Clint Eastwood & Sondra Locke

More, please!

Clint Eastwood fired many people from is life. If you’re acquainted with his films or with the Malpaso credit on the screen, you’re also aware of producer Fritz Manes. His name shows up in Eastwood’s films, he knew him for 40 years, and just fired him. I’ll rephrase that. He got someone to fire him. Eastwood doesn’t do “every dirty job that comes along”, as his character, ‘Dirty Harry’. Someone does it for him.

I still like some of the movies, but I find it quite bizarre that a “western hero”, who exterminated many people’s careers, not with a Magnum, is seriously allergic to animal fur and couldn’t even have a cat or a dog, much less a horse. Locke remembers him on the set of Bronco Billy, “feeling miserable” about this, although Eastwood does know how to ride a horse in real life and certainly looks great in it.

Sondra Locke was one of the few people that stood up to him when things didn’t go as he intended. She wanted her life and career outside “Clint’s world”, or “Clint’s bubble”, as she describes her life with the man who said “that we all can get away with anything”. As Dostoyevsky said, “if God doesn’t exist, everything is permitted”. So he tried to fire Locke from his life. I find it very hard to feel sympathy for someone who doesn’t even have the courage to break a relationship, face to face.

He “hired” someone whose “job” was to mind other people’s lives to do it. There was a disgusting confrontation in a kitchen, which Locke describes in a very detailed way.

“Certainly, above all others he ‘fired’ from his life, I received the worst at his hand. I believe that is because I dared to challenge his treatment of me when no one else did. I had the audacity [in his view] to refuse to do what he wanted me to do, which was to walk away with no work, no security, no home. THEN he wouldn’t “say anything bad about me.” I could not do that.”

Great. Another woman whining over chronic suppression.

What are the claims!

She met him at his office, the “Taco Bell”, as everyone called it, “because it looked just like one”. It was a one-story stucco bungalow. “With arms folded in front of him, he began to stroll toward me in that famous ‘S-like’ posture, his lope leading with the knees.

He was wearing what must have been his standard dress – jeans, a white T-shirt and tennis shoes. Still, I didn’t view him as imposing. (…) He had a light and carefree air about him; so much so that I experienced an odd sensation, as if the school bell had just rung and I could throw my books into the air and run off to some unexpected celebration.”

They felt comfortable with each other, and Eastwood seemed easygoing. Locke was cast as ‘Laura Lee’ in one of Eastwood’s best films: The Outlaw Josey Wales.

“I walked onto the set of The Outlaw Josey Wales wearing full Western attire. The location, Lake Powell, Arizona, was breathtakingly surreal. We were in the middle of the desert with nothing but tall sand dunes as far as the eye could see.....Then I noticed Clint. He no longer appeared the easygoing guy I had talked with in his Burbank office.

He was ‘Josey Wales’. His long and lanky body stood tall, high above everyone else’s. His handsome chiseled face seemed different behind that now-full beard, and, in that flat wide brimmed hat, he looked like some kind of mythic hero. But he was more than handsome; he was compelling.

At first, Locke saw the image of Eastwood almost everyone seems to. They fell in love on the set, “at first sight”, although the actor was still married. She describes how this happened in her book, and only people who never fell in love can’t identify the adrenaline rush they both felt. They became inseparable from then on: “I seemed to bring out the little boy in him. And although he loved me for my childlike nature, he brought out the woman in me.”

Locke’s] enemies claim nobody before or since has had as much power as Locke; that her intimacy with Clint conferred a unique ability to influence his decisions – a power she was not loath to exercise. Locke insists she had little influence. Rather she was a pawn in the Malpaso game, particularly useful to Clint when he needed to deflect responsibility for controversial policies, such as the wave of hirings and firings that would shortly rock the company.”

Locke also recalls that they “talked a lot about scripts and films”. “In fact, as I look back on it that’s most of what we talked about – the work. He was always interested in my opinions on everything.”

Although Locke was just the latest in a long line who had fallen for Clint, she had scant knowledge of his history with women”. Eastwood told her he was unhappily married, and was only stuck with it for the “sake of the children”, Alison and Kyle.

Okay. This one's gonna be a potboiler.

Was the book sanitized in order to be published?

Otherwise, it could have been a good read.

Yeah, R3, men don't ever whine, least of all not on DL. (snort)

The press only knew they lived together more than a year afterwards, by the time The Gauntlet was released, in 1977. Locke didn’t particularly like the film, but she got great reviews

She became his costar on several films and helped him with the casting and editing. She coaxed him into doing the box-office hit Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and Bronco Billy (1980), the latter remains the favorite film they made together:

“I thought of Clint in some ways as this innocent, kind of sweet, little boy, with an introverted nature”, says Locke “I thought that part of him was very much like the character in Bronco Billy, and that he saw himself that way too. At least, that’s what he preferred to project, especially off screen. But what I thought was shyness turned out really to be an inability to connect.”

Bronco Billy was a commercial flop but a turning point in his career – the critics liked it and it made him more “respectable”. Certainly, as McGilligan states, there’s no bloodshed and it shows a different side of Eastwood. Locke says it was a lot of fun to play the snobbish ‘Antoinette Lily’, the one time she didn’t feel a “narrow focus” on her own character.

Fact is, she was often cast as sidekick, not as leading lady. The movie still is much better than most of Clint’s later and recent efforts.

In 1977, Sondra Locke starred in The Shadow of Chikara, a horror/western film, but his association with Clint started to overshadow her. She felt she needed a more focused director, for one thing, and she thought about seeking a project closer to her “own sensibilities”.

In the second of the “orangutan films”, Any Which Way You Can (1980), Locke again sings by herself, and very well too. This was almost ordered by Clint. Although she likes music, she didn’t want to do it at all.

They showed up in Hollywood’s “superficial occasions”, where no one really knew them. When the Variety Club honored Clint, “hardly anyone in the large audience knew him personally. Yet everyone acted like good friends”.

He convinced him to do an abortion, then a tube ligation. She thought she’d be with him forever. She was in her early thirties. Locke started to suspect she didn’t know the man she fell in love with. Eastwood had strange reactions, which she often describes as bizarre behavior.

In the early eighties, Clint had two flops in a row, Firefox and Honkytonk Man. By then, Locke had found a project she wanted to make on her own. She rightfully felt the public perceived them as “tied by the hip”. Eastwood got his hands on it, changed it and turned it into Sudden Impact, the most successful film of the Dirty Harry franchise.

He didn’t bother with Locke’s feelings about it. She understood, although she disliked what he did. She knew he needed a hit. But, according to Locke, it’s no coincidence that this was their last film together.

I always thought this blind item pointed to Clint and Sondra:

It is tough to be a permanent A list actor and a permanent A list director, but if you live as long as this guy has, then, you might have a chance. He has definitely made and starred in some incredible movies. He also made some incredible duds. He has not been married as many times as you would think, but for someone who espouses such conservative opinions, he has lived a life that is anything but.

It can be argued that the 70’s was his prime as an actor. Women literally threw themselves at him. He was great at staying out of the tabloids and made sure the women he involved himself with could stay quiet too.

He met one of the loves of his life at a party. Not just any party. This was a no holds barred Laurel Canyon 70’s orgy. Yeah, he does not really seem the orgy type. He was the type to go to an orgy and pick out one or two women and take them to his place. Oh, and definitely no drugs. Picks up women stoned and wasted but won’t touch any for himself.

The night he met her she was being pulled into a room about to have sex with a guy and another woman. Our actor steps in and takes both of the women and leads them back to his place. So, they go back to his place and enjoy some threesome fun. The woman with whom he was about to embark on a relationship actually left the next morning while the other stayed for a few days and brought over other women. Our actor had a serious kink.

The other woman showed up a few days later and explained her situation. She was married, but was in an open relationship. Very open. Over the next few years, the couple engaged in threesomes almost every time they had sex. There would be other women and other men. The girlfriend became pregnant multiple times and had multiple abortions.

It was a crazy time. In addition to the sex there were also the fights. Legendary ones. Today, police would have been called all the time. Back then, they came a few times and when they saw the actor they didn’t do anything about it. When they split, it was one of the few times our actor was splashed all over the tabloids.

In my opinion, Clint does not so much “direct” a film as he “shoots a script.” He rarely develops or initiates a screenplay [perhaps never]. He buys a script and then shoots it literally. I would say it is not so much directing as “covering” the script. By that I mean he will “cover” a scene with all shots required to know what is going on, but doesn’t express an opinion or guide the audiences’ emotions or eye.

On Sudden Impact I recall commenting to Clint about something in the decor of my character’s house. I felt it was out of character for her, and reflected a different sort of person. His response to me was, “If they’re [the audience is] looking at that, they are not following the movie.” To him, it was entirely unimportant.

Susan Sarandon was offered the leading part on Tightrope, but she questioned the sex and violence in the script as well as the mistreatment of women. Eastwood’s answer was: “I don’t think it’s my job to worry about that. I’m an actor.” She turned down the role. But Clint was hardly considered a legend at that point. It was still during the years he was taken for granted as a good looking movie star, and a commercially successful producer, but no more.

My thoughts about Susan are that she would have turned him down even if he HAD been a “legend.” I think she has made good choices in her career and believe she is a person of integrity. I did suggest Bujold as I have always loved her work

Sometime later, Clint Eastwood even got himself elected as Mayor of Carmel, because he wanted to help his fellow citizens… no, he wanted to construct an extension of his restaurant downtown, taller than the city allowed, and the project was denied. So he got elected and approved it.

He even had the ambition of becoming President. After a dinner in the White House with Ronald Reagan, he told Locke, “this could be ours one day”.

By now, Locke was desperately searching for a project as a director, but Eastwood boycotted every effort. When she found the script of Ratboy, Clint offered his crew’s services. It would be a Malpaso film, and she fought back – it would obviously mean, to outsiders, that this was a “Clint film”, ghost directed by him, which was not the case.

Locke writes that living with Clint was “easy” – everything was always taken care of; a car waiting, all the arrangements made when they traveled, the WB private jet at her disposal. But she grew more and more unhappy. He started to go away for long periods of time without telling her where he was.

She started to see “red flags” everywhere, as she states, but admits: “Sadly, I still loved him.” Sondra Locke was at the dead end of an abusive relationship.

SL is a mistress of the Pity Party. But she hitched her wagon to a Republican pussyhound expecting her life would be a Disney Princess epic.

Later on, when they were in court, Eastwood considered himself a “feminist filmmaker”. I never understood this. Sondra Locke reflects :

“The woman in Misty was a psychotic killer; in Beguiled all the females cut off Clint’s leg, then murdered him with poisonous mushrooms; in Two Mules the woman was a foul-mouthed person posing as a nun; in The Gauntlet I played a hooker who’d been raped in an unthinkable fashion; and in Tightrope almost every woman in it was a sadistic or masochist hooker. That’s a pretty good record for a feminist filmmaker.”

Locke didn’t back down. She was interested in directing and followed through. Impulse, starring Theresa Russell, George Dzundza and Jeff Fahey was her next film. Eastwood disliked the cast, didn’t even know the actors, but he did a strange thing: He casted Dzundza and Fahey in his next film, White Hunter Black Heart (1990).

Eastwood then hired George Dzundza and Jeff Fahey (when they were in the middle of filming Impulse with Locke) to star in HIS next film, White Hunter, Black Heart. She was astonished: “I’d hired them, he’d even put them down when I showed him their pictures. To her, the gesture felt “creepy and incestuous”.

As it turned out, Eastwood didn’t like this from the start and tried to boycott Locke’s efforts. According to Sondra, he urged her to travel with him when he knew she had important meetings regarding the production. When Ruddy phoned her, he sat down at the piano, “banging out Scott Joplin tunes as loudly as he could. Was he jealous?”

Locke didn’t understand the “mixed signals” coming from Eastwood at this point: “His actions seemed another confirmation that he wasn’t trying to end our relationship; otherwise he’d be glad to know I had a film to direct, something that might keep me out of his hair, give me my own independence again.”

Locke went through a very difficult experience directing Impulse. At that time, they were estranged but not separated, and Clint, who was behaving strangely, changed the locks, gathered some of her clothes, put them into storage boxes and sent them to Gordon Anderson’s house.

She was evicted. In the exact day (April 10, 1989) he knew she was directing a complex scene on her own film, with 60 people waiting for her. When Gordon Anderson phoned, telling her about this, she fainted.

Locke was under such psychological pressure that she spent her breaks during filming crying in the bathroom until her assistant came to call her to the set. How could she direct anything? She wanted her life and career back. She started to suffer from panic attacks while trying to hide her ordeal. In her words, “don’t let them know you’re bleeding when you’re in a shark tank” (referring to Hollywood). She pulled through.

The circle of friends from the City of Angels dropped from the sky and out of the picture, as soon as they knew she was in conflict with Eastwood, whose motto was, “a man can get away with everything, if he wants to”.

Then, Sondra Locke found out she had breast cancer and had to decide if the doctor was to remove just the affected breast or both of them, since it was a type that almost always occurred on both. She decided on both.

Locke then filed a lawsuit against Eastwood: “I knew that the ceiling of my universe was now caving in completely.” The press quickly grabbed the story, Locke felt like “a complete wreck”

During that time, Sondra Locke also found her car window smashed. Her director’s log for Impulse, along with some legal papers concerning the lawsuit against Eastwood, had disappeared. Sometimes we wish that Columbo visited Eastwood and told him before going out of his office, “just one more thing…” Unfortunately, films aren’t real life, although some fictional characters have more truth in them than some real persons who carry the power of myth.

