Eastwood in Hollywood

Patrick McGilligan has updated his 2002 biography Clint: The Life and Legend (OR Books, $25) with new chapters on the Academy Award winning Western star’s life and career through 2014. For fans of Eastwood, McGilligan’s unauthorized biography is much like his subject: straight forward and unyielding in its truth and honesty. Sixty years since his first role in Revenge of the Creature and fifty years since the release of For a Few Dollars More, the updated biography of the Hollywood icon is not varnished with gilt by the McGilligan, but rather he has sanded Eastwood’s life and career down to the bare complexities of celebrity, fame and power. McGilligan concludes that Eastwood’s contribution to the popular culture of television and cinema is as great as any who have acted, directed and produced and should be considered one of the chosen few for a “Hollywood Mt. Rushmore,” even if it contains a few cracks fraught by Eastwood’s own humanity, temptations and peccadillos.