What would this picture have been like with Wayne in the role? They gave it to Eastwood because they thought Wayne was too old.
I think they would have needed to rewrite the ransom money obstacle course/chase scene as well as the cement plant chase at the end, Wayne would not have been credible doing all the running.
"I turned it down for what seemed to me to be three very good reasons. The first is that they offered it to Frank Sinatra first, but he’d hurt his hand and couldn’t do it. I don’t like being offered Sinatra’s rejections. Put that one down to pride. The second reason is that I thought Harry was a rogue cop. Put that down to narrow-mindedness because when I saw the picture I realized that Harry was the kind of part I’d played often enough; a guy who lives within the law but breaks the rules when he really has to in order to save others.”
-JOHN WAYNE.
THE THIRD REASON BEING AGE.
See, I didn't read him rejecting the role, I read him not getting it even though he wanted it, but I don't claim to be an expert in Wayne's life or roles.
shareHE REGRETTED IT AFTER SEEING THE FILM BUT ALSO POINTED OUT HOW PERFECT EASTWOOD WAS AND HOW IF HE DIDN'T REALLY GET THE SCRIPT HE WOULDN'T HAVE DONE A GOOD JOB ANYWAY...AND MADE HIS COP FILMS TO TEST SAID WATERS...I AM CURRENTLY READING A BOOK WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO WORKED WITH HIM...I HAVE PREVIOUSLY READ THREE BIOGRAPHIES ON THE DUKE.
shareHe probably would have beat up a lot more hippies!
shareHa.
The history of "who would play Dirty Harry" seems to have some very specific -- ie "true" -- history, and then a lot of speculation.
The "true" history:
The first actor to accept Dirty Harry was Frank Sinatra. The script Frank accepted had a different title, but he accepted the role and a Variety ad promoted this. As scripted, Harry was meant to be older, close to retirement -- perhaps more willing to throw his career away at the end.
Sinatra backed out over an old hand injury(from the fight scene in The Manchurian Candidate) and next approached...seriously..was Paul Newman, a very big star at the time but too liberal in his politics(said he) to accept the part.
Sinatra and Newman seem to be the "real" candidates before Eastwood got the role, BUT...
...from what I've read over the years, many movie scripts were often sent out SIMULTANEOUSLY to many male stars at a time, often. There were a lot of male actors available, and if the makers wanted to get ONE of them, they had to "spread the net wide."
So Dirty Harry also went out to Steve McQueen(who turned it down as too close to Bullitt) , Robert Mitchum, Walter Matthau(claims his son, Charlie), and Bill Cosby (who had a tough, macho reputation from I Spy to go with his comedy chops).
I'm not sure I've seen John Wayne as actually approached for the role --too old. I think when Dirty Harry hit so big, John Wayne tried to COPY it -- with McQ(especially) and Brannigan("An American Cop in London.")
CONT
Interesting: in 1971, the same year that Dirty Harry came out at Christmas, in the summer John Wayne had a movie called "Big Jake," which was more violent than his usual fare, with more sadistic villains. Turned out the script was by some of the "Dirty Harry" writers and "Dirty John" gets some speeches that sound a lot like Harry's ("Do you feel lucky? " became "Anything goes wrong -- your fault, my fault, nobody's fault -- I'll blow your head off.") Honestly, watch Dirty Harry and Big Jake back to back sometime. The Eastwood and Wayne characters are similar, as are their lines.
shareDuke didn't like Eastwood's work. Nothing against him personally but when asked by Clint to work with him he wouldn't. Now that might have been good sense about age/health but Duke did one nutjob cop role where he had a machine gun? and it was pretty bad. So in some ways I think Duke was embarrassed into these roles by Clint.
shareDuke didn't like Eastwood's work. Nothing against him personally but when asked by Clint to work with him he wouldn't.
--
The movie that never got made with Eastwood and Wayne was from a script called "The Hostiles" by Larry Cohen.