When Locke finally found a house, one of her few possessions was the photograph Bob Willoughby took of her – a promotional photo from The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Locke stood looking at the picture and thought: “Somewhere behind Bob Willoughby’s image of that gangly girl on the Staten Island Ferry was me. In so many ways, she hadn’t changed at all; in so many ways, she no longer existed.”

Sondra Locke underwent surgery and chemotherapy. In the hospital, they were expecting “a witch who was suing that nice hero Clint Eastwood” so they felt surprised. There were two court cases. First against Clint Eastwood, who wanted her to get… absolutely nothing. He had suggested, through Godfather’s producer Al Ruddy, that she could have a three year deal with Warner and develop her own projects. They settled out of court.

Then, Locke found out that it was Clint who was paying her using Warner as a front. She submitted over 30 projects, all of them were denied. One of them was Junior, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was a personal friend of Eastwood and Locke and was very enthusiastic. When he knew about the breakup, he didn’t even care about telling Locke he had decided to make it with his friend and director Ivan Reitman.

His wife, Maria Shriver, was Sondra Locke’s friend. Locke ran into her at a social occasion and told her in the face about Schwarzenegger’s disregard, when she started to say Locke was on the “family list”:

“Maria, please take me out of the ‘family list’ because apparently it doesn’t mean much. After all this, we can at least be honest. We are no longer friends and can’t act as if we are. I’m hurt and I can’t act as if I’m not.” Locke comments that “she was once one of those politically correct for her [Shriver] to pursue”. What’s interesting is that Locke tries to understand these people’s motivations and she usually gets right on target.

R14 lol

Locke did the unthinkable: She found a lawyer, Peggy Garrity, and sued Clint and Warner for fraud. “Emotionally” she “no longer wanted to go back into things with Clint”, she wanted to file a “business lawsuit”. Garrity advised her that “building a fraud case is like putting together a mosaic. No individual pieces mean a lot on their own; but put them altogether and a picture emerges. (…) The very nature of fraud is something hidden”.

They warned her it was a lost battle. Almost everyone in Hollywood turned their back, Locke couldn’t find almost anyone to witness on her behalf; they told her Warner was too powerful.

Even Lili Zanuck, who was a “close friend” didn’t mind that Eastwood overheard her conversations with Locke when he had Locke’s telephones tapped. For the last four years of their relationship, Eastwood had been living a double life with other woman and had two children with her.

Garrity and Locke fought relentlessly throughout 1994 against Warner and its law firm. Eastwood tried to deny they ever had a commitment!

Locke was so furious that she wanted to “pull out his hair transplants”, at one point. “What a completely evil, manipulating, lying excuse for a man he was. "

And what ultimate irony. Clint Eastwood, the man who symbolized to so many what a man should be, had turned out to have none of the acknowledged qualities of a real man – loyalty, honesty, bravery and moral strength

Clint finally faced Locke in the courtroom, when Garrity said, “I call Sondra Locke as my next witness”.

“I stood up and walked to the front of the courtroom, swore to tell the truth, and sat down. Looking around the room at everyone, my eyes finally fell on Clint. He was unable to look at me and just stared down at the table. The room felt quiet and still as if someone had just pushed the pause button on the videotape of my life. The past seven years of it seemed somehow destined to arrive at this moment.”

She looks amazingly like Uma Thurman.

She felt alone, but wasn’t alone – there were people on her side. One day, feeling depressed, she found a note on the windshield of her car, signed by a complete stranger: “We’re rooting for you, Sondra. A lot of us are on your side.” These small things helped her going through the trial.

When Eastwood took the stand, “his face looked hard and permanently etched by anger”, describes Locke, who remembered Gordon Anderson’s remark, “Clint doesn’t look very good. It’s sort of like what is on the inside of him has permeated to the outside”.

It was finally the moment when their eyes connected. “Incredibly it was the first time it had happened in this court – maybe even in years. His look was one of intimidation; mine was of defiance. It was a stare that seemed to last forever and carried the intensity of the ultimate showdown. I was determined not to be the first to glance away. And finally, it was Clint who turned.”

She fought two of the most powerful influences in the entertainment industry. Eastwood’s side asked her to settle out of court, and she agreed. Her lawsuit against Clint and WB even made jurisprudence.

“… the Court of Appeal of the State of California, Second Appellate District, had unanimously ruled that my lawsuit against Warner Bros. does indeed contain proper and sufficient evidence to warrant a trial for fraud and breach of contract, and that Judge Thomas Murphy of the Burbank court, who in early 1995 had cavalierly dismissed my case, acted incorrectly in doing so. (…) That means that my lawsuit against Warner Bros. has made law and will set a precedent in the future for the way major film studios can treat other artists in these kind of contracts.” Now quoting the judges’ ruling: “Such conduct [by Warner Bros.] is not beyond the reach of law.”

Before this, when they were in court, Eastwood made a carefully crafted remark to the press, posing as the victim: “No good deed goes unpunished.” Only he fumbled the words. As Sondra Locke comments, there are no second takes in real life, only in films. Besides, he entered the court by the back door, with two security guards, while Locke entered by the front door with no security. When the press noticed it, Eastwood started to enter the court through the front… still with the security guards.

is she the mom of the hot son?

R23 Sondra didn't have any kids with Clint.

"He convinced her to do an abortion, then a tube ligation" R10

In court, Gordon Anderson made such an impact with his deposition about Clint that he made Eastwood’s lawyers uncomfortable. There was no mistrial, as Clint’s attorneys kept asking. Clint had his lawyers “climbing the walls” for being defeated.

Locke settled out of court, but the jurors thought it was a mistake, they had decided that Locke was right and they wanted to express it, as they did it later on TV.

Gordon Anderson made (as usual) a shrewd remark. He had a private nickname for Clint, “Susi Pi”, short for “sociopath”.

Most important of all, what became of Sondra Locke’s career after Clint?

Most damaging to my future was the fallout with Eastwood. This was twofold. First, I had worked with him exclusively for so many years that I had not developed a network outside him and WB, his home studio.

Second – and most important – was that his obvious enmity toward me had a surefire “blackball” effect. He didn’t even have to articulate that he didn’t want anyone working with me. They understood the situation. He was a very powerful figure in town and no one wanted to get on his bad side. Why bother? Why get involved?

There was always the unspoken rule that most in Hollywood go with power. Don’t upset the apple cart. Stay out of the way of Clint or WB. Of course, this was always something I knew I had to contend with.

Is this thread a series of excerpts from Locke's book? A review of her book? A book about a book?

From Wikipedia :

Personal life :

Locke married sculptor Gordon Leigh Anderson on September 25, 1967. She has stated in court papers that the marriage was never consummated and described her relationship with Anderson (reportedly a homosexual) as "tantamount to sister and brother." According to Locke, her husband is "more like a sister to me."

From 1975 until 1989, Locke cohabited with actor Clint Eastwood. They had first met in 1972, but became involved while filming The Outlaw Josey Wales.

In the late 1970s, Locke had two abortions.Shortly after the second abortion she underwent a tubal ligation, stating in her autobiography that her decision to have the procedures was due to Eastwood's adamancy that parenthood would not fit into their lifestyle.

Eastwood secretly fathered another woman's two children during the last three years of their relationship.

In 1989, Locke filed a palimony suit against Eastwood after he changed the locks on their Bel-Air home and moved her possessions into storage while she was on the Impulse set. Following a yearlong legal battle, the parties reached a settlement wherein Eastwood set up a film development/directing pact for Locke at Warner Bros. in exchange for dropping the suit.

Locke sued Eastwood again for fraud in 1995, alleging the deal with Warner was a sham—the studio had rejected all of the 30 or more projects she proposed and never used her as a director. According to Locke's attorney Peggy Garrity, Eastwood committed "the ultimate betrayal" by arranging the "bogus" deal as a way to keep her out of work.

The case came to trial in 1996, but just minutes before a jury was to render a verdict in Locke's favor, she settled with Eastwood for undisclosed amount of money. The outcome of the case, Locke said, sent a "loud and clear" message to Hollywood, "that people cannot get away with whatever they want to just because they're powerful."

Locke brought separate action against Warner Bros. for allegedly conspiring with Eastwood to sabotage her directorial career. As had happened with the previous lawsuit, this ended in an out-of-court settlement, in 1999. The agreement with Warner Bros., Locke said, was "a happy ending" after "five years of torture." "I feel elated. This has been the best day in a long, long time," Locke said outside the courthouse. The case is used in some modern law-school contract textbooks to illustrate the legal concept of good faith.

Locke is a breast cancer survivor, having undergone a double mastectomy and chemotherapy in 1990. During treatment, she began dating one of her surgeons, Scott Cunneen. Cunneen is 17 years younger than Locke. He moved in with her in 1991.[4] In 2001, Locke purchased a six-bedroom home in the Hollywood Hills, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in the southeastern Santa Monica Mountains.

[quote] Is this thread a series of excerpts from Locke's book? A review of her book? A book about a book?

Yeah, I'm fucking confused, too.

Op, can you explain what is it that we're reading? The text goes from commentary to first person without explanation.

From Clint Eastwood Wikipedia :

Sondra Locke :

In 1972, Eastwood met married actress (later director) Sondra Locke. The two began living together while filming The Outlaw Josey Wales in the autumn of 1975, by which time, according to Locke, "He had told me that there was no real relationship left between him and Maggie."

Locke wrote in her autobiography, "Clint seemed astonished at his need for me, even admitting that he'd never been faithful to one woman — because he'd "never been in love before," he confided. He even made up a song about it: "She made me monogamous." That flattered and delighted me. I would never doubt his faithfulness and his love for me."

Locke moved into the Sherman Oaks house Eastwood had once shared with Johnson (who by then lived full-time in Pebble Beach), but felt uncomfortable there because "psychologically, it would always be Maggie's." "Finally I told Clint that I couldn't live there any longer," writes Locke.

The couple moved to Bel-Air in a fixer-upper Locke spent three years renovating. She underwent two abortions and a tubal ligation in the late 1970s and was most reluctant about the second abortion, noting "I couldn't help but think that that baby, with both Clint's and my best qualities, would be extraordinary."

Johnson made no secret of her dislike for Locke, even though the two women never met. "Maggie placed severe rules on my relationship with the kids. Apparently, she never forgave me ... After she learned that Clint had taken me onto her property to show me a baby deer that had just been born there, she laid down a rule that I was never to be allowed there again. I was not even allowed to phone the Pebble Beach house."

Locke never divorced her legal husband, sculptor Gordon Anderson, who was gay and resided with his partner in a West Hollywood home purchased by Eastwood.

Eastwood and Locke went on to star in The Gauntlet, Every Which Way But Loose, Bronco Billy, Any Which Way You Can and Sudden Impact. According to former longtime associate Fritz Manes, as quoted by author McGilligan, Eastwood was devoted to her between 1976 and 1980 at the least, but discreetly kept up several "maintenance relationships" during that period.

He was still living with Locke when he conceived two children with Reeves: a son Scott Eastwood (born Scott Reeves; March 21, 1986) and daughter Kathryn Eastwood (born Kathryn Reeves; February 2, 1988), whose birth certificates both said "Father declined."

The affair with Reeves was not reported anywhere until an exposé article was published in the Star tabloid in 1990. It quoted Reeves as saying "Some family members tell me to file a paternity suit against Clint, but I don't want to."The children continued to be unacknowledged by mainstream news sources for more than a decade thereafter.

Breakup with Locke

Eastwood's relationship with Locke (at the time unaware of his infidelities) ended acrimoniously in April 1989, and the post-breakup litigation dragged on for years. Locke filed a palimony lawsuit against him after he changed the locks on their home and moved her possessions into storage when she was at work filming her second directorial feature, Impulse.

In court, Eastwood downplayed the intensity of their relationship. He described Locke as a "roommate" before quickly redescribing her as a "part-time roommate."

Locke's estranged brother told The Tennessean that Eastwood still truly loved her, but could no longer take her "addiction" to husband Gordon Anderson. Anticipating that Eastwood was going to misrepresent the marriage, Locke asked Anderson to surrender all claims on any of her assets that as her legal spouse he was entitled to. "In an extraordinary gesture of love and faith in me, Gordon signed away everything without hesitation."

During the trial, an investigative journalist contacted Locke and informed her of Eastwood's other family. "I spoke with the nurse in the delivery room, and she confirmed that they are Clint's children. I'll send copies of the birth certificates to you and a photo of Jacelyn, if you want them," Locke quotes the informant.

"My mind was still searching to get all his actions lined up. For at least the last four years of our relationship, Clint had been living this double life, going between me and this other woman, and having children with her. Two babies had been born during the last three years of our relationship, and they weren't mine."

As the case went on, Locke developed breast cancer and said the treatments sapped her will to fight. She dropped her suit in November 1990 in exchange for a settlement package which included a lump sum plus monthly support payments from Eastwood and a $1.5 million directing deal at Warner Bros., but sued him again for fraud in 1995 when she became convinced the deal with Warner was a sham,finally settling out of court in September 1996. Since then, Locke has made discrediting comments about Eastwood.

OP, OP!!!! Wake up dear; we're having a nightmare.

^^^ LOL!

Sondra Locke

RUNAWAY THREAD!!!!

Sondra Locke interview - 1982

She wasted her life with Clint.

I've read before that Clint' family including his mother and kids didn't like Sondra

Dating an actor is one of the worst things anyone can do. They're narcissistic up to their eyeballs, and they're a huge pain in the fucking ass. It's ALWAYS about them, their work, their feelings, their money, etc.

Never, ever again.

