Standing off with John Wayne as the true king of the western cinema genre, Clint Eastwood is well worthy of his consideration, even if Wayne had perhaps laid the groundwork for his arrival in the 1960s. What Eastwood proved, though, was that he was far more than just ‘The Man With No Name’ as he possessed a versatility that extended beyond the mere realm of the western.
Portraying ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan in five Dirty Harry movies, as well as appearing in projects as varied as Escape from Alcatraz, Heartbreak Ridge and The Bridges of Madison County, Eastwood showed himself to be an actor of genuine nuance, which is perhaps something that Wayne was not able to muster.
We also mustn’t forget that Eastwood announced himself as an excellent director, too, with the likes of Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima all top-quality considerations. In that light, Eastwood is well placed to evaluate the quality of his fellow actors and once spoke highly of one of the icons of classic Hollywood.
“Cary Grant, I was a tremendous fan of, and he was another one of those guys that had a very distinctive personality on the screen,” Eastwood once told AFI of his impressions of Grant. “He probably never got as much credit as he deserved, but he was one of the kings of doing that sort of thing, that romantic comedy.”
Grant was indeed known for his lighter kind of acting and his impeccable comic timing, and he quickly became one of Hollywood’s leading men, gaining notoriety, as Eastwood notes, for his appearances in romantic screwball comedies, including The Awful Truth and The Philadelphia Story. The Bristol-born actor went on to collaborate with Alfred Hitchcock on several occasions and had been nominated for an Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ for his prior efforts in Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart.
Eastwood continued, explaining how Grant possessed a versatility unlike his rivals or contemporaries, “But he could do serious things, a Mr. Lucky noir-esque kind of thing, but he could also do the romantic comedies because he had such brilliant timing and His Girl Friday remains one of my all-time absolute favourite films.”
His Girl Friday is Howard Hawks’ 1940 screwball comedy in which Grant stars as Ralph Bellamy, a newspaper editor on the verge of losing his best reporter and ex-wife (played by Rosalind Russell) to another man. In desperation, he suggests they write one more story together and become embroiled in a murder case.
Mr. Lucky arrived three years later as a romance film directed by H.C. Potter, with Laraine Day starring alongside Grant. It tells of the relationship between a shady gambler and an affluent socialise on the eve of the United States entering World War II, and though it is indeed a romance drama, it proves Grant’s versatility as an actor in a slightly darker role.