Clint Eastwood Started His Acting Career By Causing A Director To Have A Breakdown

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Most know him as the Man with No Name or "Dirty" Harry Callahan, but Clint Eastwood's first acting role was in a largely forgotten horror sequel. Such a minuscule role surely didn't cause much of a problem on the set of 1955's "Revenge of the Creature," right? Wrong. Eastwood's brief appearance in the film prompted director Jack Arnold to descend into a fit of rage that at one point had the young actor fearful that he'd walk away with a black eye.

Eastwood didn't exactly set out to become an actor. In the 1950s, the young ex-Army Corporal was talked into a screen test by a friend and soon found himself with a contract at Universal. He didn't exactly soar to stardom in those early years. In a 1971 interview with Rex Reed, published in "Clint Eastwood: Interviews, Revised and Updated," the actor recalled, "I got $75 a week for 40 weeks a year and I got kicked out after a year and a half."

It was during this time that he secured his first role in "Revenge of the Creature," the sequel to groundbreaking 1954 sci-fi horror hit "Creature from the Black Lagoon." It starred John Agar as animal psychologist Professor Clete Ferguson and Lori Nelson as student Helen Dobson. The film sees the Gill-man captured after miraculously surviving his thought-to-be-fatal shooting in Brazil during the previous film. Professor Ferguson and Dobson study their remarkable specimen, only to fall in love before the creature escapes and captures Dobson. Eastwood played a technician in Ferguson's lab who has a short scene involving some rats and a cat. Not only was it a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance, Eastwood went uncredited for his contribution. How, then, did he manage to upset Arnold so deeply?

Clint Eastwood wouldn't get a big break until 1956, when he appeared in a forgotten Western comedy, but his real breakout performance came in 1964's "A Fistful of Dollars," the Western that truly launched Eastwood to stardom. In 1955, he was still a no-name up-and-comer, and with his role in "Revenge of the Creature," found himself part of a genre that was waning in popularity. Monster movies weren't bringing in the crowds they once did, so the actor was likely unbothered by going uncredited in Jack Arnold's "Creature from the Black Lagoon" sequel.

At one point, however, it looked as though he wasn't even going to make it into the final cut. In the book "Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979-1983," the actor recalled landing the part of the lab technician after a swift audition and immediately being escorted to meet Arnold by producer William Alland. "He said, 'I'll take you down and we'll meet the director,'" explained Eastwood. "I walked on the set and the director said, 'What the hell is this? I told you I don't want to do that goddamn scene! Who's this guy?'"

The scene in question required Eastwood's lab worker to talk with John Agar's Professor Clete Ferguson about four rats he'd been observing. The actor's character is convinced that a cat has eaten one, before finding the missing rodent in his pocket. It's a light-hearted moment that Arnold certainly wasn't a fan of. "I thought, I'm going to get punched," continued Eastwood. "[Arnold] was screaming and yelling — or else I was just going to wilt to the floor. Probably the latter."

For whatever reason, Jack Arnold had decided that the rat scene simply didn't need to be in "Revenge of the Creature." Producer William Alland, however, saw things differently. "The producer won the argument," explained Clint Eastwood during his Paul Nelson interview. "He just said, 'That's in. Shoot it first thing in the morning.' That was the final word, so I said, 'I'll see you in the morning.'"

The actor also recalled Alland reassuring him that he hadn't done anything wrong. "[Alland] made me realize that it wasn't anything against me," he explained. "The director just didn't want the scene in the movie, so he didn't see any reason for shooting it and thought they should cut it out." Still, it must have been intimidating. This was Eastwood's first job on a movie, and he was immediately confronted with an established director who didn't want him anywhere near his set. "It was a hell of a way to start your acting career," added the actor. "Walk on a set and you know that the director hates the scene. Therefore you know he hates you."

In reality, Arnold likely had no idea who Eastwood was, so couldn't really hate the man himself. What's more, Arnold and Eastwood re-teamed later that same year for another classic sci-fi monster movie called "Tarantula." As such, there couldn't have been anything personal to the director's meltdown. Perhaps the actor's solid performance in "Revenge" saved him in that respect. Eastwood played it straight throughout and did the best he could with the limited material. It didn't exactly offer a glimpse of his star power, but in retrospect, the quiet charisma that became his trademark was all there, even if Arnold was too enraged to initially notice it.