From Clint : The life and legend book

The responsibility for birth control in their relationship, according to Locke, rested primarily with her. However, Clint did espouse ideas about what constituted proper anti-conception measures. When they first got together, the actress had been taking birth control pills, but Clint was worried about the health issues raised by regular use of the pill. So, at his urging, she switched to an IUD, until the star, according to Locke, complained that the IUD interfered with his pleasure during sex.

Then Clint recommended that the actress enroll in a birth control course at Cedar-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, which advocated a process of regulation similar to the old-fashioned rhythm method of abstinence on days of high fertility. It was Locke's job to keep track of her daily temperature readings and mark off the high and low days on the calendar.

The system was fallible, however, and their first pregnancy transpired during the summer of 1978, just as they were completing Every Which Way But Loose. When Clint learned that the actress was pregnant, the star told Locke he didn't really want any more children, and that he didn't think children would fit into their lifestyle.

Clint insisted he was not the type of person who had wanted children - It was Clint, according to Locke, who made the suggestion that maybe she should consider an abortion. Although the abortion was a 'mutual decision', in her words, Clint played on her uncertainty, and her wish to accommodate 'his desires and needs and happiness'.

'At the time I very much wanted to please him,' Locke recalled.

Clint obtained the name of a doctor at UCLA and drove Locke there to have the procedure. Clint didn't come in, and had someone else pick her up afterwards, because he had a scheduling conflict with one of his important appointments.

After the abortion, Locke returned to the Cedar-Sinai classes. They made a decision to stick with the rhythm-type method, hoping to perfect whatever mistake they had made with the first pregnancy. Then the second pregnancy occurred - almost a year later, during the following summer of 1979. Once again he encouraged the actress to have an abortion

I cried,' said Locke. I was upset. I asked him how much he loved me. He said he adored me. I was his Snow White. I was his princess. We would always be together. Not to worry.'

Locke flew down to Los Angeles alone, went to the hospital alone, was picked up and taken home afterwards by friends. Clint had to stay up at the ranch, he said, because he had made a prior commitment to entertain Frank Wells and his wife.

Although these auguries were hardly positive, Clint moved to make amends. Clint's decision to let Locke buy a new house closely coincided with her second abortion and ultimate tubal ligation ('You know, Jane had a surgery to prevent surgery,' Clint mentioned. 'What do you think of that?').

I don't think I consciously understood it at the time, but finding a house, and building a nest, was also a way of licking my wounds about the tubal ligation,' Locke wrote in her autobiography. This home would be my baby.'

With a realtor friend, Locke searched for weeks and weeks. On the handful of occasions when Clint came along, with his usual insistence upon absolute secrecy, he introduced himself as 'Mr Anderson', even when he happened to be wearing a Thunderbolt and Lightfoot T-shirt. 'Clint and his six-four frame were so recognizable as Clint Eastwood that the sales agents, trying hard to keep a straight face,' recalled Locke, 'always looked at their feet when they addressed him as "Mr, Anderson".

Clint had succumbed to the fashionable bedroom sport of home pornography, taking advantage of newly sophisticated and lightweight video equipment to record his lovemaking with Sondra Locke. 'The ultimate turn-on,' the star confided to buddies, though these particular 'Clint Eastwood films', carefully labelled and filed, were restricted viewing.....

Sondra Locke did an unforgivable thing: she launched into rewriting the Ratboy script. Locke had the misimpression that she was in charge. Clint had pronounced the script okay, Warners had seconded their approval, and now here she was doing exactly the sort of thing that rubbed Clint the wrong way -working the script over, changing things!

At first, Clint hadn't realized that Locke was busy 'pepping up' the script. When Fritz Manes caught wind of it, he felt conflicted. He warned Locke that she ought to inform Clint. She didn't do so right away, because, she said, she wanted to wait until she was finished. Then Buddy Van Horn happened to find out, and he told Clint, and Clint hit the roof.

Locke had to show the script to Clint then, and the star sat up in bed one night reading the new draft, while the actress sat next to him, watching him warily. Yet he seemed to be enjoying it, laughing as he read and scribbling notes in the margins.

The next day, Locke arrived at the Malpaso offices first and told Manes, don't worry, Clint loved the changes. 'Clint comes in the door about noontime because he never came in early and he was purple,' remembered Manes. 'I've never seen him so fucking mad. He takes this thing and he throws it so hard it almost broke the window behind me.

He said, "I'm closing this thing down. How could you let her do this?" I said, "I thought you knew." He said, "Well, you don't have to worry about this piece of shit anymore. I'm going out and telling Warners to shut the production down."'

Locke was waiting in the outer office. Clint went out and grabbed her and they went off somewhere and had a huge explosion. Manes went over to the floor and picked up the script. 'It had FUCK -COCKSUCKER - SHIT - across every page,' said Manes. 'Ever) page had some awful thing on it like some lunatic had scribbled all over it!'

Clint sort of warmed to my desire to direct because I think he enjoyed the idea that he was going to be a mentor,' recalled Locke. 'It was all about him, and as long as it was about him, it was acceptable. He thought I was going to have the same point of view as he would have. I would be a little carbon copy. Then it became very apparent that he and I were quite different animals when it came to artistic choices. And he hated everything I wanted to do on the script.

I don't know how else to explain it to you other than to give you an example of a scene. I felt my character was a quirky person and there was one scene in the beginning, which is cut out of the finished film, where my character had gone into the ladies' room. She was very frustrated, nothing was going right, she had just been fired, and she sat on the floor of the bathroom and pulled a Butterfinger out of her purse and started to eat it. I didn't think there was anything so unusual about that scene, which I had written in.

'He was so threatened by it, so upset. "What are you doing? You can't have her sit on the floor of the bathroom? And eating a candy bar}" I had gone so far left-field that he didn't have any control over me, and that was very terrifying to him.

'All of a sudden, because it was my job and I had a point of view, I was arguing with him. And do you know that we had never had any real fights until I started to direct.'

Clint put his foot down: No changes in the script! Locke had no recourse but to acquiesce. She went back to the old script, with only small concessions to what she had wanted to do

Then Clint turned his back a little too long again - probably one of those flying trips to Carmel - and yikes! Now it emerged that Locke was planning to cast Gordon Anderson in one of the featured roles, playing one of her character's brothers. Anderson once had been an actor; Locke thought he could handle the role, and that his highly mischievous personality would lend itself to the film. In happier times, Clint, after seeing some of Anderson's stage reviews, had encouraged him to return to his first love of acting.

Now he cried, 'That's nepotism!' Although Clint could hire his own buddies, cast his children and mistresses, this was going too far.

Once again, Clint put his foot down: Gordon Anderson absolutely could not be in Ratboyl

Again, the novice director dared not rebel against the boss. What Locke didn't yet realize is that, behind her back, Clint wasn't calmed by his defeat of her notions. Instead he was working himself into a froth against Anderson, developing a kind of 'dossier' against him. For the first time people overheard the star referring to Locke's longtime best friend and legal spouse as 'that fucking faggot'.

Around this time, Clint pointedly asked Locke to stop hanging out so much at Anderson's house when he was out of town - which was more and more frequently - and to please stay home at the Stradella place. Locke, expressing amazement that Clint would show any hostility towards Anderson, whom he had always treated warmly, agreed to his wishes.

Although for the first time wondered what was wrong with Clint He was so disagreeable all of the time. What was happening to him? Was it the mayoral campaign? Or some kind of mid-life crisis?

Years later, Locke grew to believe that, if there was ever a chance for the two of them, that chance was lost when she announced her ambition to become a director. As long as the actress treated Clint as Daddy, everything was hunky-dory. But the minute she stepped out of his cocoon and sought to be perceived on equal terms - challenging him on his own turf- his attitude towards her changed and hardened.

Clint had several ongoing affairs, including those with actress Jamie Rose, story analyst Megan Rose and flight attendant Jacelyn Reeves. By now Locke, although she didn't realize it, was in the same position as Maggie had been during her marriage to Clint, being flown in during Clint's shoots for slotted time, while temporary paramours were shunted to the side.

On some level, Clint must have already made the decision to ditch Locke, because up in Utah for Pale Rider his womanizing was transparent. He finally made his interests clear to an attractive crew member who had been platonically flirting with him for several years while working on Malpaso productions. Clint's vaunted patience wore thin; one night in Utah he misread her, and she rebuffed his advances. That was it for this crew member - Pale Ruler was the last Clint film she ever worked on.

To rub it in, the next morning the star took up with another pretty crew member, thirty years his junior, embarrassing the cast and crew by parading around with her, holding hands.

In his nonverbal way, Clint was sending messages to Locke. But the actress had few real allies at Malpaso, and the handful of mutual friends who knew what was going on with Clint were caught between their divided loyalties and at a loss what to say to her.

Another time, they were all up at Rising River Ranch - Clint and Sondra Locke and Fritz Manes and his wife. They were having a peaceful evening, Clint was stirring the logs on the fire. Only the fire wasn't cooperating, the poker wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, logs kept rolling out. Clint kept trying to shove the logs back in.

Finally, the star blew up. He took the poker and cleared the whole mantel of the figurines and knickknacks that Locke had lined up there, and then turned and started beating on the wall of the fireplace. 'Cocksucker!' he screamed. 'Motherfucker! Piece of shit!'

'Sondra, Audie and I just watched him,' recalled Manes. 'Just sat there. You have no choice. What could you do'

Arguably, Locke saw less of this than other people, because (Clint usually made a point of behaving in gentlemanly fashion around her. And as time went on, she - like other close friends of the star - learned that the best thing to do once any warning signs were noticed was to disappear.

Sondra Locke thought the mayoral gig was a manifestation of Clint's mid-life crisis. None of his recent films had done as well as he hoped. 'I guess they don't like your old Dad anymore,'

Clint had told Locke wistfully after Honkytdnk Man died in theaters. Around this time, the mid-1980s, is when the star had secret hair transplants. And, worried about ageing, he started eating red meat again, telling one friend it was because he found out 'all of the higher intelligence mammals of the world were meat eaters'

In mid-1987, Kyle Eastwood moved into Stradella Road. He had received poor grades at USC, where he was majoring in cinema studies, and the hope was that he might turn his life around over the summer and re-enroll in the fall. Locke was annoyed that Clint didn't even discuss the matter with her. He simply said, 'Kyle is moving in,' and then within a few days, 'Clint promptly left town', according to Locke.

Locke had tried to reach out to Clint's children. She felt genuinely fond of Kyle, a sweet kid as low-key as his dad, and now she tried to make the best of the awkward situation. While Clint was in Cannes, up in Carmel, at Rising River Ranch, at his golf tournaments, whenever and wherever Clint roamed, Locke and Kyle lived together as a makeshift family unit.

Tensions increased when one of Kyle's friends moved in; his pals showed up, and also their girlfriends. One night Locke woke up to find one of Kyle's friends in her bedroom, staring down at her. She ordered him out

When she complained to Clint, Clint got mad. I don't know what your problem is,' the star told her. 'Kyle's my son. I want him there. I haven't had a chance to be with him all these years.'

Locke was thinking, 'Excuse me - you're not here, now; and, 'Hey, whose fault is that?' But she held her tongue and instead said, 'That's fine, Clint. We're not talking just about Kyle. We're talking about all his friends.' Clint responded, 'You're not at home half the time anyway. You're always visiting Gordon.'

They were starting to have circular conversations and arguments. So they talked less. That wasn't hard to arrange, because Clint was out of town so much

Reading these Book Troll threads is great for self-confidence. I am a nobody, but at least I'm not (that much of) a hot mess.

She had a husband and he had a harem of baby mommas on the side. This was no great love story. You have to be nuts to get into a relationship like this.

For a woman who's nearly 80 she looks fantastic in that video.

I want to hear more about his sex tapes! He used to be haf. I would gladly watch one of those tapes.

Eastwood is a shit? Who'd have guessed it?

Clint has always had a lot of baby momas as he doesn't want his lovers to use the pill. Many were originally extras on his sets who wanted extra days work/pay and to seduce the star. They quietly received $$ from him as long as they agreed to not tell a soul anything about their baby's father.

Periodically Clint would arrange for each child he sired to have a day's work as a union extra where he would have a quiet and very private lunch with them. He did try to be courteous, asking them about their school work and career ambitions and encouraging them to pursue "normal" professions like nursing with steady employment options.

Yes Clint was married but not often in his home town because of his work priorities and the supposed ongoing work-related socializing like wild swing parties especially after awards ceremonies. Oh and he only took his agent when he showed up to win an award. After all he wouldn't be there if it weren't for his agent.

Locke was delusional. She knew he had a wife and children and therefore the risks with his carefully crafted Conservative moral image he was taking if info about his blatant adultery hit the paps.

Locke should have known Clint always had a few "girls on the side" he would consistently see when he wanted an escape. He'd always take them to his fav small steakhouse where he knew the owner and his dinner would always arrive exactly how he wanted it to look. The owner in return knew Clint wanted absolute discretion and privacy especially when the various girls would get to hold his hand and engage in affection outside of a bedroom situation.

Clint's behavior is actually fairly typical of most A-list celebs who are very controlling and extremely spoiled. Directors are always afraid of an actress that has too many smarts, as she might then not be as submissive to the way he wants things done on set. Hollywood loves people pleasers.

Clean freak Clint would never accept a pet in the house. He constantly asked his lovers to brush their teeth before bed. Those who consistently engage in various 3-ways and need a pseudo harem obviously cannot handle intimacy at all. So why would one expect them to directly handle the "messiness" of a breakup?

Had a friend, an entertainment lawyer, who at one time had an office next door to Clint's production company. Said he really, really admired the actor-director-producer-etc but not so much the actual man vis-a-vis his relationships with certain women. I responded that the less submissive and accommodating Sondra Locke became the greater the friction in their relationship. Unfair perhaps but true. As I said Locke was beyond delusional as she should have known how Hollywood operated. If she didn't like the way the game was played then she should have found another game to play. Hollywood would always protect and side with the bigger star.

