Over the course of the diverse and indulgent career of Clint Eastwood, the Academy Award-winning actor-director has embodied some classically enduring characters and roles in films that have withstood the test of time. For nearly 70 years now, Eastwood has presented some of his best work, whether in front of or from behind the director’s lens. His popularity and talent, beyond a point in the industry’s evolutionary time, crossed such a mark that Eastwood soon became a mythical yet living legend.
Clint Eastwood Took Over Frank Sinatra’s Role in Dirty Harry
At the tail end of the 60s, just as the Eastwood name began to reign uncontested over the film industry, another series of Hollywood films would go into production that would also become just as famous as the Dollars Trilogy. After Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns made waves and turned its rough-and-tumble star into the most coveted man in Hollywood, Clint Eastwood would take over yet another film series that defined his career in the same way his roles as The Man With No Name did.
As was recounted by the actor himself in an MTV News interview, the leading man role for the Dirty Harry franchise was supposed to go to Frank Sinatra. However, for one particularly strange reason, it ended up falling into his fortunate and waiting hands.
I guess they tried to get a lot of people for it. They tried Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum and Steve McQueen. Then they finally ended up with Frank Sinatra. I was in post-production [on Play Misty for Me], and they called up and asked, ‘Are you still interested in Dirty Harry?’ I said, ‘What happened to Frank Sinatra?’ And they said, ‘Frank Sinatra’s got some problem with his hand and he can’t hold a gun.”
That sounded like a pretty lame excuse, but it didn’t matter to me. I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ But since they had initially talked to me, there had been all these rewrites. I said, ‘I’m only interested in the original script.’
The neo-noir vigilante action thrillers which were collectively titled the Dirty Harry series went on to become legendary in their own rights after spawning 5 films over the course of 17 years, namely Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool. All the films would star Clint Eastwood in the lead as the titular Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan, working for the SFPD Homicide Division.
Frank Sinatra Was Overshadowed By Clint Eastwood
Frank Sinatra, the legendary blue-eyed, fedora-wearing singer who took over the music industry redefined and established an entirely new culture-infused era in his lifetime. However, the artist who exercised such an unparalleled hold on the crowd of the mid-20th century was also multi-layered and multi-talented in his endeavors. The Sinatra name was as much a tide-turner in the music and record-label industry of the 50s and 60s as it was in the movie-making business. But, considering the ambition-driven talents and crowd-pulling names that existed at the time, Sinatra was not the sole go-to artist for a studio or production.
Clint Eastwood would go on to become a much more enduring name at the time and continue to be so throughout the decades to the present day. His stratospheric success and multiple Academy Award-winning career that witnessed his extraordinary work as a director in the latter half of his career produced such incredible films as Invictus, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Sully, and Gran Torino.