.
Below: A couple of superb behind the scenes photos
Aside from cast regulars Bobby Troup (who was married to Julie London) also appears in this episode as Anne Danvers manager Nelson Hoyt. Not knowing the Civil War is long over, a Confederate battalion defends an isolated canyon, as Gil's drive approaches. Following the cattle drive is a U.S. cavalry squadron, dispatched to stop mysterious raids on local farms. The green, young cavalry don't know the raiders are CSA veterans who are well dug in and itchy for serious battle. The much older U.S. cavalry sergeant looks suspiciously familiar to drover Jim Quince, who fought under flamboyant rebel General Jeb Stuart.
Below: The full episode, Incident at Rojo Canyon - My kindest thanks to the original uploader
There are also a few other little Eastwood connections which I like to tie-in to this particular episode, namely the director who was Ted Post. The director broke into movies and ended up directing Clint in his first American feature film, Hang ‘em High, and again for the Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force. Another (indirect) connection perhaps, is the song ‘Misty’ as featured in Play Misty for Me. Call it coincidental, but Julie London’s latest album (released at the time of this particular episode) was Around Midnight (1960), and featured on that album was... Erroll Garner’s ‘Misty’.
Yes, I know it’s pretty thin right? But hell, I’ve always liked connectivity!
Early Eastwood: 1955 -1956 Highway Patrol Series 1 Episode 27
1955 – 1956 signified a rather important period for Eastwood. He had official embarked on his acting career with appearances in a couple of Universal B movies such as Revenge of the Creature and Tarantula and appeared in a credited role as Jonesy in Francis in the Navy, part of the ongoing Francis the talking mule series of films. By 1956 he had changed agencies and also beginning to find work on TV.
Highway Patrol was an action crime drama series produced for syndication from 1955 to 1959. It was one of the most popular syndicated series on TV and was the first American series broadcast in West Germany on that country's commercial TV channel. The chance of appearing on National TV in such a popular series was something that made good sense to Eastwood – and why shouldn’t it? It was also filmed locally, shooting around the San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley.
Episode 27 was titled, Motorcycle A and Eastwood landed a credited role as young biker, Joe Keeley. This episode was first aired April 2nd, 1956.
Below: The complete Highway Patrol Episode, Motorcycle A
Handwritten letters by Clint
To tie-in with these events and the Eastwood timeline, here are some extremely rare handwritten letters by Clint to an adoring fan. The letters are dated very early in Eastwood’s career, 1955 and 1956. There is also an early circa 1955 signed headshot of Eastwood which he sent to the recipient.
One letter is dated October 27, 1955 mere days after being dropped by his first agency. The second letter is dated May 13, 1956, about a month after the Highway Patrol episode had aired and also mentions his next film “The First Traveling Saleslady” as well as his first wife, Maggie.
First letter measures roughly 5” x 8” and the second letter measures roughly 4.5” x 7”
Below: Signed photograph measuring 5” x 7”
Below: Clint as Lt. Jack Rice in his next venture - the feature film The First Traveling Saleslady
I thought I’d post this short piece as I noticed lately that a few reproductions, or retro styled metal signs have been turning up on auction sites. The key word of course is reproduction. The original campaign was launched by the brewers in 1974 and designed to tie-in with the dollar film. It’s strange how late this appeared considering the film was running around 1967.
Nevertheless, the ad was obviously designed as if it was a film poster (of sorts) and clearly an Eastwood likeness image was used to try and maximise the impact. Strangely enough it looks as if various different elements have been used to create the image. The shirt looks way out of place and resembles something close to what Clint was wearing in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, while the hat with the distinct threaded leather lace looks more like the hat worn in Two Mules for Sister Sara.
Naturally, Guinness no doubt had to handle this rather carefully, probably to avoid any copyright infringements. However, this wasn’t the case with the tie-in campaign and the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun, also from 1974. This design took the full quad design poster and exploited it officially with the Guinness brand up front and centre and fully in your face!
While the reproduction metal signs can be picked up relatively cheaply, you can expect to pay a great deal more for the original 1974 posters, which do pop up occasionally as there is a healthy interest in Guinness brewery memorabilia.
His breakout role was in BBC TV drama Boys from the Blackstuff, where he portrayed Yosser Hughes, a character who struggled - and often failed - to cope with unemployment in Liverpool. He died early this morning, his agent Lou Coulson confirmed.
In Boys from the Blackstuff, Hill drew praise for his gritty portrayal of Yosser Hughes, an intense and memorable character.
That show won a Bafta for best drama series in 1983, and in 2000 it was ranked seventh on a British Film Institute list of the best TV shows ever made.
Another of Hill's memorable BBC TV performances came in the 2015 drama series Wolf Hall, adapted from Hilary Mantel's book about the court of Henry VIII. Hill portrayed the Duke of Norfolk - an uncle of Anne Boleyn and an enemy of Cardinal Wolsey.
In 1999, Hill starred as Warden Luther Plunkitt in Clint’s tense thriller, True Crime. Hill lived with his wife, High Plains Drifter actress Marianna Hill, with whom he had a son named Gabriel.
RIP Sir, our thoughts and condolences go out to his family and friends.
It’s fair to say that in 1957 Clint was still a struggling, but jobbing actor. While under contract at Universal, he had appeared in several bit parts between 1955-56 which included, Revenge of the Creature, Francis in the Navy, Lady Godiva, Tarantula! Never Say Goodbye, Star in the Dust and Away All Boats.
He was also appearing in several Television series which included Highway Patrol, Death Valley Days, TV Reader's Digest and The West Point Story. Universal terminated his contract on October 23rd, 1955.
Clint joined the Marsh Agency. Director Arthur Lubin landed him his biggest role to date in the film The First Traveling Saleslady (1956) and later hired him for Escapade in Japan (1957), without a formal contract. On his financial advisor Irving Leonard's advice, he switched to the Kumin-Olenick Agency in 1956 and Mitchell Gertz in 1957.
Next up was Lafayette Escadrille, also known as C'est la Guerre, Hell Bent for Glory (UK) - an American war film produced by Warner Bros. It starred Tab Hunter and features David Janssen and Clint in an early supporting role. Clint worked on the movie between October 19th to December 8th 1956 and pretty much rounded off the year for Clint. In January and February 1957, he obviously found some time to sit down and return some of the fan mail that continued to arrive. Of course, it would only be a year or so later that Clint would be offered a supporting role in a little up and coming TV series called Rawhide.
Below: Clint at home contemplating his future and addressing some fan mail
Below: One of Clint’s original letters to a fan, dated February 25th 1957. Clint had just completed filming of Lafayette Escadrille.
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