Clint does have very strong hands, can be quite flirtatious and seductive. He gives superb neck & shoulder massages too.

[quote]Locke was delusional.

Maybe. But you never saw her on national tv arguing with furniture.

I remember reading this book years ago. Also, didn't Locke have some kind of confrontation with Jane Brolin who Eastwood was also supposedly sleeping with?

[quote] The text goes from commentary to first person without explanation.

What's wrong with that?

R42 "Manes went over to the floor and picked up the script. 'It had FUCK -COCKSUCKER - SHIT - across every page,' said Manes. 'Ever) page had some awful thing on it like some lunatic had scribbled all over it!'

LAMO

Around this time Malpaso began to receive a series of strange, threatening letters addressed to Clint, mailed from various California locations. The messages were sometimes cut-out words, with crude, very specific language, often mentioning Sondra Locke. 'Get that bitch out of your life!' That sort of thing.

Clint had received death threats before. Yet these were particular!] vile and seemed to come from someone with inside knowledge of Clint's life and Malpaso operations. Because of his Dirty Harry role, Clint was a hero to many policemen, and had gone out of his way to do favors for police organizations.

He even had a collection of police badges of which he was proud. Now he called on the services of a friend who was a detective on the Los Angeles police force. The detective, helped by the US Postal Service, began to investigate the letters. The trouble was, the detective had an extremely long list of possible Clint enemies and ex-girlfriends but no real clues as to who might be the culprit.

While people at Malpaso pointed fingers at each other over RatBoy, the detective was trying to figure out if any of them could be the anonymous pen-pal. After a while suspicion focused on Jane Brolin.

Clint scoffed at the idea it was Jane Brolin. He thought it might be an actress friend of Roxanne Tunis, seeking some kind of revenge on him. One night he drove around the Hollywood hill with Fritz Manes, trying to find this lady's address.

He tried to convince Manes that they should burgle her place, and see if the lady's typewriter matched up with any of the letters. Manes said no; another mark against him.

Even in the best of times, Malpaso was a paranoid place, but now, as the vile letters waxed and waned, the atmosphere of distrust and suspicion grew

Enter Jane Brolin, poison to the brew. Clint's on-and-off paramour, dating from the late 1950s, was breaking up with her husband, actor James Brolin, after twenty years of marriage........Jane Brolin had become a regular house guest at Stradella Road. Not only was Brolin undergoing an acrimonious divorce, but she had been hit with a diagnosis of breast cancer.

These days she seemed to be constantly in Los Angeles, coming down from Paso Robles, where she lived, keeping appointments with lawyers and physicians. Sondra felt sorry for her, and they began to develop a cosy friendship.

It was Brolin who told Locke some of Clint's longtime secrets (his purported vasectomy, details of his 'understanding' with Roxanne Tunis). She gave Locke an earful about how ungenerous Clint could be, and how it was too bad that the rich, successful star didn't buy his live-in lover expensive gifts - jewellery and clothing.

Locke listened patiently, although everyone says that if there was anything she didn't expect or receive from Clint it was . . . expensive gifts. Little did Locke suspect that everything she did and said to Brolin was reported back to Clint.

....Since Megan Rose knew about Sondra Locke, she wasn't under any illusions. She didn't dream of marrying Clint one day. But she did think they shared a unique intimacy. Clint was sweet and charming whenever they were together. He would crack jokes and murmur endearments. He had an ability to make people feel special. When she didn't see him for spells - he was away sometimes for weeks or months at a stretch, filming or doing publicity - he wouldn't call, or write. But she didn't worry; she knew he would come back. And then when he was with her, he was totally with her.

It was like - at least it seemed this way in retrospect - he was an actor very skilled at playing a certain type of romantic scene. Whatever happened between them, Megan always felt was truthful. For that day, it was the truth. For that moment. I would say I love you and most of the time he would say "Me too",' Rose remembered. 'Which always made me wonder: Is he saying he loves "him" too, or does he love "me"?

They didn't use birth control. Rose had been married before, and believed she was infertile. Clint assured her that he had had a vasectomy, because he didn't want to have any more children. Rose was lucky not to become pregnant. Considering what transpired elsewhere in Clint's life, it must have been the worst vasectomy in the history of medicine!

She suspected there were Clint-girlfriends in other places: These were his 'separate lives', in her words, which Clint kept secret from her and other people. She had no illusions, and was proud to be the girlfriend at Warners.

Clint had no illusions either. Megan Rose gave him script advice. She brought him healthy desserts that she baked herself. She was available over the lunch hour. He occasionally joked about her, con-spiratorially, with Fritz Manes.

According to Fritz Manes, 'There was no romance, no "let's-go-out-to-dinner" [with Rose]. It was strictly in the office. To him, it was a very light, almost funny relationship. He'd say, "Here comes Megan ..." and snicker. I used to laugh too because we were like brothers. I didn't see there was another human being being hurt. I didn't see that - ever.

Sondra Locke had no idea what was going on between Clint and Megan Rose. Her path crossed the story analyst's at Malpaso one day, and Clint introduced them, but it must have been his private joke that both women were sleeping with him.

Locke was with Clint flying aboard the Warners jet to Sun Valley when the actor plopped down in front of her to read the script of 'The William Munny Killings'. Afterwards, he passed it around. He tended to focus on what he saw as the surefire comedy scenes. 'Don't you love the part where the guy gets his ass blown off in the shithouse?' he kept asking Fritz Manes, who didn't think the script was all that great.

Clint was a little thrown by the style of it. According to Megan Rose, Clint telephoned her from Sun Valley to say either it was the best script he had ever read, or the worst.

So Clint and Megan Rose got together in his office with a pair of scissors and Scotch tape, cutting scenes out of one script and pasting them into the other. Clint vowed to reward Rose, since such activity was above and beyond the call of duty for a story analyst. Rose said she was happy to help out any way she could. 'No, I owe you a lot.' Clint insisted.

According to Megan Rose. Clint said "I promise to reward you, and I want you to know that I'm a man who keeps his promises.'

The two worked on splicing the two scripts together for a short time before Clint's energy waned. 'Oh, you do the rest of it,' he suggested. Rose went home and finished up a 'hybrid', typing it herself. When she brought it back, Rose suggested that either Hackin or Stinson be brought back into the project to create linkage scenes in the same style as the rest of the script. Clint wanted Rose to write them herself; when she refused, insisting she was a story editor not a writer, Clint got mad at Rose.

Producer Fritz Manes insisted in an interview that Megan Rose couldn't have made any real contribution to the script, and that Clint was shining her on, which was one of his techniques with people.

Behind Rose's back, according to Manes, Clint used to make denigrating jokes about the script judgment of the woman 'He used to say something like, "I wish she could pick projects like she can bake cookies",' recalled Manes. It was a real shitty thing to say.

.........Getting up early most mornings to work out, it didn't take Clint long to turn his gaze to strawberry-blonde actress Frances Fisher, then in her late thirties, also jogging and lifting weights.

Clint and she began a more-torrid-than-usual relationship. Fisher said later that, because she was a relative newcomer to Hollywood, she had no idea Clint was involved with, in fact living with, Sondra Locke. When she asked the star about other women in his life, he issued his usual disclaimer, 'I've been with someone - but it hasn't been happening for about three years.'

She persisted in asking, Is that it?' and Clint added, 'And I'm seeing a few other people"

Back in Los Angeles after filming, Clint and Fisher continued to see each other . She did think it odd, however, that Clint never invited her up to visit his house

Locke hadn't been expressly informed that it wasn't 'happening' anymore. She and Clint had last slept together in October 1988, just before filming of Pink Cadillac started. But Locke was busy planning her next directing foray, a suspense film involving a lady cop working undercover as a prostitute. And wasn't Clint just busy, working and travelling? Busy was normal for Clint. Locke was looking forward to their annual Christmas trip to Sun Valley, when Clint could let his hair down and relax

Christmas 1988 approached, with Clint probably let down by the reaction to Bird and The Dead Pool That, plus he prided himself on his willpower, and Sondra Locke wasn't getting his messages. He had clashed with her on Ratboy. He was spending more and more time away from Stradella Road. He philandered almost brazenly. Still, Locke hung on. Was she dense?

Clint surprised Locke on the day before Christmas Eve by saying that he had decided to go up to Carmel and play golf. I feel like hitting some golf balls, that's all.' They had always made a point of spending Christmas Eve and Day together (usually with Gordon Anderson and his longtime companion), but not this year. Clint promised they would still go to Sun Valley on the day after Christmas. Crushed and angry, Locke spent Christmas with Anderson and his friends.

Jane Brolin called at Christmas to say that Clint wanted her to come to Sun Valley with them. Locke, feeling that she and Clint badly needed some time alone, asked Brolin not to come. 'Well,' said Brolin, 'what could I say? If Clint wants you to do something, you just do it. You know that. Of course, I have to wonder what he has up his sleeve.'

The awkward threesome, along with Kyle and Alison, took a Warners jet to Sun Valley. There, on the morning before New Year's Eve, Brolin cornered the actress in the kitchen and told her that it had become apparent to her that Clint was alienated from Locke; didn't want to be with her anymore. Locke should recognize the relationship was at an end.

Locke was aghast, and she and Brolin started to quarrel. Quickly the argument escalated, with Brolin dragging in the issue of Kyle and Alison and claiming that Locke didn't really like Clint's children.

Clint wandered in, closing the argument with, 'There's a Warner plane leaving for LA today, and I think you should both be on it.' Locke left; Brolin stayed. A sobbing Locke was driven to the airport by Lili Zanuck, the wife of Richard Zanuck, one of the Sun Valley skiing circle who had known Clint since The Eiger Sanction. Lili Zanuck urged Locke to confer with a lawyer. She told Locke all of her girlfriends were talking about Clint. The star seemed to be behaving irrationally.

Subsequently, Locke made contact with Norman Oberstein, a well-known divorce lawyer whose name she was familiar with because he was also representing Jane Brolin in her split-up with James Brolin. Oberstein advised the actress to watch and wait.

"In my head, I knew it was over,' said Locke. In my heart I kept thinking, "This isn't happening. Somehow, some miracle is going to occur and it's going to turn around." A part of me was glad and wanted out. A part of me was beginning to feel sick. Another part of me wanted things to be the way they were, even though they weren't ever really that way.'

For a short while Clint stayed behind in Sun Valley. When he left Sun Valley, and where he stayed when he did, it is hard to say. In later court depositions. The caretaker of the Stradella Road house told Locke that Clint was 'creeping in and out of the house when I was not home, careful not to disturb anything'. But where was he sleeping at night?

Clint's lawyers would object to any line of questioning that inquired as to Clint's other personal relationships, and Clint himself was vague, insisting that he occasionally sneaked onto the Stradella Road premises without alerting Locke and then he tucked himself away quietly some nights in a spare room in the caretaker's quarters - off the courtyard next to the garage - or the guest bedroom, down the hall from where Locke slept every night.

Fisher herself was still in the dark as to Locke's precise circumstances. One night Clint and Fisher drove up to Stradella Road, because the star said he had to retrieve something. He advised her to wait in the car. She watched as he went in, leaving the door ajar. Inside, a light or two went on. The minutes ticked by, curiosity overcame her. She got out of the car and walked up to the door, intending to peek in.

But the moment Fisher got there, the door swung open and there was Clint, urging her to get back inside the car. He was in a big hurry. That is the closest Fisher came to meeting Sondra Locke.

Some time in March, when, as he later admitted, Clint placed a recording device on his own telephone. He didn't inform Locke, who was still living there and who was the only person using the home phone on a daily basis from January to April.

Locke only laid eyes on Clint in the flesh three times during that period. The first two occasions were interesting: both were for public appearances.

Clint and Locke went with Kyle to the American Cinema Awards. Clint and Locke sat together and didn't say two words to each other, although they were sighted and photographed for the columns. Afterwards, they came home and slept in the same bed without sharing any physical intimacies. The next morning, Clint got up and left, without ever broaching the impasse.

The only possible explanation for Clint's behaviour, considering what happened next, is that either he still hadn't made up his mind to act, or that he was waiting for Sondra Locke to act first - get out of his life voluntarily. He was still trying to exert his willpower.

As for Locke, she was mystified. By now she realized she and Clint had their deep problems but she was also heavily into denial. She thought Clint was doing all these things because he wasn't number one at the box-office anymore, or because he was facing his mortality. She thought there was still a chance they might work things out, but decided that the next move - communication and reconciliation - was up to him.

The worst thing that could happen, she believed, was that Clint's lawyer, Bruce Ramer, would ring her up and say Clint wanted to initiate talks for a mutually-agreeable separation

Therefore, the third time she saw Clint was shocking. On 4 April Clint asked Locke's production secretary to phone her in the morning and wake her up, and then he turned up at Stradella Road to greet her as she came downstairs in her robe.

He opened up by telling her that he had just washed a dirty dish in the sink. (Is he trying to tell me how neat and thoughtful he is,' Locke wondered, 'or is he saying I am a slob for having left a dirty dish in the sink?')

Standing in the dining room, his arms crossed, gently swaying from side to side, the star gave a little prepared speech. I hesitated to bring it up while you were shooting this film,' Clint began. 'But I was . . . uh . . . thinking, it's come to my attention that you . . . uh . . . and Gordon are sitting on my only real estate in Los Angeles.'

When Locke got her powers of speech back, she told Clint that it was hard for her to deal with the crisis now. She had just launched into directing Impulse. But, she continued, she wasn't going anywhere. Stradella Road was every bit her house.

