Clint Eastwood's Theory About Why Westerns Initially Rejected Him Is Hilarious

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Clint Eastwood began his career playing bit parts in monster movies, at least two of them for director Jack Arnold. He played an amusing lab technician in the "Creature from the Black Lagoon" sequel "Revenge of the Creature" in 1955, and he was a masked pilot in Arnold's "Tarantula" the same year. He was in comedy films, war pictures, and globe-trotting adventures, establishing his career and proving his versatility. He also worked, very briefly, for Universal TV, and had bit parts in a few hit shows of the mid-'50s.

It wouldn't be until 1959, when he landed the role of Rowdy Yates in the hit series "Rawhide," that he would become associated with Westerns. While "Rawhide" was in its penultimate seventh season in 1965, Eastwood was cast by Sergio Leone in his Italian Western "A Fistful of Dollars," which would go on to become one of Eastwood's best movies. The actor's taciturn performance left a deep mark on his career, and he has been associated with the genre ever since. (At least as an actor — as a director, he has proven more versatile.)

In those early years, however, Eastwood still had to forge an identity, and, perhaps surprisingly, was seen as something of a pretty boy. Indeed, back in 2015, talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Eastwood reminisced about his early contract with Universal, and how he was shunted about between various films, not finding a toehold. To provide a timeline, Eastwood's Universal contract was terminated in October of 1955, only shortly after his "Revenge of the Creature" gig. Biographer Patrick McGilligan, in his book "Clint: The Life and Legend," points out that Eastwood was often criticized for being something of an amateur, and for speaking through gritted teeth too often. 

Eastwood also recalled that he couldn't get any parts in the Westerns of the day because, perhaps surprisingly, the casting directors thought he looked too much like Gary Cooper. And if there was already one Gary Cooper out there in the world, Universal didn't need a cheap knockoff of its own.  

Eastwood said his time at Universal was kind of a wash, having been dumped after only a year and a half and being declared a total failure as an actor. It seems Universal wasn't having a lot of luck at the time anyway, so a lot of actors were being let go, with the most recent hired exiting first. He got a few gigs, and was able to work his way into TV, but Westerns — the hottest genre at the time — eluded him. As Eastwood remembered it: 

"[T]hey just didn't say much of anything. 'We can't use you.' And they were kind of dropping the whole program at that time, and I was early in the game there, so I went out. And at that time, TV was starting to come in, and a lot of TV series at that time; 'Highway Patrol' and 'Men of West Point' or 'Men of Annapolis,' they had a couple of those. And they'd have some Westerns and stuff. I never could get a bit in a Western for some reason."

After the 1960s, that would have been an unthinkable notion, but Eastwood was kept away from Western sets. And according to him, it was just because he looked kind of like Gary Cooper: 

"The girls at Universal used to call me Coop because they thought I resembled Gary Cooper at that time ... who was kind of a big leading actor some of you might remember." 

It took a few more years of paying his dues before Eastwood was cast in "Rawhide." That show gave him the credibility (and the paychecks) he needed to stay in the game. Now almost 95 years old, after a 70-year career, he's still going in the business, having released his latest film, "Juror No. 2," in late 2024.