Western star Clint Eastwood played a singing cowboy in the only musical of his career. Several decades later, he still regrets the decision.
Clint Eastwood knows how much of his fame he owes to the western genre. But that doesn’t mean that he remembers every one of his roles fondly: as he told Empire in 2017, even 48 years later, he only thinks about Westward the Wind blows with unease. Yet the musical is a great find for fans. After all, the star plays a singing cowboy in a love triangle
Clint Eastwood’s western shoot was so bad that he wanted to quit
Westward the wind blows revolves around Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin), who wants to make money with his partner (Eastwood) in the Wild West in various ways. Among other things, he wants to dig for gold and supply the other lonely fortune hunters in the small town of No Name City (!) with sex workers for a profit. He and his partner have a relationship with Elizabeth (Jean Seberg), whom Rumson has bought from a Mormon.
Watch the English trailer for Westward the wind blows
here
Discreet plot elements or not, there is also singing. But since none of the big stars had any vocal training, their ballads sound more like a “sad, lonely whisper” according to Collider. Perhaps it’s no wonder, at least Eastwood had imagined the experience of filming to be very different.
After countless revisions to the script, the movie ultimately bore no resemblance to the concept Eastwood had signed on for. “The movie [ended up] being much shallower and just didn’t have the dynamic of the original script,” Eastwood explained to Empire. “It also took forever to shoot.”
(Eastwood, Seberg and Marvin in Westward the Wind Blows)
In the meantime, the star even wanted to quit and fled to another film set. “I left to shoot Agents Die Alone. [The producers of Westward Winds] came by plane and convinced me to come back,” Eastwood said.
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