Page 502 of the Scott Eyeman bio of Wayne:
"Shortly after Clint Eastwood made High Plains Drifter in 1973, he optioned ('The Hostiles"), which involved a gambler to be played by Eastwood who wins 50% of ranch owned by an older man(Wayne.) The two men have to become partners , which is complicated by the fact that they can't stand each other. There's a battle coming that will destroy the ranch, so Eastwood, who knows about the situation, sells his half of the ranch back to Wayne, who is innocent of the underlying situation. At the last minute, Eastwood returns to help the older man fight off the hostiles."
Sounds interesting. But Wayne kept turning Eastwood down -- finally throwing a copy of the script off his yacht and into the ocean.
Wayne evidently didn't much like High Plains Drifter and Eastwood's "R-rated" take on the West.
Too bad. Sounds like The Hostiles could have been a good movie. But a lot of good movies never get made. Wayne also killed the original 1971 proposed version of "Lonesome Dove," to be directed by Peter Bogdanovich, which would have put Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda into the roles played by Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, and Robert Urichin the 1989 mini-series FINALLY made from the book that the screenplay turned into . Interesting: Stewart and Fonda said they would do Lonesome Dove in 1971, but without Wayne, the studio would not finance.
--
CONT
Now that might have been good sense about age/health but Duke did one nutjob cop role where he had a machine gun? and it was pretty bad.
--
That was McQ (1974), made three years after Dirty Harry and the year after Magnum Force. One critic said of Wayne's look in McQ: "John Wayne is too old and too big to be wearing a sportcoat in a movie -- it looks like a monkey jacket."
--
So in some ways I think Duke was embarrassed into these roles by Clint
--
Well, Eastwood managed to segue out of the dying Western genre into cop roles and modern action movies...it was harder for Wayne. In the 70's he did two cop movies -- McQ and Brannigan (with its "fish out of water in London" hook.) Neither really worked.
Thank God for John Wayne that he got The Shootist in 1976. What turned out to be his final movie was a moving tale about a gunfighter's final battle with cancer and bad guys simultaneously. A very good final film.
Now Bill Cosby as Dirty Harry, THAT is something we're all less better off for not having.
share
I think most of us agree that Eastwood was really pretty good for Dirty Harry, but I can see Sinatra doing a different take on the role and making a very good film. While it could have been an excellent film (perhaps better than Eastwood), I don't envision Sinatra's version to be anywhere near as big a phenomenon as Eastwood's.
I just can't see John Wayne at all for Harry.
I think most of us agree that Eastwood was really pretty good for Dirty Harry, but I can see Sinatra doing a different take on the role and making a very good film.
---
In addition to being the premiere male singer of the late twentieth century, Frank Sinatra was a very major movie star in the fifties and sixties. His Supporting Actor Oscar for From Here To Eternity(1953) launched him to a movie stardom that had him as bankable and sought after as Marlon Brando and Cary Grant, in his prime.
Sinatra's movie stardom peaked around 1962(with The Manchurian Candidate surrounced by his "Rat Pack" movies) but studios kept hiring him well into the late sixties. The problem came around 1968, when Sinatra -- while still a good actor -- seemed to becoming lazy and old fashioned in his movie choices. The Detective was R-rated and pretty lurid(with a bad take on gays); his two Tony Rome private eye movies were entertaining but "tired."
As it turned out, Sinatra made his last major movie -- a Western sex comedy call "Dirty Dingus McGee" in 1970. It bombed and Sinatra would only make one major movie years later in 1981 (The First Deadly Sin.) He retired as a singer in 1971 - - but came back from THAT a mere two years later in 1973 and kept going into the nineties as a concert act and recording artist.
My point: Sinatra received and committed to the Dirty Harry script(under another name; I'll find it UPDATE: "Dead Right")) almost EXACTLY around the time he was deciding to retire from films(which he did, almost forever) and music(for a couple of years.) HIS Dirty Harry would have been the work of a older, uncommitted(if good) actor...and probably pretty minor. Perhaps he used his hand injury as an excuse; he just seemed to want out of everything in 1970/1971.
---
CONT
While it could have been an excellent film (perhaps better than Eastwood),
--
Possibly -- Sinatra COULD be a very good, soulful actor and he had that great voice. He might have "given his all" to the powerful story of Harry and the psycho -- we know the script was good.
