American Rebel (15 page)

Irving Leonard managed to get $500,000 up front for Clint, a figure still considerably below his sought-after million, but Leonard had so constructed the deal that much of Clint’s salary would be deferred for tax advantages and he would have a hefty participation in the
expected profits. Leonard also managed to get Clint cast-approval, which was how actress Jean Seberg managed to land the role of the Mormon wife Pardner decides to buy, and who subsequently becomes part of a three-way relationship. Lerner had created this character to juice up the film a bit for younger audiences, and Clint insisted that it be played by Seberg.

The actress was widely believed to be French because of her roles in Otto Preminger’s
Saint Joan
(1957), his in-French production of
Bonjour Tristesse
(1958, aka
Hello, Sadness
in English), and especially Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking French
Breathless
(1960,
À Bout de Souffle)
, one of the jewels of the French Nouvelle Vague that became an international sensation and inspired the
post-Bonnie and Clyde
generation of independent American filmmakers. In fact, Seberg was born in Iowa and had moved to Paris during her appearances in
Saint Joan
and
Bonjour Tristesse
and lived there for a while after
Breathless
. By the time she agreed to appear in
Paint Your Wagon
, her career was on the decline due mostly to her active involvement with various leftist radical organizations and her outspoken support of the widely feared American Black Panther Party. That support caught the attention of J. Edgar Hoover, who many believed used the Bureau to hound her until she committed suicide in 1979 at the age of forty-one from an overdose of sleeping pills.

But at thirty-one she was still a ravishing beauty, with big eyes, high cheekbones, and a European-acquired air of sophistication that, when he first met her during the casting, nearly drove Clint wild. At his insistence she was hired, and the two immediately began an on-set affair that they hid from no one. They carried on even as the film itself escalated out of control under the direction of Logan, whose manic-depression went wildly unchecked. The result was a budget that escalated to $30 million, to produce a film that had as much life as an embalmed body.

Seberg and Clint stopped carrying on only when Maggie showed up to pay a visit at the Oregon location shoot, infant in tow. As soon as she left, the entire cast and crew let out a collective sigh and the affair resumed—until the film ran out of location money amid script differences between Logan, Chayefsky, and Clint, and the cast had to return to the soundstages of Hollywood to finish the shoot. At that
point, perhaps feeling he was too close to home, and also near the end of the shoot, Clint dropped Seberg. Already in a troubled marriage to Romain Gary, Seberg’s heart was broken.

    
A
fter five grueling months of work it became clear that Logan had no idea what to do with the growing financial monster that was
Paint Your Wagon
. The film was unofficially finished by assistant director Tom Shaw. By now Paramount, the studio financing the film, just wanted it to end, believing, as did everyone involved, that it was going to be one of the most expensive Christmas turkeys ever given to the filmgoing public. Although it grossed a respectable $14.5 million in its first full year of domestic release—helped by charitable reviews and Clint’s undeniable box-office pull—it came nowhere near its breakeven point, which, because of all the cost overruns, was somewhere close to $60 million.
^*
In the years to come the film’s critical response would not improve. (The
Times
always runs the same blurb about it whenever it shows up in its TV listing: “California gold rush musical. Elaborate but squatty, and Clint sings like a moose.”)

Paint Your Wagon
, while not an out-and-out disaster, was undoubtedly a downward turn in the otherwise steadily rising arc of Clint’s career. Now, as the 1960s cross-faded into the 1970s, and as independent film was gaining its strongest foothold in Hollywood since the beginning of the studio-dominated century, Clint decided to make a giant leap forward. A studio effort like
Paint Your Wagon
was, he felt, now a dinosaur from an industry that had long ago lost its hold on fresh and independent moviemaking. He was sure he could do better.

In other words, he wanted to direct.

But to do so he would have to also produce, as no one was about to hire him despite his star-status, and with no previous directing credits, to helm a movie with a budget of several million dollars. He would have to find the money himself and use it to deep-seed Malpaso. In
the interim he would watch, listen, produce, and star in the films of other directors from whom he thought he could learn something.

