Can't see behind the squint

New Clint Eastwood biography will not make your day

In his first major film, “A Fistful of Dollars,” Clint Eastwood emerged as an enigma, a character simply known as The Man With No Name. Eastwood has more or less remained an enigma, particularly behind the camera, and it has served his career well. With two Oscars for best director and two for best picture, Eastwood is one of Hollywood’s most respected filmmakers.

With American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood (Harmony, $25.99), author Marc Elliot attempts to penetrate the Eastwood enigma. Elliot’s story of Eastwood’s career is the familiar one: The 1950s television star hits it big in Sergio Leone’s 1960s Spaghetti Westerns and builds on his image as an action hero of few words. Eastwood also was looking early on to produce and direct his own films. From the start he was a man who abided no guff in an industry filled with it.

Eastwood’s private life is less pleasant. Elliot describes a man who coldly dumps mistresses and business partners when he no longer has use for them. According to the book, Eastwood cheated on his first wife, Maggie, soon after they wed in 1953. Maggie either ignored or tolerated her husband’s infidelity until the late 1970s, when his affair with Sondra Locke became too public. Eastwood’s split with Locke would be even more public and far uglier than his divorce.

Is any of this information new? No. Elliot assembles his material from previously published biographies (even those he derides in his author’s notes) and magazine articles. His research is comprehensive but not revelatory. Any attempt to reach the inner layers of Eastwood’s enigma is probably doomed while the man remains alive. Eastwood is famous for saying little — he has granted only a handful of in-depth interviews, and he did not cooperate with Elliot.

Because Eastwood ranks among today’s most powerful filmmakers, those in the industry would be foolhardy to say anything unflattering about him on the record. Elliot claims he interviewed “several dozen” insiders, but doesn’t name any, nor does he cite them, not even anonymously, in his text. If it weren’t for Locke’s tell-all 1997 autobiography, which Elliot quotes extensively, his book would be much thinner.

That may not have been a bad thing. Elliot’s book suffers because it is too long. With no original information, it would have worked better as a quick, easily digestible overview of Eastwood’s life and career. Elliot expands the book to bolster its prestige. But his priorities are strange. He gives few details about Eastwood’s seven seasons on “Rawhide,” but devotes an entire page to his guest shot on “Mr. Ed.” Later, Elliot provides play-by-play descriptions of the Oscar telecasts when Eastwood won big with “Million Dollar Baby” and lost two years later with “Letters From Iwo Jima.”

The strength of Elliot’s biography is its currency. Elliot fades out with last year’s “Gran Torino,” an enormous hit at the box-office but a failure at the Oscars. His book describes the man sufficiently, but as for what goes on behind Eastwood’s squint, Elliot offers only conjecture.

Jeffrey Westhoff is a local free-lance writer and film critic.