She had shopped long and hard for it, had renovated and furnished it to her taste. She had lived there for eight years. If Clint was uncomfortable being around her, then he should stay in one of his other houses, or wherever it was that he had been staying. 'And where is that, Clint?' Which the star did not answer, for he was busy staring out the window.

Instead Clint mumbled, 'Well, maybe you could just put it on the back burner until you finish your film.' Then, with nothing more to say, Clint left.

Clint knew that Locke was in the midst of shooting Impulse. 'The timing was calculated,' said Locke. 'Clint knew the pressure I was under. He also was jealous that I was doing something away from him. He didn't want me to be able to succeed at all away from him. He didn't like that for one second.'

He didn't give her much time. On 10 April Locke was engaged in directing one of the film's most challenging scenes - the one towards the end ('a nightmare to choreograph', in Locke's words) in which everyone converges on the safe house where the undercover prostitute-policewoman (played by Theresa Russell) is hiding in wait for the killer. Clint would know this from the phone tapes, if he didn't know it from daily logs circulated at Warners.

Clint showed up at Stradella Road. The first thing he did was change the locks. He was aided by Malpaso underlings, whose job descriptions this day included stuffing Sondra Locke's belongings into some fourteen Bekins boxes and then stacking the boxes in the driveway for a mover to transport over to Gordon Anderson's house.

Anderson phoned Locke on the set and read her a letter which had just arrived, directed to Mrs Gordon Anderson at the Crescent Heights address. The letter, signed by Bruce Ramer, stated that on behalf of Clint Eastwood and Roy Kaufman, Locke was being duly notified that in the past the Stradella Road house had been utilized by her 'free of rent, on a nonexclusive basis', and that 'this accommodation may be terminated by Mr Eastwood at any time. Mr Eastwood now wishes to take possession of the Stradella Road house on an exclusive basis. Mr Eastwood has asked you to vacate the premises. You have refused to do so.'

Therefore, because of Locke's 'intransigence', the locks were being replaced, and all of her possessions were being packed up and taken to the Crescent Heights house which 'you and your husband rent and occupy'.

Locke fainted dead away in front of cast and crew. The next day, the tabloids, the legitimate dailies and the broadcast media were full of the news, competing amongst themselves for details of Clint and Locke's sensational break-up.

Pink Cadillac opened on 26 May..... the film, crushed by the weight of such negative reviews -Clint's worst of the 1980s - quickly sank out of sight, and ended up one of the lowest-grossing Malpaso productions of the decade.

Sondra Locke had refused to accept her public humiliation and physical ejection from the Stradella Road house. Her lawyer, Norman Oberstein, had contacted Clint's lawyers, threatening suit and asking for step-term compensation amounting to $1.3 million and ownership of the Stradella Road and Crescent Heights houses. Only when Clint, through his lawyers, said no, absolutely not, did Locke file a suit against him for $70 million.

The lawsuit, which was filed on 26 April, stated Locke's case for 'financial support, breach of contract, emotional distress, forcible entry, possession of personal property and other claims', in the words of the Los Angeles Times. The case was widely referred to as a 'palimony suit', because it sought to prove that certain common-law agreements between Clint and Locke had been violated.

'The suit is a potentially precedent-setting legal case,' noted the Los Angeles Times, 'because it raises the question of whether a woman, who is legally married to one man, can claim palimony rights from another.

The lawsuit riveted Hollywood, because few in the film industry would have dared to make a public enemy of Clint (and through him, Warner Brothers). Also, Locke's sworn declaration, leaked to the press, hinted, for the first time, at the hidden personality of the 'intensely private' star.

Maggie, in their divorce, had agreed to seal the public record; now, however, leaks to the press painted Clint as a sometimes distant, manipulative, volatile man with an abusive temper. The public learned for the first time that Clint helped persuade Locke to have two abortions and the sterilization operation of a tubal ligation.

Clint felt the need to convince mutual friends and possible Sondra Locke allies that he had been wounded by the drastic turn of events. Privately he explained himself, weeping, especially, on the shoulders of female friends - Lili Zanuck, Kitty Dutton, the omnipresent Jane Brolin. His line, echoed in later court depositions, would be that he had been forced to act the way he did by Locke's unwillingness to separate amicably and also by her betrayal of him when she consulted a lawyer behind his back.

Publicly, at first, and for a long time, there was 'no comment' from Clint himself. His publicists released a prepared statement claiming that Locke's suit was 'unfounded and without merit', while, behind the scenes, the team at Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown prepared a legal counterpunch, taking the usual Clint precaution of asking the court to seal any 'discovery' documents from press scrutiny.

Locke's lawyer went along with this, agreeing to a private hearing with a judge, because the actress naively trusted 'that if it were completely private, my high-profile friends might participate' on her side

Clint's legal team pressed to establish several motifs: that Clint, through Roy Kaufman, paid for all costs and expenses at Stradella Road; that no significant purchase or household decision was ever made without Clint's approval; that nothing in writing, no witnesses, could corroborate Locke's assertion that the house was in any way co-owned by her; that Locke was, in fact, married, and beholden to her husband.

In the deposition sessions Clint's lawyers tried to assert that Locke had fairy-tale hangups and saw Clint, in some delusional way, as a Prince Charming. They inquired about her long-term devotion to Gordon Anderson, asserted that she often had visited Anderson or stayed overnight at the Crescent Heights address, wondered if she and Anderson ever had sex or were still in the habit of having sex. Locke gladly admitted her affection for Anderson, but denied any sexual relationship with him.

They did their best to raise suspicions that Locke had sexual relations with others while living with Clint, but to little avail; she came off poignantly as the monogamous partner. They even inquired if she had engaged in sex with one of the cameramen of Impulse, although this activity would have taken place after the lock-out. (Anyway, Locke replied no, she and the cameraman had merely gone to dinner, during which time the man in question had been kind enough to express sympathy with her plight.)

Locke's longtime marriage to Anderson, convenient for Clint at one time, was now one of the principal grievances stacked against her. As he had done in conversations with his close friends, now Clint, in sworn statements, advanced the argument that he felt in a losing competition with Anderson; that his feeling for Locke was eroded by her first loyalty to her childhood sweetheart. He wanted Locke to spend more time at Stradella Road; she hung out too much with Anderson. He wanted Locke to go places with him; she preferred to stay home, near Anderson.

'I don't think he was at all threatened or jealous of Gordon until he decided he wanted to end the relationship,' commented Locke in an interview, 'and then I think he, in moments, might even have convinced himself that he was jealous.'

Clint's fear and jealousy of Locke's husband dominated the star's lengthy deposition, taken two days after Locke's. Norman Oberstein was permitted to question Clint for six hours.

Clint explained that at one point in the past he had truly loved Locke and wanted her to be happy. Then a gulf opened up between them. This gulf was worsened by Clint's 'feeling that she had spoken to a litigator to attack my finances and estate, and I considered that to be an act of hostility not to be rewarded in case of my death'

Asked to characterize his precise relationship with Locke in the past, Clint reverted to teenage lingo to note they had been 'going together'. He refused to concede that they ever really lived together. He didn't care to describe Locke as a 'live-in' lover, explaining that they were lovers but 'not necessarily live-in', because after all Locke was married.

He was more wont to describe Locke as someone who helped out with the decorating and then stayed overnight occasionally - more like a 'part-time roommate'. Asked to define a part-time roommate, Clint explained, 'Anytime a person spends one night it's part time.'

Sensing an opening, Norman Oberstein asked Clint if he had had any other 'part-time roommates' during the time he was 'going together' with Locke. But Clint's lawyers objected to that question, and Clint refused to answer on the grounds of privacy.

Oberstein was reluctant to probe into Clint's other relationships, believing that Clint's womanizing was a double-edged sword for his client. If it could be proven that Clint had other mistresses in his life, it might weaken Locke's claim to being any kind of de facto Mrs Clint Eastwood.

As for Locke, she knew about Roxanne Tunis (Clint's daughter Kimber had worked briefly in the Malpaso office) but still did not know about any of the other ongoing inamoratas; she did not know about actress Frances Fisher, whose continuing relationship with Clint would not become public knowledge until the end of 1989

It was one of the peculiarities of Clint's deposition that Locke herself was present for the whole time and observing his interrogation, though the star never once made eye contact with her or offered any reference to her proximity. Another peculiarity, missing from the transcript, is that at one point Locke left the room to take a phone call.

This phone call, ironically, turned out to be from a reporter representing a tabloid weekly, asking the actress for her reaction to rumours they were investigating, that a woman living up in Carmel, Jacelyn Reeves, had given birth to two illegitimate children fathered by Clint. That was the first time Locke had ever heard Jacelyn Reeves's name, and when the actress returned to the deposition room, she was shaken.

Jacelyn Reeves, a pert, slender blonde from Seattle, was an airline hostess who, though she travelled extensively, lived in a rented home in Carmel. Clint was so taken with her, when they were introduced at the Hog's Breath Inn, that he invited her up to the Rising River Ranch. Her polite turndown served both to confuse and intrigue Clint

At their next meeting, Clint was cool because of the previous rebuff, and Reeves turned aggressive. That launched them into bed and a relationship that would blow hot and cold for the first couple of years. Interestingly, Reeves was in her thirties when she and Clint first got together, and unsure of the identity of her biological father. Because she was born in Seattle during the period when Clint was living there, and because he confided in her his belief that he might be the father of a child born in Seattle around that time, they joked that Reeves might be his daughter. He liked women to call him 'Daddy' anyway, and that was one of Reeves's pet names for him.

Although Reeves had first met Clint at the Hog's Breath, she never turned up there again when Clint was in town unless invited. Most of their late-night rendezvous were arranged at discreet locations or at her home.

Clint's confession that he had wiretapped his own telephone was directly linked in this hearing to the perceived threat of Gordon Anderson. The confession was all the more surprising since Clint had not mentioned any wiretapping in his earlier, sworn declarations. Knowing Clint, Locke had entertained suspicions that her phone was tapped. He always seemed to know what she said and did.

Asked directly if there were any transcripts related to her claims that Locke's attorneys hadn't seen, Clint admitted that he had placed a tape-recording device on the Stradella Road phone, without Locke's knowledge, some time early in March.

Clint's voice wasn't even on the tapes, which amounted to six or seven hours of conversation in total. The transcripts were limited to Sondra Locke and her friends (including her lawyer), because this was during the period of time when Clint was rarely glimpsed on the Stradella Road premises; the wiretaps were removed shortly after Locke was expelled.

Nonetheless Clint's argument for why it was suddenly 'morally right' for him to engage in wiretapping was that it was his phone, his home. Only he and his lawyer, Clint noted, had listened to them ,although Jane Brolin, discussing the tapes with friends, indicated she also had listened to them.

Clint further explained that he had been receiving harassing phone calls, both at home and at Malpaso, since the mid-1980s. These calls he characterized as coming from a voice not unlike his own - a whispery male - saying, I am going to kill you! I am going to kill you! I am going to fuck you!' This combination of threatened violence with homosexual overtones might have been the reason why, without am concrete evidence, Clint insisted, in his deposition, that the likely culprit was Anderson. Taping his calls, went the theoiy, would catch Anderson in the act.

No such evidence was provided by the transcripts. However, Clint was able to point to a conversation between Locke and Anderson, in which the two of them rehashed Clint's increasingly bizarre behaviour. The little pistol Locke owned, which had been given to her as a present by Clint, she kept in a leather case in her purse. On one tape, Anderson asked Locke what she would do if Clint showed up on the set of Impulse to bad-vibe her, and she responded that she'd dig in her purse, get out her gun, and shoot him in the fucking head!

It's important to keep in mind that these were Clint's transcriptions, and that Locke's side never accepted their accuracy. And even so, this remark was made in a joking context. Above all, it did nothing to support Clint's original motive for the wiretapping: it proved nothing about Anderson. It was Locke who made the so-called threat!

This was the highlight of Clint's deposition. Mostly Clint said that he didn't remember; or a favourite phrase, I have no records on that' - about seventy-nine times during the six-hour session. Clint's lawyers refused to let him answer many queries; . Finally, as the clock neared 7 p.m., Clint and his lawyers got up and left the room, over the protests of Norman Oberstein, who still had a list of unanswered questions.

An interesting footnote, for film buffs, is that the whole deposition was videotaped. Even more than the X-rated home movies, this is the great, unseen Clint film. The visual style is radical, almost Godardian

One long take, an unvarying medium close-up of Clint, whose face is the only one in the frame. The performance is deeply unsettling. There is baffling lack of emotion. A hint of smugness. Absurdist comedy. Siskel and Ebert, if they ever saw the deposition film, would surely agree: both thumbs up!

Deserted by her celebrity friends Maria Shriver ('Maria was in New York and "couldn't possibly return in time'") and Lili Zanuck (busy filming in Florida and 'quite unable to be away from the set for even one day'),

Locke had a painfully short witness list, consisting of Gordon Anderson, one of Anderson's close friends (who said he had witnessed an incident up in Carmel when animal-lover Clint, in a pique, had hurled his pet parrot Rosanna to the floor), and the Guatemalan caretaker of Stradella Road ('the only person from my life with Clint who dared to come forward and tell the truth').

The Stradella Road realtor, plumber and electrical contractors were questioned by both sides, eliciting the fact that Locke had employed and given them their instructions, but that all cheques were signed by Roy Kaufman.

Clint didn't muster a very long list either; he counted only two witnesses on his behalf. The first was Jane Brolin, whose testimony was intended to buttress the notion that Locke actually lived with Gordon Anderson the whole time she appeared to be living with Clint. Brolin insisted that whenever she visited Crescent Heights she observed extensive wardrobe and cosmetics belonging to Locke strewn around, in drawers, and inside closets.

