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Don Siegel: Tough Loners, Major Male Stars, Eastwood's House Director -- "And More"

posted 9 months ago by roger1 (3626)
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Don Siegel started at Warner Brothers in the forties directing "montages" (dissove inserts) in movies to show action "compressed" -- like in Casablanca, evidently the most famous movie he ever did montages on.

He got to direct a Warners semi-B in which the corpulent Mutt (Sydney Greensteet) and skinny little Jeff(Peter Lorre) of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon were actually given the leads in a movie. "The Verdict."(Paul Newman would grab the same title for a 1982 film.

Came the 50's, Siegel was one of those accomplished 'black and white B movie makers." Riot in Cell Block 11 is his famous prison film, but his MOST famous classic of the 50's was in the SciFi realm, allegory division: "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" -- the first of many but never really matched for its stark terror -- "If you fall asleep, they take over your body," and "If they take over your body, you never feel emotion again."

But it was across the breadth of the 60s, the 70s, and the beginning of the 80s that Siegel made his mark -- slowly at first and then in one big walloping climactic star making movie that - Siegel himself said -- made him a known auteur forever more.

The movie wsa "Dirty Harry"(1971) a blockbuster that critic Richard Schickel said "converted Clint Eastwood from a star to a superstar" and made Don Siegel the "go to director" for tough guy action movies as they existed back then.

"Dirty Harry" was actually rather the end of a collaboration between Siegel and star Eastwood.
Between 1968 and 1971, Don Siegel ONLY worked with Clint Eastwood, as somewhat of an in-house director, even as Eastwood worked on other movies like Hang em High, Where Eagles Dare, Paint Your Wagon, Kelly's Heroes and his self-directed "Play Misty for Me," in which Siegel took a small part as a cynical bartender pal of Clint's (The mustacheoed Siegel was good in teh character part, a bit like Walter Matthau in it.)

In between doing all those othe movies, Eastwood worked with Siegel on Coogan's Bluff(an Arizona cowboy cop fish out of water in NYC -- the inspiration for McCloud as a New Mexico cowboy cop in NYC); Two Mules For Sister Sara (with Clint copycatting his spaghetti Western gunslinger in an America/Mexico adventure -- with top billed Shirley MacLaine as a hooker in nun's clothing); The Beguiled (Almost an art film for Clint and Siegel -- with Clint's sexy Civil War soldier surrounded by women in a mansion and subject to their lulst and their vengeance.)

Evidently, Siegel was supposed to do Kelly's Heroes with Clint too, but something fell through.

1971 saw Clint Eastwood getting the luckiest break of his career: an offer to play Dirty Harry after its original star, Frank Sinatra had to back out and Paul Newman turned it down. Eastwood was still seen as a cowboy star then -- and evidently the Dirty Harry script was sent to EVERY male actor in the biz before Clint took the role. The list includes Steve McQueen(too close to Bullitt), Walter Matthau, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne(who may have wanted the role more than he wsa wanted for it) and Bill Cosby. All of whom can be pictured saying "Do you feel lucky, punk?")

Eastwood took Dirty Harry and got Siegel to direct it and the rest was history. Why such a hit? Well it was a Warner Brothers movie rather than at the cheaper Universal where Clint and Don made their earlier films. Everything about it looked bigger and more professional than the Universal movies -- and the San Francisco location shooting extensive and meaningful.

But also: that PLOT. With Eastwood in the role, the Western gunslinger becomes the loner action cop -- and the genres changed accordingly. Crucially important was the villain, a cruel psycho that only the new R rating could allow. He killed a woman, raped and killed a teenage girl; killed a black child; and commandeered a school bus FULL of children to terrorize them. With Dirty Harry's shoot-first tough guy in one corner and the World's Most Evil Villain in the other -- Dirty Harry boiled the blood of righteous crowds around the world.

And that movie rather split Eastwood and Siegel apart.

For Eastwood's part, he would now direct himself most of the time. As for Siegel, suddenly it seemed that he had to make movies with every male star imaginable.

Funny: right after Dirty Harry, the next Siegel action movie was anchored by: Walter Matthau? But the movie wsa great -- Charley Varrick -- Matthau was believably tough (it was a return to thrillers as he had done in the 60's, after a lot of comedies) and the cast in support was great.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

Here was Don Siegel's line up of male stars through the 70's to his finish in the 80's:

Clint Eastwood(three movies climaxing with Dirty Harry at teh beginning of the 70's, then one more as a reunion in 1979: Escape From Alcatraz. Counting 1968's Coogan's Bluff, that was 5 total Clint/Don movies)
Walter Matthau(Charley Varrick.)
Michael Caine(The Black Windmill)
John Wayne (The Shootist -- a Western with a crime thriller feel -- and Wayne's last movie, as a gunfighter dying of cancer played by an ACTOR dying of cancer -- just slower.)
Charles Bronson(Telefon -- a spy movie.)
Burt Reynolds (Rough Cut -- rather "To Catch a Thief" for 1980)
Rip Torn (Jinxed -- Don Siegel's final film -- his first to star a woman -- Bette Midler, who hated Siegel -- but its Torn who really steals the show, and the movie is set in Charley Varrick's Reno with some of the same cast.)