Which is why, having decided to move out of the Hollywood mainstream, he figured the quickest and most expedient way to get what he wanted was to dive even deeper into it.

With Shirley MacLaine, in a role originally intended for Elizabeth Taylor, in
Two Mules for Sister Sara,
1970
.

S
eeking to capitalize on his growing popularity and steadily growing box-office clout, Clint wanted to make pictures that showed off his best qualities without turning him into a perpetual cartoon version of the Man with No Name. While others in Clint’s position might have happily accepted simple, popular, gritty western after gritty western and enjoyed a single-persona run (as Arnold Schwarzenegger did until the novelty wore off and his film career ended), Clint was after something different, even if he wasn’t sure yet exactly what that was. Having attained the level of a legitimate Hollywood star, he would surely remain there—going back to pumping gas held no allure at all.

As an actor, Clint knew that the Man with No Name held audiences’ interest because of his unique imperfections (no family, no woman, no past, and no future) rather than the standard-issue imperfections (heartbreak, separation, and desperation). He understood that it was their fascination with this unique character that had ignited his rising star.

But as a filmmaker, Clint had no interest in perpetuating that character until it became a caricature. Instead, he wanted to get behind and inside of the image he projected onto the screen. To do so, he needed to generate work that not only suited this goal but was within his grasp.

Despite his surprise success with the spaghetti westerns, his journey of cinematic self-exploration had thus far been neither quick, nor easy, nor smooth. Now the well-intentioned misadventure of
Paint Your Wagon
had nearly wrecked all that he had previously achieved. The artistic failure of that film, even more than the financial one, convinced him once and for all that no one in Hollywood knew anything, certainly no more than he did and probably a lot less, about how to make a good film that could earn a decent profit.

Still, he had a lot to learn about putting what was in his head onto
the screen, and he had five years to learn it. His nonexclusive 1968 contract at Universal (Lang had gotten him to sign it by doubling his salary for
Coogan’s Bluff to
$1 million) would expire in 1975 at the earliest, depending upon how many pictures he made for them during that time. It would not be easy to make the films he wanted. Disappointments came early, as the projects he brought to the studio were met with little or no support. To make matters worse, in December 1969 Irving Leonard—Clint’s longtime business manager, the president and primary of Malpaso, and a true friend—died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three. Few events outwardly affected cool-customer Clint, but the loss of Leonard visibly shook him up.

Leonard was irreplaceable in his uniquely combined roles as father-figure and mentor and pervasive guiding light. But to try, Clint chose entertainment lawyer and now his resident producer, Bob Daley, whom he had known since
Rawhide
days, when Daley was a cost analyst at the studio, working his way up to unit manager. His job had been to control the flow of money during productions, including
Rawhide
. Clint had always liked Daley’s business style and acumen, keeping costs low and cutting out the usual ego-stroking expenditures like providing limos for stars and other perks. Daley’s job now at Malpaso would be to continue to help Clint find great projects he could star in and produce and help him handle his daily finances and act as go-between with Malpaso’s accounting firm, Kaufman and Bernstein.
^*

The first film that Clint decided to pursue after Leonard’s passing was the one Elizabeth Taylor had brought to him,
Two Mules for Sister Sara
. He had run it by Leonard, who approved of the idea shortly before he died. Clint wanted to make it because he felt the character was a more humanized, in-depth version of the Man with No Name. The film’s producer was Marty Rackin, a screenwriter who had enjoyed a fair measure of success in the 1950s before turning to full-time producing—he held the option on the original script, written by veteran writer-director Budd Boetticher. Clint and Taylor were his first choice to star in the film.

Then Taylor informed Rackin that she wanted the production transferred from Mexico to Spain, but Rackin insisted on keeping the
location in Mexico, to be faithful to the script and to keep production costs down. Taylor was also experiencing some of the recurring “health problems” that had plagued her throughout her career. When the insurance for her alone proved beyond the film’s budget, Rackin and Universal decided to cut her loose.
^*
Clint agreed to stay on, as long as he could have a say in who would direct. Rackin had no objections to bringing in Clint’s first choice, Don Siegel.