Go Ahead ...

At the beginning of the Republican convention last week Glenn Beck had taken some days off from his radio program at about the same time it was announced there would be a mystery guest speaker on Thursday night. The guest hosts were speculating about whether or not the mystery speaker would be Glenn Beck, and were taking calls to hear what their listeners thought. One woman guessed Clint Eastwood. I thought that would be an interesting twist, but didn't really think it would happen.

Lo, and behold!

I was never a real big fan of Clint Eastwood. We watched Rawhide when I was growing up, but for me, the name Clint meant the big guy on another western, Cheyenne. Clint Walker was my first TV cowboy hero, and today he is still my favorite.

My brother, Randall, met Clint Walker in Branson, Missouri a few years ago, and got me an autographed poster and a set of the first year of Cheyenne on dvd. Randall works in the entertainment business and had a chance to talk with Walker for awhile. He encouraged Randall to keep his performances clean and family oriented, which certainly struck a chord with me. Walker is very conservative with deep religious beliefs, and it shows in his work. He often encouraged people to read the Bible in his Cheyenne series, and there are no better family oriented films than Night of the Grizzly and Baker's Hawk.

Unfortunately, by the end of the 1960's Clint Walker's star was already fading, but the other Clint in Hollywood was on the rise. Rawhide had brought Eastwood to the viewing public's attention, but he had second billing on the program, and when the show's lead actor, Eric Fleming, drowned, Eastwood was unable to carry the program on his own and it went off the air. Then he went to Europe.

Spaghetti westerns made Eastwood a star. The no-name-silent-tough-guy image resonated with audiences and by the time he took on the Dirty Harry roles he was a superstar and one of the top Hollywood draws. He's made some great western movies, Pale Rider, a mysterious remake of Shane, immediately comes to mind. The Dirty Harry movies gave us some terrific one-liners like, "Well do ya, punk?" and of course, "Go ahead, make my day." But his films are so full of bad language, and "gratuitous sex" in the later movies, that I can't let my children watch them (I don't either, by the way), which is really a sad commentary on what the movie industry deems is needed to make a hit film.

Eastwood himself is a good, believable actor. The bold, confident resolve in his roles exudes a type of character most men would probably like to emulate. But the last night of the Republican convention may have been Eastwood's finest performance. The enthusiasm of the crowd was electrifying when he stepped out on the stage. Then his stuttering delivery and mocking of Obama with the empty chair brought the house down.

Commentators kept referring to his ad lib performance, but at first I didn't think it was. It was too well done to have not been thought through ahead of time. But in an interview with his home town newspaper, The Carmel Pine Cone, he said he had roughed out an outline of what to say, but the chair came to him as he was backstage just 15 minutes before he was to go on. My guess would have been that he had practiced that performance to perfection, but his improvisation was still the perfect performance and proves that he is a very talented star and a consummate actor.

And yes, he made my day. Now if he would just clean up his movies a little bit.