Though Clint Eastwood was clearly Don Siegel's bread and butter for a key part of their career, those OTHER tough guys(including Walter Matthau!) lined up quick like after Dirty Harry was such a hit.

And Don Siegel became famous for making -- pretty much exclusively -- movies about "tough male loners with their own code." Some were lawmen, some were robbers, some were hit men. But all the same in the end.

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

But Siegel's "tough guy bona fides" only EXPANDS when one considers the stars he worked with BEFORE Clint Eastwood, in the 60's:

Elvis Presley(in a Western, Flaming Star, that counts as one of Elvis' good ones.)
Steve McQueen(Hell is for Heroes -- a WWII movie. McQueen and Siegel clashed.)
James Coburn (Also in Hell is for Heroes.)
Bob Newhart(ALSO in Hell is for Heroes -- and Bob was always deceptively tough -- check out his passive aggressive personality. He does one of his "phone routines" in this movie, too.)
Bobby Darin (ALSO in Hell is for Heroes.)
Lee Marvin (GREAT in The Killers of 1964 as the older half of a two-man hit team -- and early "Jules and Vincent" ala Pulp Fiction.)
Clu Culager (GREAT in The Killers of 1964 as the younger half of a two-man hit team -- offbeat and nutty versus Marvin's cool cat.)
Ronald Reagan (GREAT in The Killers of 1964 as a crime boss -- his final movie before politics -- The Killers was meant to be a TV movie but deemed too violent and sent to theaters.)
Henry Fonda (In the Western Welcome to Hard Times)
Henry Fonda AND Richard Widmark(in the NYC cop movie Madigan -- which got Siegel called an auteur by Jay Cocks of Time Magazine THREE YEARS BEFORE Dirty Harry.)
Richard Widmark again in "Death of a Gunfighter"(Widmark got his director fired and forced Siegel to take the job.)

Sorting them out, this includes such "top guns" as Eastwood, Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen and Burt Reynolds before adding in such "one offs" as John Wayne, Walter Matthau and Michael Caine.

Interesting thing though: not all Don Siegel movies hit the same. He seemed very dependent on script -- so Walter Matthau ended up with a better thriller to be in than either Michael Caine, Charles Bronson or Burt Reynolds, for Siegel

"The hits":

The Killers
Madigan
Coogan's Bluff
The Beguiled
Dirty Harry
Charley Varrick
The Shootist
Escape from Alcatraz

"The misses":

Two Mules for Sister Sara
The Black Windmill
Telefon
Rough Cut
Jinxed

CONT

[–] roger1 (3626) 9 months ago

PLUS: All that work in the fifties. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is the landmark classic -- but Riot on Cell Block 11, The Lineup (with Eli Wallach as a hitman -- more macho), and Baby Face Nelson(with Mickey Rooney believably psychotic and a ladies man as a gangster) -- lots of good ones in there, too.

Side-bar: In the 50s, Sam Peckinpah worked odd jobs for Don Siegel and actually did some acting in invasion of the Body Snatchers(as a meter reader.) Eventually Peckinpah was a "bigger name" than Siegel in the 70's(thanks to The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) but also eventually Peckinpah burned out on booze and drugs and became unemployable before his old friend Don Siegel hired Peckinpah AGAIN to be his second unit man(On "Jinxed" in 1982.) Siegel and Peckinpah now seem to have co-equal status with "The WIld Bunch" and "Dirty Harry" as their towering acheivements(but The Wild Bunch wasn't as big a hit as Dirty Harry.)

Side-bar: Evidently, Dirty Harry was SUCH a huge hit that it rather drove Eastwood and Siegel away from each other. Eastwood wanted to direct himself; Siegel wanted to work with other actors. But Paramount honchos conspired to hire Eastwood away from his Universal/Warner Brothers strongholds for one movie -- and then conspired to bring in Don Siegel to keep Eastwood out of self-directing. It was hard to get EITHER man to agree to the deal, but they did. Escape From Alcatraz got great reviews and good box office -- but it is far less exciting than Dirty Harry.

Side-bar: Eastwood gave an on-screen dedication credit on his 1992 Best Picture/Best Director Oscar Winner Unforgiven "To Sergio and Don" -- Sergio Leone and Don Siegel. But Clint made more movies with Don.