Films Clint Eastwood starred in but did not direct

[Jed Cooper]

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  1. A Fistful Of Dollars (1964)
  2. For A Few Dollars More (1965)
  3. The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966)
  4. Hang ‘Em High (1968)
  5. Coogan’s Bluff (1968)
  6. Where Eagles Dare (1969)
  7. Paint Your Wagon (1969)
  8. Two Mules For Sister Sara (1970)
  9. Kelly’s Heroes (1970)
10. The Beguiled (1971)
11. Dirty Harry (1971)
12. Joe Kidd (1972)
13. Magnum Force (1973)
14. Thunderbolt And Lightfoot (1974)
15. The Enforcer (1976)
16. Every Which Way But Loose (1978)
17. Escape From Alcatraz (1979)
18. Any Which Way You Can (1980)
19. Tightrope (1984)
20. City Heat (1984)
21. The Dead Pool (1988)
22. Pink Cadillac (1989)
23. In The Line Of Fire (1993)
24. Trouble With The Curve (2012)

Here are two other, similar threads I recently created you may find interesting: 

Films Clint Eastwood directed & starred in      Films Clint Eastwood has directed but not starred in

This one is probably my favorite because of the Leone Trilogy and the best of the Dirty Harry series.  There's a few in here I dislike but a lot of these are great films.  Trouble With The Curve is shaping up to be a very enjoyable film.  My prediction, anyway.

[Jed Cooper]

I'm glad to say I now appreciate this film.  I watched it a couple of times earlier this year and came away pleasantly surprised, especially after the first most recent viewing.  To be honest, I was a little stunned.  Like most of Elvis' films, this was not a favorite and not one I planned on returning to periodically.  I know part of the reason is because Clint appears less as an actor these days but I'm sure my initial reaction to it played a big part in my overall judgment through the years.  I've already elaborated in detail and in case anyone's interested, you can read more here:  Coop's Eastwood Reviews

[Jed Cooper]

Another Eastwood film I'd all but written off up until recently.  I still have quite a handful of films to view before finishing the 35 Films 35 Years collection, but I may even sneak this one in again before then.  I think I'll wait until the opportunity presents itself when I have the house to myself, which is rare these days.  Most of the time, I'm watching movies and tv piece-meal but that's better than not at all.  I have more thoughts on this movie here: Coop's Eastwood Reviews

[Jed Cooper]

I just watched Tightrope again recently and looked it up on Wikipedia.  I know Richard Tuggle is credited as director but it's stated that Eastwood wound up directing a lot of this film because he thought Tuggle was moving too slowly. 

[KC]

Yes, on this board we generally consider Eastwood to be the director of Tightrope.  See Schickel's Clint Eastwood, pages 390-391, for a more detailed account of what happened.

[Jed Cooper]

Yes, on this board we generally consider Eastwood to be the director of Tightrope.  See Schickel's Clint Eastwood, pages 390-391, for a more detailed account of what happened.

Thank you.  I decided to include the pertinent text here:

Clint Eastwood - A Biography by Richard Shickel (1996)

     Tuggle had sold his script on condition that he be allowed to direct.  Clint, harking back to the passion with which Michael Cimino had animated his writerly vision, thought that was a good idea.  But the two men are very different personalities.  Cimino is a willful and decisive character.  Tuggle, on the other hand, is a man who tends to see a dozen equally interesting alternatives in any situation and is not averse to exploring them all.  Moreover, he did not have the experience that Cimino had gained making commercials, did not, therefore, know how to command a set.  This last, perhaps, was his largest failing, for this was an Eastwood crew, used to moving quickly and ready to glance in his direction when a director faltered.

     It seems Tuggle lasted no more than a day in full control of the location.  One witness remembers him hesitating overlong on the placement of a picture in the background of a shot.  Another recalls him choosing a camera placement that ensured a door that had to be opened in the scene would block the actors from view.  And these were comparatively simple shots.  “He didn’t know how to function in a decision-making deal” is the way Clint puts it.  He also suggests, and it is the only criticism of Tuggle that he offers, that the would-be director should have spent some time on other sets, observing how the job was done.  It was too late now.  There was much complicated work still to be done involving crowds, high-voltage action and sophisticated coverage, and Clint simply did not feel Tuggle would be able to handle it.

     Here it was again, the near-endemic problem of trying to direct a star who was not only the film’s de facto producer, but also his own best director (at least until someone proves otherwise to him) – vastly complicated in this case by the fact that Tugle was manifestly “such a good guy,” as Clint describes him.  Even if the Directors Guild’s Eastwood rule had not prevented Clint from taking over, he really didn’t want to.

     So a compromise was worked out.  The writer would stay on, contribute what he could in a collaborative way and receive directorial credit, while Clint, literally, called most of the shots.  Tuggle insists he made substantial contributions to his script’s realization in this role, and Clint does not deny them.  But our eyes tell us this is very much an Eastwood movie – his stylistic tracks are all over it – and the anecdotal evidence supports this reading.

 

I caught a misquote on page 389.  Schickel states a quote from the movie regarding a certain part of the male anatomy came from Allison Eastwood, when in fact, it came from Jenny Beck.  These girls played his daughters in the movie.  I noticed a number of errors in this book the first time I read it way back in ’96 but otherwise, a very decent biography.

[KC]

I caught a misquote on page 389.

Yes, as we've often pointed out on this Board, Schickel's book is chock full of errors of fact regarding the content of the films. I don't think he bothered to re-watch any of them when he was writing the book.

[KC]

Here are a couple of threads where we've previously posted that quote from the Schickel book, and discussed the Tuggle-Eastwood question with regard to Tightrope:

http://www.clinteastwood.org/forums/index.php?topic=7612.0

... and this post from a thread titled "Malpaso questions":

http://www.clinteastwood.org/forums/index.php?topic=7612.msg131139#msg131139