Eastwood Revamps For The US Market

Hang 'Em High and Coogan's Bluff Ask Us To Buy American 

These were a pair that Clint Eastwood made in the US after he had been The Man With No Name three times. Those out of Europe would change our concept of frontier men. One-time Rowdy Yates became the anti-anti-hero for a worn out genre. Trouble was accepting him back on American soil, where the wearing out was accomplished fact. Hang ‘Em High especially was like Rowdy back in stirrups. Feature westerns long since stank of television, background littered by faces too familiar from the tube. Italo imports had an edge because anything might happen in them. Life was obviously cheaper there, Eastwood gunning down five for every one dispatched back home. The former MWNN, called “Jed Cooper” in Hang ‘Em High (and a marshal, yet) rescues a calf from rapids, then is hanged by last week’s guest cast from Gunsmoke. I noted discrepancy then (Fall 1968) and wondered if Eastwood erred in coming home. Hang ‘Em High seemed a reversal from new direction the Leones had gone. Should Eastwood have stayed abroad to play out a fashion he started, or return to uncertainty of homegrown stardom to be earned from ground up? Hang ‘Em High and Coogan’s Bluff, coming but months apart, were neither a sure thing toward the goal.

Tingling Excitement As Clint Subdues Beloved "Skipper" Of TV Fame

Hang ‘Em High was essentially a get-even yarn, but Yanks were skittish still with revenge served cold, so our man dons a badge, making him an Establishment figure at a time many were fed up with Establishment figures. A music score by Dominic Frontiere wobbles between overwrought and faux-Morricone. There are reminders of great westerns and even noirs past: Ben Johnson, Charles McGraw, a barely-there Dennis Hopper just before Easy Rider breakout. Hang ‘Em High could be labeled slapdash, historian William K. Everson calling it so in later excoriation where it stood for Decline and Fall of the western genre. I watched Hang ‘Em High on the MGM/HD channel and saw credit for Eastwood’s Malpaso company as co-producer. Same with Coogan’s Bluff. That’s quite a grip Eastwood had on direction of his starring career, and from early on. Fact he was older and well-seasoned by the late 60’s had much to do with smarts acquired. You wonder if he was plotting all this from beginnings at U-I and piloting jet that downed Tarantula.

Int'l One-Sheet and Ad Copy Pushes Eastwood Italo Western Roots  

Coogan’s Bluff was an improvement, being among other things a slam on the counterculture, and feature emphasis on what Jack Webb preached at his weekly Dragnet re-do. Fact Universal was host to both Coogan and Webb points up fundamental conservatism in force, but soon to slide as termites dug deeper. Did Wasserman sign off on politics as Coogan-expressed? Director Don Siegel wrote in his memoir of front office overlook every step of ways through Coogan’s Bluff and earlier The Killers. Seems also that Eastwood had considerable creative hand. He and Siegel customized a useable script from multiple drafts spread out on a floor, taking best of scenes and dialogue from each. The concept of a cowboy loose in Gotham was familiar since silents, Hoot Gibson and Harry Carey having rode herd on city slickers, then Buck Jones, George O’ Brien for talkies. Coogan’s Bluff put edge on its knife by letting flower children be purveyors of crime and moral rot. This was catnip for frustrated majority who saw youth as way out of control and Eastwood a force for return to normalcy. He and Siegel would apply message of Coogan’s Bluff to signature endorsement of law-order that was Dirty Harry. The wake of that massive hit put Coogan’s Bluff deep in shade. None of college audience I served in the 2000’s had even heard of Coogan, occasion being a combo with Eastwood/Siegel Escape From Alcatraz, and these were Eastwood fans, if not completests. Pity it’s become obscure, for Coogan’s Bluff is one of leanest and best of Eastwood pics before he took altogether control of output.