80/80 - The man with a great name

"You have to keep selling yourself. You have to run around peddling a commodity that is you. You have to believe in yourself in the same way a salesman believes in a vacuum cleaner.' Clint Eastwood in a 1959 interview.

At the end of this month Clint celebrates his 80th birthday and so May is Eastwood month on the Archive - among out 80 posts for Clint's 80th we'll be reviewing every film, looking at Clint's passion for jazz, his many love affairs, his political life and much much more.

We'll even be given a potted history of the first Eastwood to be born in America - the Eastwood dynasty started here.

So let's kick off by brushing over all those small roles in forgettable B-pictures, covering this period in a few paragraphs. And although we will be looking at Eastwood's life before fame and his early acting roles, it is when he crossed over into Rawhide that was year zero for the actor we know today. Any anyone wanting to know about Clint's early roles should visit the excellent Clint Eastwood archive

In May 1954 Clint Eastwood tried out for the movie, Six Bridges to Cross. It was the young actor’s first real audition and it didn’t go well. Director Joseph Pavney thought the young actor was terrible and rejected him for any of the roles on offer. Eastwood also failed to win parts in - Brigadoon, The Constant Nymph, Bengal Brigade and The Seven Year Itch in May 1954, Sign of the Pagan (June), Smoke Signal (August) and Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops. It wasn’t until Eastwood auditioned for Jack Arnold that he had any success. He was given a small role as a lab technician in Revenge of the Creature, which was the forgettable sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

In 1955 Eastwood appeared in his first western – as a ranch hand (uncredited) in Stars in the Dust. For the rest of the decade Eastwood bummed around on contract, appearing in small roles in equally small motion pictures. And by the time Rawhide came about the actor stated that, he was just about ready to quit acting. But he persisted and auditioned for a part in Rawhide, reading Henry Fonda’s monologue from The Ox Bow Incident and the rest is history.

Next RAWHIDE and the time Eastwood and lead actor Eric Fleming had a furious fist fight that was covered up by the show's producers.