Movies - TV
How Rawhide Started Clint Eastwood Down The Path To Becoming
A Director
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
Clint Eastwood got his start in Hollywood in 1995, but it would be four years until the actor landed a role that turned him into a household name as Rowdy Yates of the massively popular Western TV series “Rawhide.” Throughout the show's 217-episode run, Eastwood was just getting his bearings as an actor, but already the star was thinking about directing.
Eastwood recalled the moment he thought he could film a scene better and more dynamically. In an interview, the actor said, “we were shooting some vast cattle scenes […] I was riding along in the herd […] But the shots were being taken from outside the herd, looking in, and you didn't see too much. I thought, we should get right in the middle of this damn stampede.”
Although Eastwood proposed mounting a portable Arriflex camera to his horse to get a more dynamic shot, the producer turned him down. When Eastwood kept pressing, the “Rawhide” producers agreed to let him direct the trailers, although it didn’t turn into directing an episode, and it wasn’t until the 1971 film, “Play Misty for Me,” that Eastwood got his directorial debut.