Brolin's testimony, so intense, so ardent on Clint's behalf, might have backfired. What was she doing poking around in drawers and closets anyway?

Brolin also admitted that she had tipped off the National Enquirer with insider details about the rift between Clint and Locke, because, as she explained, 'Clint is not good at giving interviews. He doesn't give interviews.' It was unclear whether Clint, the sworn enemy of tabloids, had sanctioned this gesture on his behalf, but he certainly did sanction Brolin, who, according to sources, was paid in cash by at least one tabloid for her 'insider information'

Cross-examination elicited the fact that Brolin was due to accompany Clint to Africa, where he was headed to shoot Black Hunter, White Heart, and that for the first: time, in the 17 June 1987 codicil to his will, Brolin had become one of Clint's inheritors, entitled upon his death to the not inconsiderable sum of one million dollars

Clint's travelling companion to Africa was indeed Jane Brolin, who boasted to friends that the longtime, on-and-off affair between her and Clint was . . . definitely 'on'.

One woman definitely back in his life was Frances Fisher. According to Richard Schickel, Clint had put some emotional distance between himself and the actress from the cast of Pink Cadillac. Clint never wooed Fisher 'exclusively' and it was 'always on his timetable'.

Now, in the late summer of 1989, Clint and the actress resumed contact. Pretty soon, without their ever formally discussing it, they were living together

Soon Fisher was introduced to Clint's older buddies and to members of his family, to Arnold and Maria and the rest of the Sun Valley crowd. Soon she was spending time with Clint up at Rising River Ranch.

Although all of Locke's belongings had purportedly been placed in Bekins boxes, no one had accepted them when the truck drove the boxes over to the Crescent Heights place. Anderson, because Locke did not live there and because he suspected Clint was up to something, refused to answer the door.

Therefore, her belongings had been transported to Bekins Storage and deposited in the West Jefferson Boulevard warehouse. 'Our client will pay for the first month of storage and handling fees,' Clint's lawyers advised Locke. 'Should these items remain in storage for longer than one month, you must bear the additional costs

He's nothing! He's not even good in bed! I only slept with him because I felt sorry for him!

When she got the fourteen boxes out of storage, things were missing. Clint, unilaterally, had decided what Locke would get and he would keep. The lawyers drew up lists of what each side claimed as possessions. Clint took special interest in the lists, and worked as hard to prove claim for small treasures as he did for the grand prize of the house.

Some of these battles he lost. One old acquaintance was taken aback when Clint called to ask him about a white, old-fashioned telephone. Locke had claimed the phone. It had been a gift, but Clint couldn't remember - to him or Sondra? Clint couldn't conceal his disappointment at the answer: it was a gift to the actress.

Others he won. The household boasted two parrots, Rosanna and Putty, but only Putty was contested. Locke insisted that Putty, a Yellow Nape Amazon parrot, was hers, a gift from Jane Brolin back in the days when they were friendly. She had named Putty, fed and taken care of Putty.

Clint insisted Putty was his, a house gift from Brolin, not a personal gift to Locke. Naturally, Brolin backed Clint up, and Clint instructed his lawyers not to budge, for Putty, an emotional issue with Locke, was a proprietary issue for him. And Clint won. Indeed, Putty lived on at Stradella Road and Clint renamed him Paco

'The William Munny Killings' would quietly undergo a tide change to Unforgiven, but not until August of 1991 would the Western be announced as Clint's next film.

Megan Rose, the Warners story analyst who had discovered the script, last slept with the star around December 1987. He was making Bird, his elegy to Charlie Parker, and their lovemaking took place within the confines of Clint's forty-foot customized silver recreational vehicle, purchased for him by the studio, which was then parked on the lot.

She had no idea it would be the last time. Their relationship deteriorated when she insisted that she be credited, professionally and financially, for 'finding' the script. One time, discussing 'The William Munny Killings' with Clint, she was surprised to hear him say, 'You gave me the script for the writer' - meaning, she gave him the script to consider the writer for future assignments, but Clint had fallen in love with the script. 'No,' Rose corrected the star, I gave it to you for the project- not the writer.' Clint then dropped the subject, but the seeds were planted.

Throughout the second half of the 1980s, Rose feels, she helped to keep Unforgiven alive. The story analyst communicated with the writer, David Webb Peoples, and made script suggestions to him and to Clint.

In the late 1980s she came down with a mysterious illness, later diagnosed as Lyme disease. She dropped out of circulation for a while. But she continued to stop by Malpaso with her fat-free, healthy desserts, including a family recipe for Southern-style pan-fried apple pie, which Clint especially loved. Although Rose knew about some of the unfair things that happened around Malpaso, she continued to adore Clint and right up to the start of photography never dreamed she would not be credited and compensated for Unforgiven

By May 1990, Locke had had enough of the legal manoeuvring and thought to intercede personally with Clint. She tried to make an appointment with the star, 'hoping that if he felt I'd "come begging" he'd feel he had won and would settle fairly with me'.

She hoped 'enough time had passed that I could remind him of all the good that had been in our relationship and that we could end this ugly battle'.

Clint agreed to see her alone, in his offices at Malpaso. The first thing Clint said was, 'The whole world thinks what you've done to me is terrible. The actress, Clint explained, had embarrassed him publicly.

'You just want something like everybody else,' Clint told Locke. I don't owe you anything. How much do you want for each time we did it? Huh?'

Locke pleaded with him. 'Look, Clint, do we have to be enemies? For your own good, if you don't stop distrusting everybody's every move, you're never going to be happy . . . ever. No matter who you put in your bed, you're going to be miserable.'

I am happy! I'm ecstatic!' he screamed. 'I have lots of friends and lots of people I trust.'

At times, during the brief meeting, Clint acted warmly, even flirtatiously, at one point kissing the actress on the cheek and holding her hand. The truly scary part, Locke reflects nowadays, was that, with everything that had happened between them, he seemed the same old Clint. It was as if he was sending her a subliminal message: they could go back to the way they were, if she only would behave the way he wanted; if she could content herself with being, in effect, one of his 'other women'.

When Clint lowered his voice and asked, in a super-sincere tone, if she really, honestly, believed he owed her anything, Locke had to say, yes, honestly, she believed he did. So they couldn't come to any agreement, and shook hands goodbye.

Clint's farewell words rang in the actress's ears, 'I'll be your friend! No strings attached. Drop your suit, come back, and I'll see what I can do for you, but it has to be no strings attached.'

Locke believed she had damaged her acting respectability in Clint's films. She believed her future lay in directing. She believed Ruddy had good intentions; although in retrospect, she also believes he was a spear-carrier for Clint, who feared that her recent breast cancer was bound to influence any jury.

The basic idea was that Locke would drop all claims against Clint in return for a multi-year directing-development contract with the studio. Gordon Anderson would get the Crescent Heights house; Locke would receive $450,000 cash owed for 'past employment' at Malpaso, and a $1.5 million directing deal.

Locke accepted the terms, even though it meant she gave up all claims on Stradella Road and was left in questionable health and with an uncertain future. All in order to get back to work.

..........A minor irritant during this Oscar foreplay was Megan Rose, the story analyst who had slept with Clint and handed him the script of Unforgiven. Angry at seeing the film she had been crucially responsible for in the process of being positioned for the Academy Award she had predicted, she hired a lawyer and threatened to sue.

All she wanted was her 'finder's fee' and a modest screen credit. Rose's lawyer spoke to Clint's lawyer, who informed him that Clint could not justify giving her a fee and credit. The offer came back that Clint would pay her $10,000 to act as story editor on his next production, A Perfect World, which might be especially attractive to Rose because she had once worked as a reader for Kevin Costner. Rose said no, she felt she had already done the work for which she ought to be compensated.

Clint seems to have lived the most boring life of any big Hollywood star and director..

Selfish, indulgent, manipulative, plenty of women ready to fuck him, powerful...This is all a given.

When does something happen?

Talking to the chair at the 2012 RNC was only the surface of his cray-cray! What an asshole. I have stopped watching his films altogether now. He's right up there with John Wayne and a few others now. Obnoxious asshole.

Rose threatened to go public with her story - and the revelation of her affair with Clint. Before she could do so, however, she found herself exposed in the New York Post of 8 March 1993, where the 'Page Six' gossip column reported her claims of having discovered the Unforgiven script, along with her story of romantic involvement with Clint. Warners Vice President of Worldwide Advertising and Publicity Robert Friedman was quoted, stepping outside his customary purview to note that Rose was just a low-level exec in the story department'.

That was harsh enough, but Friedman was also quoted as stating that Rose once told another Warners executive 'that she'd had an affair with Eastwood six hundred years ago in a previous life'. Since Rose had apprised Clint of her belief in reincarnation, she took this as coming directly from the star, and felt crushed.

A few lawyer manoeuvres followed, then Rose dropped her pursuit of payment and credit.

To this day, poignantly, she doesn't hold a grudge, and like many people once enamoured of Clint, she would be happy for a phone call and another chance in his life.

Jane Brolin was a real cunt. And Maria Shriver was a really, really shitty friend. She was friends with Sondra but socialized with clint's pieces on the side. She got what she deserved in the end when her husband fucked and had a kid with the nanny and kept the kid in their lives and right under Maria's pointy nose. Even bringing the kid on vacations with the rest of the family.

To say that Clint had made an amazing comeback is not quite right; he had never gone away. But by the mid-1980s, his films had begun to wobble, younger stars were charging the box-office, and Sondra Locke's 'palimony' case had tarnished his once-pure image. Unforgiven regenerated a career that looked as though it had peaked.

Nineteen ninety-three was something for Clint: the Oscars for Unforgiven by the end of summer, there was another baby, this one a girl with the last name Fisher-Eastwood.

According to an interview with Fisher in Redbook, 'The decision to have a baby had been percolating in the back of my mind for years,' 'and we were coming close to it anyway. He wasn't opposed. He knew that I wanted to have children - everybody knows that about me. It was part of the package.'

This is what she said in print. In actuality, according to sympathetic friends of Fisher, she had made it clear to Clint that she was interested in a life partner, husband and father. He, typically, remained elusive. When she became pregnant, his reaction was to make a joke about her womanly figure going to hell. When she asked Clint if he wanted the baby, he said, in his noncommittal way, that it was up to her

This was a period of inner turmoil for Fisher, despite the smiles she displayed to the press whenever she and Clint were out and about. She did decide to have the baby, and even then Clint sent her negative signals.

He didn't want her to tell anyone, especially before the Academy Awards, because as the star told her flatly, he didn't want anything to detract from his Oscar campaign. So the actress was forbidden to tell her closest friends, and she went to the Oscars, four months pregnant, trying to feel that the congratulations they received that night were partly for the baby growing inside her

r50 Sandra is 73 that is NOT nearly 80

Clint still refused to tell people, and it wasn't until a couple of months later, when Fisher visited the set of A Perfect World in Texas, that he started to acknowledge the pregnancy to friends and the press. People on the set recall what a glowering mood he was in that day, when Buddy Van Horn commented to him that Fisher was 'showing'. It's probably relevant that her visit also interrupted his flirtations with a young assistant, according to people behind the scenes of that film.

......Clint was there throughout the labour, though he had been absent from the births of Kyle and Alison. They went home together for five weeks, a 'miraculous time', 'A tone was established [between Clint and Frances Fisher] in those weeks that persisted for months,' noted Richard Schickel. 'The three of them were constantly together, and on the rare occasions when they were apart Clint always stayed punctiliously in touch.'

She believed Clint's philandering days were past. When Fisher had asked him about other women in his life, Clint reportedly quoted his Unforgiven character: I ain't like that no more.'

.....Around this time Clint's relationship with Frances Fisher was reverting to 'its former troubled state', according to Richard Schickel. Since giving birth to Francesca, Fisher had become more demanding. 'He, in his turn, was beginning to find some of her "New Age" ideas -which included strong reformist impulses about traditional masculine modes as well as theories of feminism - puzzling, irritating and, as they applied to his own ways of thinking and being, impossible to adopt,' explained Schickel.

'He also says he found himself once again under pressure to find roles for an actress who had a large personal claim on him.' Clint's mother took the actress aside and warned Fisher that she loved her son too much.....

Certainly, The Bridges of Madison County spelled the end of Clint's relationship with Frances Fisher, who like Sondra Locke - and others - couldn't decode the subliminal messages Clint was sending. According to Richard Schickel, the actress who was also the mother of Clint's daughter made her last error by proposing herself for a role as Francesca's daughter. That was rejected by Clint. 'Personal issues aside,' wrote Schickel, 'she had just finished another Malpaso picture, and he was more than ever determined not to repeat the Sondra Locke scenario.

According to Schickel's book, Clint also was not very encouraging when Fisher proposed a visit to the Iowa set. Definitely not encouraging, agree friends of Fisher. Although, indeed, Fisher had hoped to play a part in The Bridges of Madison County, she had said, 'Any part'. She revered Meryl Streep and simply wanted to be part of any film that starred the foremost actress of her generation; she wanted to observe Streep at work. Clint knew this. So he kept saying, 'Next week . . .' whenever Fisher asked to visit.

Finally, when Fisher and Francesca arrived in Iowa, they discovered Streep had already gone. k Oh,' Clint informed her, 'she's done with her scenes.'

Why Vicki Cornell got pregnant, and then insisted on vows and a ring.

