The cult detective film “Inspector Harry” was released in theaters 50 years ago. The opportunity to remember that Clint Eastwood was not at all the first choice for the role!
Clint Eastwood is inseparable from Inspector Harry. However, the American star was not at all the first choice of the production, which had previously offered the role of Callahan to a skewer of other great American actors. As Inspector Harry celebrates his 50th birthday, we reveal who almost held the gun instead of Clint.
Before Clint Eastwood was finally chosen to be Inspector Harry, a role he would hold in five feature films between 1971 and 1988, the production first turned to heavyweights of the time: John Wayne , Robert Mitchum, Burt Lancaster and Steve McQueen, just that!
Is it the violence of the script that made these four big stars decline the offer? We do not know. It is in any case for this reason that George C. Scott refuses to commit. Without a main actor, the project fell through and the script rights were then sold to ABC Television, then to Warner Bros. studios.
When Warner took over the project, it was with an actor in mind, and it wasn’t Clint Eastwood yet. The Major indeed hopes very strongly that Frank Sinatra, 55 years old at the time, embodies on the screen Harry Callahan in front of the camera of Sydney Pollack or Irvin Kershner. But a surgical intervention undergone by the actor-crooner will definitely put him out of the game.
It was only after all this turbulence surrounding the casting of Inspector Harry that the role was offered to Eastwood. Then 40 years old, the actor, already well established with the success of Sergio Leone’s Dollar trilogy, accepted the offer on the condition that Don Siegel, who had filmed A Sheriff in New York, Sierra Torride and Les Preies, officiates behind the camera. Request accepted and legendary saga initiated.
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