Summer ’64: A welcome home party after shooting The Magnificent Stranger

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