Frances Fisher knew about Roxanne and Kimber Tunis. But it didn't help the tensions between her and Clint when the actress also learned about Jacelyn Reeves and her two children. According to sources sympathetic to Fisher, the actress was up at Clint's Carmel house, tidying around one day, when she noticed a children's-type birthday card inscribed to 'Daddy'. Glancing at it, thinking how sweet it was of Kyle and Alison to send Clint such a children's card, she was perplexed to discover two names she had never heard of: 'Scott and Katie'.

Confronted with her discovery, Clint first clammed up, angry that, from his point of view, Fisher had been snooping around. Later he explained that he and Reeves had got together at the premiere of Pale Rider, they had slept together on impulse, she had got pregnant, and since she made no great demands on Clint, he later repeated the experience. Fisher was sworn to secrecy.

It was only later that she learned that Clint had been carrying on with Reeves for over ten years; half of Carmel and all of Clint's barnacles knew about Reeves; not to mention, after February of 1990, when the first articles about Reeves appeared, in the tabloids, America's inquiring readers.

Fisher finally met Jacelyn Reeves at the funeral of one of Clint's golf buddies, where Jane Brolin, loving the drama of it, took her aside and told her the mother of two of Clint's children was there. Clint, with a frozen look, ducked away, roaming the room and making small talk, while Fisher eventually came face to face with Reeves. They politely introduced themselves to each other, these two women with Clint and babies in common.

Nor did it help that more mothers and offspring seemed to be forever popping up. In mid-1993, Clint was confronted with the claims of a woman in her late thirties, originally from Washington State. who had researched her adoption and ascertained that Clint was her biological father. She was the pregnancy left behind in 1953, when Clint went to Hollywood for the first time. Clint sometimes talked about the possibility that he was the father of someone living in Washington. Now this lady appeared genuine.

Clint had his lawyers and business managers check her out. before agreeing to meet her. The woman was married to a rich man, had no designs on Clint's money. Happy to guard her anonymity, she desired only to meet her father. Clint had a cordial if awkward dinner with the woman and her husband, and promised to stay in touch.

Back at Stradella Road, the house Clint still shared with Frances Fisher was 'alternately silent and quarrelsome', in Richard Schickel's words, with Fisher trying desperately to figure out the relationship, and Clint projecting ambivalence.

According to Schickel, the last straw was Jane Brolin's death, which came on 13 February 1995. Brolin was fifty-five when she died from injuries sustained in a late-night auto accident near her home in Templeton, California. A phone call awakened Fisher and Clint with the news. When Fisher tried to console Clint, he turned away from her. 'He cried, the first and only time Frances saw him in tears,' wrote Schickel.

Clint and Jane Brolin had had a falling out after White Hunter, Black Heart. Maybe Brolin, whose role had always been as one of Clint's sidekicks, had turned around and become too clingy. The word went around that a resentful Brolin was writing a tell-all book about Clint.

Maggie tipped off Clint, and then fresh word went around that Clint and Warner Brothers had come to some kind of understanding with Brolin. Brolin's Variety obituary concluded with this titbit of information: 'She had recently negotiated a contract with Warner Brothers to film a television series starring chimpanzees.'

Brolin's will, scrawled just a few months before her death because she knew her habit of taking too many sleeping pills, officially declared her undying love for Clint. It also stipulated that the star would receive payment of all money she owed him before any other debts or bequests were honored.

By then Frances Fisher had moved out of Stradella Road, taken up single parenthood, and resumed a busy career, where every one of her acting jobs wouldn't be ascribed to Clint's influence.*

Fisher, like other mothers of Clint's children, probably received a carefully negotiated settlement. A house and regular financial installments were part of the standard agreement. Usually the houses would be designated as remaining under Roy Kaufman's name until Clint's death, a not-so-subtle enforcement of Clint's preference that the women he left behind avoid any statements about him to the press

The great bulk of Clint's net worth was assigned to be divided equally between Kyle and Alison upon his death. With Kyle and Alison, Clint had always been financially generous, buying them, over the years, IBM and other blue-ribbon stock. As indicated by his will, these were the two for whom Clint felt the most responsibility, love and perhaps - though everyone says it isn't a strong emotion with him - guilt.

'There is no guilt with Clint,' noted one of the mothers of his children, speaking on condition of anonymity. 'Anything that vaguely resembles guilt is channeled into anger. His anger is always intended to prove people wrong, or prove their behavior bad. And if people are wrong or bad, there is nothing for him to feel guilty about.'

In September of 1996, Clint was back in court, with, of all people, Sondra Locke.

Clint's former live-in lover, recovered from her bout with cancer, had spent three years at Warners, unable to persuade the studio to develop a single story or idea out of the thirty or so projects she brought to the table. Frustrated and angry, the actress filed suit, alleging the studio had treated her fraudulently, giving her a directing deal upon Clint's say-so without any intention of making good on the contract

In the discovery stages of her lawsuit, Locke discovered paperwork that indicated Clint was in on the deception. So she filed a $2 million suit against the star, too. Friends warned her against such action. It was dangerous to take on the corporate giant, Warner Brothers. It was stupid to go after Clint once again. The actress would be destroyed in the courtroom by Clint's lawyers ... if she ever got that far.

Locke was determined to try to bring Clint to justice. Clint was just as determined to evade her, at one point calling in the studio police on a professional process server, having the man handcuffed and then held for interrogation on the Warners lot. After months of legal stalling - with Clint and Warners choosing to separate themselves in the litigation - the case arrived in the Burbank Superior Court in September 1996.

A jury was picked. Since it was a civil case, only nine of the twelve jurors would have to side with Locke in order for her to gain a verdict against Clint. The presiding judge was David M. Schachter. Locke was represented by attorney Peggy Garrity.

For two weeks witnesses were heard. Locke explained affectingly how the star, known far and wide for his warmth, generosity, loyalty, etc., had operated behind the scenes, in collusion with Warner Brothers, to deceive her and ruin her career. And how the studio deal was in reality the star's secret, cut-rate pay-off of her 1989 'palimony' lawsuit against him.

Clint was called as Locke's final witness. His time on the witness stand would be covered by media from around the world. The star was tense, uncomfortable. Under questioning from Peggy Garrity, he reverted to his Gary Cooper-mode, saying only about fifteen words. These included, as itemized in one account, five 'Yes' responses, three 'No's, and an occasional, 'That's true'. His most verbose reply, according to one press account, was 'Part of it, yes'.

Speaking in a 'barely audible voice', Clint admitted that it was he who covertly had paid Locke the $1.5 million of her Warners salary during her three-year dead-end deal. He had little choice but to confess, since, in the discovery phase of the trial, the actress had unearthed a bookkeeping print-out from Warner Brothers which recorded the figure of $975,000, part payment to Locke, as being written off to the budget for Unforgiven, with the remainder of her salaries and expenses amortized to Malpaso.*

Back on the witness stand later, in the defense phase of the trial, the 'previously laconic' Clint now 'grew animated on the witness stand', in the words of the Los Angeles Times, claiming, I never intended to defraud anyone. I didn't discourage them from making movies with Sondra Locke.' He insisted he underwrote Locke's directing pact as 'icing on the cake' to convince Terry Semel to accept the arrangement.

When asked by his lawyer, Raymond Fisher, if he ever told Warners not to make a film with Locke, Clint couldn't restrain a chuckle, saying, 'No, not at all.

After giving his testimony and leaving the courtroom, Clint was 'unusually loquacious' to outside reporters, quipping: 'No good deed goes unpunished.'

Does anyone think that Clint Eastwood had sex with Marisa Berenson during the filming of White Hunter Black Heart in 1990? Clint was still seeing Sondra at that time.

The judge refused to allow the records showing the charging of Locke's costs to Unforgiven to be admitted to the court record. Locke's lawyer Pegg) Garrity argued that this was 'the heart of the fraud. It was hidden, it was concealed, and it was concealed in the payment and the costs on Unforgiven, But Warner Brothers 'fought hard' to keep those documents out of the public eye, and the judge decided in the studio's favour because 'that's between them and their investors'.

When, on 23 September, the jury went into deliberation, the betting odds had switched to Locke. Ten of the twelve jurors were believed to be solidly in her corner, with the only real issue being how much money ultimately would be awarded.

Since before the trial, Clint's friends had been lobbying him to settle once and for all with the actress. According to sources, even his own legal team argued against the messy courtroom showdown. But Clint's mind was stubbornly set

Now, at the eleventh hour, the friends and lawyers began to lobby him again. Clint was bound to lose. An out-of-court settlement was bound to be less costly than a judgement. Also, if he moved swiftly, Clint would seem the generous spirit, acting to end all this misunderstanding and hostility. Clint liked that side of the argument.

Therefore, on the morning in which jurors were set to begin a second day of deliberation, a surprise announcement was made. Locke had agreed to drop her suit against Clint in return for an unspecified monetary settlement. I just hope she got a good deal,'jury forewoman Brenda Williams was quoted in the press.

The actress stated for the public record that her cause would have been vindicated by the award of one dollar. Her victory over Clint was meant for 'the little person' everywhere, the outcome a 'loud and clear' message to Hollywood 'that people cannot get away with whatever they want to, just because they're powerful'.

That is how a sympathetic press also covered the conclusion of the case, with smiling photos of a triumphant Locke. The settlement was, as usual, sealed from public scrutiny, and technically, no verdict had come down, but any hopes Clint might have had of looking magnanimous were dashed by the coverage. Any hopes that he might look the winner - keeping his perfect court record - were dashed by the public perception. It was a bitter experience to have lost in front of the whole world.

Gordon Anderson, Locke's husband, came in for especially nasty sniping. The fact that Anderson is homosexual had been acknowledged openly for the first time by Sondra Locke in the courtroom during the trial. But the press, rightly considering Anderson a private individual who did not court any public recognition, did not cite his sexual orientation in print.

Now Clint, in a March 1997 interview with Bernard Weinraub in Playboy - a heterosexual venue for the occasion - 'outed' Anderson in print, then disparaged him publicly, as he had sometimes disparaged gay characters in his films. Soon after, in another interview for George, John Kennedy Jr's glossy magazine, Clint added to the disparagement, claiming Locke and Anderson were 'macabre' people, saying, 'Jeffrey Daumer is right up their alley', an astonishing allusion - unchallenged in print - to the Milwaukee, Wisconsin serial murderer who preyed on postpubescent boys.

Clint's callous remarks were more the type he usually reserved for his 'barroom barnacles'. In Playboy, he went so far as to accuse Locke of playing the card of victim by currying sympathy with people with her breast cancer and double mastectomy

The Sondra Locke case continued to haunt the star. In May the actress achieved another, last-minute out-of-court settlement, this time with Warner Brothers, for its part in alleged collusion with Clint, dating back to the 1989 break-up. After ten years of battling her former lover and Warners in the courts, the agreement awarded Locke with undisclosed financial compensation and a new business arrangement with the studio

........Clint Eastwood's name first appeared on my list of proposed subjects over fifteen years ago. He was repeatedly passed over by publishers who preferred the sales potential of other film personalities. It wasn't until Unforgiven and the Oscars and other honours began to mount up that a New York editor who had previously rejected Clint as a subject, saying he was unfamiliar with many of his films and not particularly disposed towards him anyway, resurrected the idea. Clint, he thought, was 'hot'.

At dinner, Clint was very gracious, not only making a point of complimenting other books of mine but picking up the bill. I remember he asked me, with a somewhat horrified expression, if I was going to be phoning up 'people like Sondra Locke'. I told him I wasn't looking forward to it, but that it would seem to be required under the circumstances. (My impression of Locke, at that early stage, was that she was some kind of wounded bird flapping around on one wing.) He said he could never do that sort of thing..

When I wrote my book about Jack Nicholson, Jack neither helped nor hindered me. Some people associated with him refused to see me, but most were happy to, and I had only a small number of off the record conversations with key people. With Clint, People were worried about talking to me without his go-ahead, and therefore many people, especially those currently employed by Malpaso (the people quoted in most articles and books), shied away from me, sometimes without replying to letters or phone calls, other times as politely as possible. The people who did talk to me on the record either did not work in the film industry or, if they did, felt secure in their careers independent of Malpaso and didn't fear for their livelihoods. They didn't fear Clint.

The sister of one long-deceased Clint friend pleaded to be excused from an interview, because, even though she had 'nothing really bad' to say about Clint, she feared Clint's wrath and, worse, being sued; even Clint's grade-school principal had to call Malpaso first before deciding. (Whoever answered the phone at Malpaso advised him against talking to me, and he didn't.)

One lady friend of Clint's was perfectly forthcoming about the star in phone calls and letters, but insisted on anonymity in print. I love Clint dearly,' she told me, 'but I also know him very well. And he's vindictive.'

Unlike the Nicholson book, I was confronted with numerous, reputable sources who believed in Clint's vindictiveness and wished to remain unidentified as sources. I am pledged to conceal their names. I was struck by how many people I encountered who really hated Clint and made no bones about it. 'People like Sondra Locke' - who felt that he had betrayed or mistreated them. In the case of the Nicholson book, I would be hard-pressed to name a single such source; almost everybody loved Jack, felt obliged to defend and protect and explain him against the violations of a biographer. Not so with Clint, who, contrary to his decent-loyal image, has left many broken friends and outright enemies in his wake. He has left many 'unidentified sources'

in the end I was left with a Clint who is in many ways the antithesis of his legend and certainly the antithesis of his authorized biography. Looking back over Clint's career, I find that his life is partly a triumph of publicity, and his beguilement of the press and critics an unavoidable part of the story.

Man what a mess.

Genetic Sexual Attraction is a real thing. The flight attendant could really be his daughter.

Thanks OP!

Sondra Locke and Gordon Anderson

.........

Sondra Locke in 2005

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

[quote] One day, feeling depressed, she found a note on the windshield of her car, signed by a complete stranger: “We’re rooting for you, Sondra. A lot of us are on your side.” These small things helped her going through the trial.

