Eastwood: Pieces from the past No 1

Eastwood: Pieces from the past No 1

I’ve been sitting on 1000’s of pieces for many decades now, magazine articles, clippings and all sorts of bits. They’ve sat in folders for so long, I thought it was about time to dig some of these out and take a scan of them for reasons of both nostalgia and general interest. I lot of these are contained in their original magazine form, but a lot I also have duplicated – where articles or pages have been separated from the magazines or newspapers and are therefore a lot easier to scan. 

The contents and subjects will be quite varied, perhaps an interview, a feature or simply Clint’s favourite recipe or television show – there’s a lot of stuff, but it’s all very nostalgic and of the time. I’ve found that a great deal of fans love this sort of material and it often re-awakes many memories of the past. 

As Clint’s work rate slows down it also feels appropriate and timely to pull a great deal of this material and take a retrospective look back to the golden decades of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. 

To begin this new feature, I’ve randomly picked this original 1973 interview / feature which appeared in Photoplay magazine from August 1973 and is by Vernon Scott. What’s very interesting about this piece is the inclusion of a particular photo. The shot of Clint pointing gun at camera… This photo shoot has always been associated with The Enforcer (1976), and was even used in the film’s publicity campaign – although Clint never appears with the gun in any of the scenes? It was therefore always considered as a simple publicity photo. In this article the photo is credited from Magnum Force, which was of course the Dirty Harry film for this specific time. It’s a very strange and puzzling mystery as Eastwood also appears to be wearing the same jacket which was also worn in The Enforcer? Was this considered as part of Harry’s casual wardrobe, and simply carried over? Was this photo shot for Magnum Force and shelved until the release of The Enforcer?  It would be great to get a definitive answer.