---
I don't envision Sinatra's version to be anywhere near as big a phenomenon as Eastwood's.
--
Agreed. Sinatra's era was closing. Eastwood was young and willing to do "R-rated" material quite a lot. Hollywood didn't quite know what to DO with Eastwood(given the fadeout of Westerns) and suddenly Dirty Harry solved that problem and made Eastwood a superstar.
But the key thing was Eastwood's YOUTH. (at 40!) Sinatra never could have carried a series into the 80s. Dirty Harry lucked into a young star who could.
The same "lucky" thing happened with the TV detective Columbo. The TV producers first wanted Bing Crosby for the role. He would have been fine, but old, and Crosby died in 1977 so there would be no "second series." The younger Peter Falk was more vibrant for the 70's and did a version in the 90s.
---
I just can't see John Wayne at all for Harry.
---
Not for the movie as we have it. I don't see Wayne comfortably operating with all the kinky material in the movie as we have it -- including Harry's peeping! Which seemed rather sexy and funny when Eastwood did it. Also, as someone noted "up thread," John Wayne simply couldn't have done all that running that the younger, more fit Eastwood did.
Now Bill Cosby as Dirty Harry, THAT is something we're all less better off for not having.
--
A nice "game" to play with all the alternative Dirty Harrys to imagine each one saying the opening words: "Now, I know what you're thinking, did he fire six shots or only five? Well to tell you the truth, I kind of lost track myself in all this excitement..."
We know how Eastwood said it.
But now imagine...Bill Cosby (in that amused but mean voice he could do.)
Or imagine...Walter Matthau(in that New York flat deadpan accent.)
Or imagine...Frank Sinatra (with his famous voice and its New Jersey accent...I picture him saying the speech faster.)
Or imagine..Steve McQueen (I CAN'T. He never liked to talk that much in movies.)
Or imagine...John Wayne (EASY...he would have had some fun, except he might not have said "punk.")
Bonus...he was never offered the role, and would have been totally wrong for it, but hey, Michael Caine could go to town in his Cockney accent, and at the end with Scorpio, he could do it real angry between gnashed teeth. (Clint Eastwood said that he said the speech the first time "foxy" with the black robber, and "pissed off" at the end with Scorpio.)
Anyway, Bill Cosby might not have been half bad. Kind of a Blaxploitation Harry -- and that bank robbery scene would take on a new tone.
I'm trying to understand how Hollywood would have managed a breaks-the-rules black cop in '71, especially one prone to some level of violence.
I wonder if it would have even have had any verisimilitude to audiences to have a law-and-order type cop who was black who was a gunslinger? Harry pissed off the up-and-coming liberal leadership but arguably got away with it because he was one of them. In '71 is it even believable that a black cop could shoot a bunch of white guys -- even if they're armed robbers -- and not get run out of town? A black cop torturing Scorpio the way Eastwood did would have been unthinkable even in San Francisco.
Sidney Poitier in "Heat of the Night" seemed like the only kind of black cop white audiences could buy into in that era -- cerebral, not into strong-arm, and challenging the white establishment with his brains, not his revolver.
All this being said, a black cop version of Dirty Harry could have been kind of amazing especially if the script kept the racial irony at a subtle level (perhaps playing into Cosby's personality). "The Enforcer" would have probably worked in the era better, having a black cop chase down left wing radicals.
Have you seen Sinatra in Tony Rome? That gives us some kind of idea what his Harry would have been.
NOBODY does anger like Clint. He was asked in an interview why his seething anger was so convincing. He said, in effect, that most people in real life try to hold our anger inside, but an actor playing a part will express anger more openly; so Clint played to keep the anger inside of him, which resonated more effectively with the audience. He also said that, when the script called for him to be angry, he would remember all the auditions he’d gone on where they treated him like shit, and he used the energy from that memory to drive his scene.
I agree that Frank would have done well in the role, but there is only
1 Clint Eastwood. Given the apparent direction of our culture, there’s not going to be another one.
Given the apparent direction of our culture, there’s not going to be another one.
