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Clint
Eastwood’s first big break as an actor came in early 1958. While visiting a
friend employed as a reader at CBS Television City, Eastwood had a chance
meeting with Robert Sparks, the network executive in charge of filmed
programming. As it happens, Sparks was about to meet with producer Charles
Marquis Warren to discuss casting for a new Western series Warren was
developing about a group of cowboys leading a herd of cattle to a railhead
north of Texas. Sparks was particularly looking for an actor to play Rowdy
Yates, the young ramrod who was also the second lead in the series. Sparks
thought Eastwood looked the part and arranged for a screen test the
following day.
Ironically,
Eastwood thought he blew the tryout after choosing to improvise key elements
of a long monologue written by Warren. Having just been handed the script
only moments before his audition, Eastwood knew there wasn’t enough time to
memorize every single word. So he called on a technique he’d learned early
as an actor: that it was far more important to understand the emotions of
the character than to deliver lines word for word. Though Eastwood felt he
nailed the part, it soon became clear to him that Warren thought otherwise.
Eastwood was convinced he’d lost the role—and in fact, he probably would
have, had fate not intervened again, this time in the form of CBS
programming chief Hubbell Robinson. Upon seeing footage of Eastwood’s test
in a screening room with Sparks and Warren, Robinson immediately liked what
he saw. That’s the guy,” he said.
I don’t need to see anyone else.”
With that, Clint Eastwood was on his way.
Rawhide: The Collectors Edition,
released by Columbia House DVD in 2005,
features liner notes by Ed Robertson
for the first 30 episodes of the series.
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After
successfully adapting
Gunsmoke from radio to television, Charles Marquis
Warren produced and directed Cattle Empire, a 1955 movie starring Joel
McCrea as a trail boss seeking vengeance on the men who had wrongfully jailed
him. The success of Cattle Empire, coming several years
on the heels of
Red River (the classic epic from 1948 starring John Wayne as a tyrannical
trail boss leading a cattle drive from Texas to Missouri) led Warren to develop
what would eventually become
Rawhide for CBS.
Besides
Cattle Empire, Warren drew inspiration from two sources:
The Chisholm
Trail,
the classic novel by Borden Chase on which Red River was
based; and
Driving Cattle from Texas to Iowa, 1866 ,
a diary of an actual cattle drive from San Antonio to Sedalia
led by a drover
named George Duffield.
The narrations with which Gil Favor introduces each
episode of Rawhide
are similar in style and breadth to the entries in Duffield’s journal, lending the series an extra measure of authenticity.
Also recommended:
Rawhide: The Complete First Season
Riding the Video Range:
The Rise and Fall
of the Western on Television
Back in the Saddle:
Essays on Western
Film and Television Actors
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