It’s not even remotely hyperbolic to suggest that cinema history could have turned out very differently had anybody other than Clint Eastwood played the title role in Dirty Harry, and not just because John Wayne was one of the many names who declined the part.
After The Good, the Bad and the Ugly had rounded out Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy in spectacular style, Eastwood was a bigger star than he’d ever been. However, he was also smart and self-aware enough to know that the majority of high-profile gigs he was going to be offered in the aftermath were going to be westerns, and he had no interest in being permanently pigeonholed.
In the years that followed, he did make Hang ‘Em High and Paint Your Wagon, but 1971 was instrumental in securing not only the star’s A-list status but also his longevity. Released just two months apart, Eastwood’s directorial debut, Play Misty for Me, and Don Siegel’s hard-boiled action thriller showcased both sides of the actor and filmmaker, coalescing to announce him as a capable filmmaker and onscreen badass.
Dirty Harry gave Eastwood one of his most iconic characters, launched a massively successful franchise, and spawned so many of his most unforgettable soundbites, with the fictional character and the person playing them becoming so interwoven that audiences found it increasingly difficult to figure out where one of them ended and the other began.
And yet, he was nowhere near being the first choice for grizzled cop Harry Callahan, which Wayne turned down out of nothing but bitterness and spite, a decision he openly regretted. ‘The Duke’ made plenty of enemies during his decades in the spotlight, and one of the most pronounced was Frank Sinatra, who became an endless source of ire for John Ford’s most famous collaborator.
‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ was offered Dirty Harry, and when he knocked it back, attentions turned towards Wayne. However, he was so affronted at being considered for a part his mortal nemesis had already rejected that he simply couldn’t sanction the idea of swooping in to scoop up a character that Sinatra had already made it clear he didn’t think was worthy of his time and effort.
Of course, Dirty Harry would have been a very different movie with ‘The Duke’ taking centre stage, and not only because he was more than 20 years older than Eastwood. The face of the ‘Golden Age’ western was notoriously protective of his image and never played characters who didn’t fit the persona he’d painstakingly crafted for himself, and a police officer who takes the law into their own hands and bends the rules so long as the ends justify their own notion of the means wasn’t in that wheelhouse.
In the end, everybody was a winner, except maybe ‘The Duke’. Eastwood got another seminal role, Siegel landed a box office hit, the studio turned a tidy profit, and audiences were introduced to one of cinema’s greatest-ever antiheroes.