Wayne usually played more of a classic hero type. I don't think people would have liked seeing him shoot crims. Eastwood on the other hand tended to play the anti hero.
shareOh, I agree completely. I think what we’ve been doing here is discussing John Wayne lobbying for the roll of Harry Callahan.
On the final broadcast of his Tonight Show, Johnny Carson selected 2 guests to share it with him. Younger posters may not realize what a TITAN Carson was in late-night broadcast network TV. We will never see his like again. The programming options have fragmented far too much, the audience subsequently diluted. Carson could have had the Pope and the President of the United States of America if he asked for them, and I am not exaggerating. He chose Robin Williams and Bette Midler.
While chatting with Williams on the famous Tonight Show couch, Robin was riffing on President George Bush, doing his celebrated impersonation of POTUS. Carson remarked on how much the impression sounded like bush, and asked how Robin did that. Williams replied, “I just do John Wayne and then I tighten up my asshole.”
Robin then said, and I thought he was sincerely contrite, “I’m sorry. Can I say that on TV?”
Showing every inch the reason why he is the GOAT, Carson instantly replied, “What are they gonna do? Fire me?”
Titans: Johnny Carson, Robin Williams, John Wayne, Bette Midler and Clint Eastwood.
I think Wayne would have been too clean cut for the role, that said the idea of an older clean cop deciding enough is enough would have been interesting.
Harry as played by Clint basically comes off as always being the way he is shown in the film.
You're right about Callahan -- he's *already* got a reputation as a hard hitting gunslinger in Dirty Harry.
It makes you wonder if there was a missed opportunity to develop his character over the series, with each installment demonstrating a more intense "Dirty Harry". I'd guess they never planned or expected the films to turn into a chain of sequels, plus it begs the question what the first film would have been like with a less intense Harry.
It also makes me wonder if it leaves room for prequels with a Dirty Harry origin story. If we assume the character was Eastwood's age, you could have a young Eastwood as a young patrolman in the early 1950s in an initial prequel, with the narrative basically him involved in some case that gets him promoted to detective. Then you could have an early 1960s Detective involved in another case, this time making Detective Inspector.
Maybe some random bonus points for having some kind of crossover in the 1960s era film featuring the other famous San Francisco detective, Bullitt.
Of course these probably shouldn't get made because they would be awful and full of MCU-grade performances and action, but it would be pretty interesting if done right.
It was definitely a product of it's time. Not a lot of character development or insight. We get to see a little of that with Sudden Impact but generally the films are all about Harry shooting people. Deadpool in my opinion is the worst of the DH films.
Makes me think of the first Lethal Weapon film, especially the Directors cut. There is a lot of work put into showing why Riggs is suicidal and manic. We get that insight and it helps make him more human. I guess if DH came out now we would end up getting an origin series or an origin story within the main story. Flashbacks etc
Perhaps DH is the way he is due to something that happened before he even got on the Force, a Korean War vet maybe?
I am not sure it would have been done right back then but it would have been interesting. Unlikely we would see a remake or prequels now given the climate in regards to cops shooting criminals. The film would never even get the green light.
Speaking of Bullitt, McQueen was considered for DH, if he had of accepted it I wonder if DH would have become a different character. McQueen tends to play more sympathetic characters than Eastwood usually. Even with the same script I wonder if McQueen could have made DH a little more rounded.
John Wayne Would Have Been A Terrible Dirty Harry (These 2 Cop Movies Prove It)
https://screenrant.com/dirty-harry-john-wayne-bad-movie-proof-mcq-brannigan/
John Wayne regretted passing on Dirty Harry and set about making his own rogue cop movies in the aftermath, which proved he was wrong for the role.
I don't know if he was wrong for the role always or just wrong for the role in his 60s when (at least in hindsight) he seemed to be suffering from his lifelong smoking habit and general poor health.
I also try to think of anyone who could have helped those movies be better. I think Wayne had enough pull in Hollywood and general popularity to get those films made, but it doesn't mean they were good to begin with.