MovieChat Forums > Dirty Harry (1971) Discussion > When Popeye Doyle Met Dirty Harry

When Popeye Doyle Met Dirty Harry

posted a year ago by roger1 (3703)
6 replies | jump to latest

(Formerly ecarle.)

Always interesting to me:

Some people caught it, some didn't, but I'll bring it up again now.

The French Connection and Dirty Harry both came out in 1971...in the final quarter of the year, TFC in the fall and Dirty Harry at Christmas. Popeye Doyle and Dirty Harry were compared and contrasted to each other, and the roles helped their actors immeasurably: as his biographer Richard Schickel noted, Dirty Harry "converted Clint Eastwood from a star to a superstar" and Gene Hackman (who got Popeye after Steve McQueen and a bunch of other names turned the role down) got a Best Actor Oscar and solid stardom himself (he was sort of a "stealth superstar," making good and bad movies with equal fervor, like Michael Caine.

Flash forward 21 years:

Its 1992. Clint Eastwood is trying to recover from a career slump that last roughly from 1988(when his 5th Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool, got wiped out at the summer box office by the bigger and better Die Hard) to 1990(his attempt at Lethal Weapon -- The Rookie -- was mean and sick and maladroit, an art film called White Hunter, Black Heart failed.)

Meanwhile, Gene Hackman was keeping to his then super-busy schedule of appearing in just about anything, from the "class" of Postcards from the Edge(director: Mike Nichols) to the hokum of "Loose Cannons"(a cop buddy movie with the fading Dan Ackroyd.) Hackman made THREE movies in 1990 alone. And look at this list from 1988 to 1991:

Mississippi Burning(a hit with Oscar cred and a Best Actor nom for Hackman) but also from 1988 to 1991: Split Decisions, Bat 21, Full Moon in Blue Water, Another Woman,The Package, Narrow Margin, Class Action, Company Business.

Gene Hackman: The Hardest Working Man in Show Business...but not always in movies you'd remember. Eastwood was still a bigger star.

But Eastwood's star was fading and he needed a comeback, pronto: he had been sitting on a great script(now called Unforgiven) for years, waiting to use it when he was old enough and needed a career save.

He also needed some great other actors to be in it. Morgan Freeman was one. Richard Harris was another.

And Gene Hackman was the most important of all.

Now, Dirty Harry and Popeye Doyle would finally share the screen and it was 1971 all over again. Except older.

THAT's what i think about when I watch Unforgiven.

And what a winner. Best Picture for Eastwood. Best Director for Eastwood. Best Supporting Actor for Hackman(his first Oscar since French Connection.) If only Clint Eastwood could have won Best Actor too..but no...it was time to break Al Pacino's streak.

[–] christomacin (4660) a year ago

making good and bad movies with equal fervor, like Michael Caine.

I consider The Swarm with Michael Caine the greatest unintentional comedy ever made.

[–] roger1 (3703) a year ago

making good and bad movies with equal fervor, like Michael Caine.

I consider The Swarm with Michael Caine the greatest unintentional comedy ever made.

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It was from Irwin Allen in 1978, and a mere four years earlier, Allen had made the most expensive professional and classy disaster movie ever made with The Towering Inferno -- with Steve McQueen and Paul Newman leading a cast that also had William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire "and more."

The Towering Inferno got a lot of respect for Irwin Allen -- who had started in the 50's with movies like The Big Circus and moved on to Voyage of the Bottom of the Sea for movies AND TV, and Lost In Space for TV. The Poseidon Adventure got Allen "Inferno." Some like the plot and spectacle of Poseidon better than that of The Towering Inferno -- but getting Newman and McQueen together trumped everything. Class all the way.

Which is why The Swarm(in which Michael Caine was given some prestigious but faded stars as co-stars -- Olivia deHavilland, Henry Fonda, Fred MacMurray) was such a shocking surprise. It was as if Irwin Allen forgot everything he learned about class moviemaking and reverted back to "Lost in Space" cheese. "Bees" as villains backfired -- we got lines like "But bees have always been our friends" and in their attacks they looked like clouds of wheat puffs cereal. A scene where Caine had to run out onto the Warner Brothers backlot street and yell "Run! The bees are coming!" is possibly his worst acting, ever.

But Irwin Allen wasn't done with Caine yet. The very next year, he put Caine in "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure," a rather cheesy follow up to the original(with Sally Field "slumming" on advice of boyfriend Burt Reynolds to make a commercial movie.)

Caine was spared the Final Irwin Allen Indignity -- "When Time Ran Out" -- a volcano movie that doubled crossed Inferno stars Paul Newman and William Holden(McQueen bowed out and died the same year.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (3703) a year ago

In short, Michael Caine in The Swarm WAS an unintentional comedy but Michael Caine THOUGHT that Irwin Allen knew what he was doing.

Also: in one of his autobios, Caine said he had moved to LA from England in the 70's and was having trouble getting work. "Irwin Allen saved me" with two bad movies(paychecks.) To save his career from a total dive, Caine took the "interesting" part in Brian dePalma's slasher shocker "Dressed to Kill" (1980) and righted his career.

[–] christomacin (4660) a year ago

If that was a career save imagine what a career assassination would have looked like. I guess it did the trick, though. He got a Dressed to Kill, Educating Rita, and Hannah and Her Sisters in the 80s.

[–] roger1 (3703) a year ago

SPOILERS for Dressed to Kill

If that was a career save imagine what a career assassination would have looked like.

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Ha. I guess you mean because Caine accepted a role that turned out to be "Norman Bates 1980" -- a cross-dressing slasher killer.

This even as Caine had turned down the REAL Hitchcock's offer to play the psycho rapist-strangler in Frenzy(1972.) But Hitchcock made his offer when Caine was riding high(Get Carter, Sleuth) and DePalma made his offer when Caine was riding low -- The Swarm. (Also, when Hitchcock offered Caine Frenzy Hitchcock's reputation was at a low, himself. That Frenzy was good surprised everybody.)

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I guess it did the trick, though. He got a Dressed to Kill, Educating Rita, and Hannah and Her Sisters in the 80s.

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Yes. Dressed to Kill was a hit. In that same autobio, Caine offered the theory that a movie leading man "can have four flops in a row, but if he gets five...he's out." Dressed to Kill came after four flops.

And led to Educating Rita(Oscar nom, yes?) and to Hannah and Her Sisters(Oscar win -- Supporting.)

But then again, it also led to Jaws 4 -- awful. But Caine just always seemed to know how to alternate trash with quality. He wrote of Jaws 4 -- "I bought a house with the money from that movie. I"ve never seen the movie, which I hear is quite bad, but I HAVE seen the house, and it is very nice."

Witty fellow -- and, as I post this, still with us and around 90.

[–] Mrmojo4700 (21539) a year ago

Added to my watchlist.