It's the little people who matter!

[quote] Clint Eastwood' current girlfriend looks like Sondra Locke

More like the middle aged Meredith Baxter.

I really thought the blind item at r11 would have garnered more notice. It's nothing Clint could have admitted, but puts Sondra's claim of monogamy into a quite different light.

As to Clint, I always thought his portrayal of John Huston in White Hunter Black Heart was his arguably best performance. Apparently though the white hunter with the black heart wasn't such a stretch.

Bitch was crazy!

Sondra Locke was nominated for an Oscar before she even met Clint Eastwood. She was one of the few women to pursue a directing career in the 80’s. Eastwood tried to ruined professionally & personally when he had moved on to other women.

Her personal style was not Hollywood glamour girl – she was comfortable maintaining her small town Southern persona.

I love that she and the gay husband best friend never divorced.

Clint talked Sondra into abortions and tubal ligation (ruined her chances to have kids) while he was having children with other women!

I gave up reading this after awhile. Can someone sum up all of this for me? Her relationship with Eastwood was a disaster and it's all his fault?

Review of Sondra Locke book - 1997

CLINT'S DREAD-LOCKE: EX-PAL SPILLS 'BAD,' 'UGLY'

" Like the girl with the proverbial curl, the "Good" part of the couple's 13-year relationship was very, very good particularly the sex.

While they were working on "The Outlaw Josey Wales" together, Locke writes, Eastwood came to her ho tel room. "Once at my door all that was necessary was another look at each other. There was no conversation, no maneuvering, it was all as natural as if it were happening for the thousandth time, but as exciting as any first time could be. He pulled me into his arms and kissed me gently, delicately. Then lifting me up, like some knight bearing his maiden, he carried me across the room to the bed . . . . And in spite of his size and power, he was a gentle, affectionate, thoughtful, and yet intensely ardent lover.

" One problem: He was married. Locke should have gotten a clue right then and there. But she was in too deep, and the "Bad and the Ugly" part came soon enough. As anyone who followed the couple's sensational palimony trial knows, Locke claimed Eastwood convinced her to have two abortions, then to get surgery that would render her infertile. "I don't really want any more children," she says Eastwood told her. "You know, [a friend] had a surgery to prevent pregnancy . . . a very simple outpatient procedure.

" Locke then began to cry. "Don't you want to spend the rest of your life with me?

" she claims he said. Locke had the procedure done. Later, she found out he had three children with two other women while she was living with him. Eastwood's aw-shucks, thank-you ma'am image is going to take some hits with Locke's biting little revelations on life with the Big Star. She claims: The erstwhile Mayor of Carmel and prominent conservative was unsophisticated about general goings-on in the world, and once asked her, "Who's Barbara Walters?

" Eastwood later flirted with Walters on her show. Eastwood wanted the much younger Locke to refer to him as Dad. "He loved for me to call him Daddy," and he'd say to her, "Let your old dad take care of things," she writes. After Locke redecorated one of their houses (bought as a gift to Locke after she agreed to be sterilized), the actor walked in and became angry. "This house doesn't look like Clint Eastwood!" he yelled. Eastwood confided in Locke that he developed his husky intonations after studying Marilyn Monroe's breathy whisper. "He decided he'd do a male version of it himself.

" Their once-passionate romance eventually fell into a rather fastidious routine. Just before going to bed, he would ask her, "Sweetie, did you floss?

" She would take that as a signal that he wanted to have sex. We have no comment,"

"But Eastwood didn't just cheat on Maggie, he beat her, too. Fritz Manes, a high school buddy of Eastwood's who helped produce 17 of his movies (until he fell out of favour), recalls a row between the couple. 'Clint just turned round and knocked Maggie out cold. He really decked her knocked her clear from the living room into the tub in the bathroom.' It wasn't an isolated incident."

Sondra Locke interview :

""I think he thought I'd go away, because he always gets his way," Locke says. "He just wills people to do things, he would say that all the time. And he was willing me to go away. And I didn't. So he had to make it happen, which is not his way."

She draws a breath. "I'd been so reasonable. He got off so easily. He broke all his promises with such a cavalier hand. And I reasoned it all away; I just wanted to go forward, I just wanted to work. It seemed more important to me."

"People can say, He made her famous, he gave her movies.' " She shakes her head. "He didn't give me movies, I did a job. He didn't make me famous. It was never my fame -- it was his fame. I was Clint's girl. I only stood to lose professionally." A pause. "I didn't think about it initially, but three years in, I knew it. I saw it. Certainly I take responsibility for it." Had she pursued her own career, she goes on, "I understood it would be at the risk of our relationship. And when I did, that was the beginning of the end.

"He's like the emperor," Locke says. "He always had his own company store. If you were in Clint Eastwood movies, you were in the Clint Eastwood movie business. You weren't in the movie business. You weren't part of Hollywood. This became clear early on; people stopped calling. They automatically assumed I was working exclusively with Clint."

"I'm sorry he is who he is. As sorry as people are going to be, it was far more devastating to me to find out who he really was," she says. "I loved him. I entrusted myself to him."

She smiles ruefully. "My biggest misfortune, my greatest regret, is that I wish I'd cut my time with Clint in half. I wouldn't say I wish I never had the relationship, but I wish I'd found a way, I'd understood who he was, where it would end, five or six years earlier so I could have gotten on with things." She strokes a still-smooth cheek. "I just feel like, Oh my God, I've lost so much time. If only I were 40, it wouldn't be so bad." She sighs. "If I were 40."

Cry me a river.

Sally Field went through the same thing with Burt Reynolds.

Sally Field was only Burt Reynolds beard, she knew the score when she signed on.

So, while Locke sterilized herself to please Eastwood, he has children with other women behind her back??!!! What a low blow, what a fucked up manipulative cunt Eastwood was, I always say, no one as manipulative, dishonest and only interested in their own well-being like a man.

He didn't want her to "lose her figure" because he lived with her. He didn't mind paying off various women to raise his illegitimate kids.

People like Eastwood aren't bright. They have a charisma that they get by with. They steal the ideas and work of those propping them up. Tale as old as time.

This is why you take time to get to know someone before emotionally investing. These types always try to rush the emotional commitment on your part, so that they have a strong power over you.

Sondra Locke deserved that breast cancer diagnosis for the travesty that is 'Ratboy'.

Thanks Book Troll! Love you're threads!

Your.

R119 you've got that right!

Would her career have been different if it were not for Clint Eastwood?

He destroyed her chances of having kids while he went on fathering many children with other women! How he could live with himself?

Clint Eastwood is the reason Frank Wells is dead. He died on a helicopter crash after going on a trip with him. If he hadn't, he might still be alive and Michael Eisner might never have been able to negate all the good things he did at Disney the way he did after Wells' death.

I'm always curious about men like Eastwood who have a posse of pussy. Did he ever mix up the names? Or did he just call them all "Honey" or "Darling" to avoid embarrassing faux pas.

R125 I think so, without Clint, she would have been a decent actress, as Sondra said, she lost her respectability in Clint' movies and later her battles with Clint, all this put her in the blacklist of Hollywood.

R130 : Sonra Locke talk about this in R26

"Most damaging to my future was the fallout with Eastwood. This was twofold. First, I had worked with him exclusively for so many years that I had not developed a network outside him and WB, his home studio.

Second – and most important – was that his obvious enmity toward me had a surefire “blackball” effect. He didn’t even have to articulate that he didn’t want anyone working with me. They understood the situation. He was a very powerful figure in town and no one wanted to get on his bad side. Why bother? Why get involved?

Sondra seems a lovely,intelligent woman. I think she fell into that trap of believing Clint was her one perfect love and after what she sacrificed it was very hard to let go.

She fell into the trap of her career being washed up. Only a couple of years after the now forgotten 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter' she was reduced to doing B movies and guest appearances on tv shows. Without hooking up with Eastwood it's highly unlikely she would have ever been given the chance to direct/produce any movie, especially the shitfest camp classic (ratboy). Whether she likes it or not, the only reason anyone even knows her name is due to the movies she made with Clint.

^Clint suffering from advanced dementia.

The Gauntlet is my favorite Locke-Eastwood film.

You are so right, R133. Too bad she had to totally surrender to Clint's control while he did as he pleased.

I hope that bitch Jane Brolin suffered terribly before she died in the car wreck.

Clint acts out his homophobic rape fantasies.

"I've been looking for a new punk"

I can only guess how many of you sad middle aged queens have wished for those words to be spoken.

Sondra Locke regarding suppression of her autobiography :

I was shut out of most venues to promote the book, in particular the networks. Remember, Bob Daly (president of WB) had, at one time, run CBS. The influence was there. I was told by my publisher that Oprah Winfrey wanted me to come on her show. As it was being scheduled, I was suddenly canceled and Clint was set to appear on the show instead. At that time, and even rarely today, Clint had almost never appeared on such a talk show.

The gay magazine The Advocate was set to do a big article on my book, which was a natural because of Gordon being gay. Suddenly Clint was giving them an interview and appearing on the cover and I was out ENTIRELY. Why could they not have run both pieces if indeed it was an innocent coincidence? Liz Smith, a very highly regarded and read New York columnist, wrote a supportive rave review about my book - and me - in her column. When her column appeared in the L.A. Times, the review and all references to my book were excised from it. The rest of her column was intact.

Warner Brothers had some sort of association with L.A. Times. I was told at the time what the connection was, but have forgotten. Entertainment Weekly, a very well read entertainment magazine, also gave my book a rave review. It was pulled and a bad review appeared instead. I am fairly certain that Warner Brothers had some financial involvement with Entertainment Weekly - perhaps they even owned it, I can't recall.

What R135 said.

She was an adult. She knew what a star was like. She knew what Clint was like. She knew Hollywood caters to a star of his level. She can't blame Eastwood for anything only herself.

She is not a victim of anybody else. If she threw her life away and is complaining about it she is still emotionally an adolescent.

what's up with Clint' last wife, Dina? was she cray cray?

[quote] what's up with Clint' last wife, Dina?

I think that was her signal to the world "I'm with her!".

[quote]He even had the ambition of becoming President. After a dinner in the White House with Ronald Reagan, he told Locke, “this could be ours one day”.

He should have done it. That might have kept Trump out of office.

I'm still waiting to hear about the sex tapes! I always assumed he was gay or at least strongly bi, so I'm surprised to hear about all the affairs he had with women. I would have thought she would say something about his having sex with men if, indeed, he ever had. The fact that she didn't, yet didn't hold back any punches when talking about him , makes me think that he is totally straight. Too bad. What a waste.

wow, and I liked this guy. I researched where he was discovered by the old jewish agent , it became a 76 gas station where Clint used to work in Beverly Hills. (not the one where the hooker guy escorted out of) but on Wilshire. Its amazing that if this little old pudgy agent had not been crazy about Clint. Clint would never have been the famous actor he became. He had no talent. People wondered why this agent was pushing him on everyone. He was stiff as a board. but the gay agent kept pushing him on people and BINGO STARDOM. but he really is an awful person.

All the gory details will come out when Clint dies.

[quote] He was stiff as a board

If you think about it he made that his strength. The Man with No Name, Harry Callaghan, the Army Ranger with Richard Burton, the other westerns, etc. Each strong, silent, grim, and stiff. Clint's big failures were when he tried to loosen up. Bird, Paint Your Wagon, Pink Cadillac.

Paint Your Wagon died a very quick roadshow death helping to end roadshow presentations. But it played as such for a year in London.

I've never understood that.

By the way I saw it at the Warner Cinerama in Times Square in 70mm and six track stereo on its 80 ft curved screen in the late 70s and that dreadful movie suddenly was enormous fun. Cecil Beaton in his diaries about going to the world premiere at Loew's State while he was working on Coco is hilarious.

He gave her class. She gave him ass.

Doesn't she hint at some bisexuality on his part going on in their sexcapades? Why would a gay agent so strongly push a young actor with no discernable talent if the young actor wasn't putting out? Like that gay man giving room and board to Brad Pitt for being a pool boy when Pitt now acts as if he doesn't know the man at all. By the way the guy isn't pissed he just misses Brad.

I don't think Eastwood is gay, maybe he just acted nice to a middle aged gay director. He certainly wouldn't be the first our the last who's done it.

In the book Sondra says that one time Clint was telling she and Gordon how he got his start in the business. Gordon jokingly asks if the rumors were true about Clint and his mentor Arthur Lubin. Clint dropped his wrist and with a lisp said "I'll never tell!"

I have some minor Sondra Locke gossip. Many Years ago I worked at an ice cream parlor in Santa Cruz. About once a month, Locke and a bunch of Carmel ladies-who-lunch types would come in during the dead hours (when no other customers would be around). They were the sort that ordered single scoop hot fudge sundaes with no nuts because of their diets. one day one of the women brought in a photo album consisting entirely of studio portraits of herself in Victoria's Secret/Frederick's of Hollywood lingerie. It was a cheesecake fest. It was ostensibly a gift for her husband, but it was obviously a big ego boost for her as well. All of the women, including, Sondra, thought it was a great idea and talked of making appointments with the photog to give their "men" similar gifts. I wonder if Clint still has the album.

I'd this book when it first came out, Sondra was in love with Clint and he insisted. He told her that she would have to have the tubal ligation surgery if she wanted them to stay together and promised her that they would remain together "forever and ever". (Of course such a promise is often made in the heat of romance and is often broken. But the point is she thought he would grow old with... I guess he was already old. She thought of him as the love of her life and wanted the relationship to be permanent.

A silly assumption of course, especially with a spoiled egotistical man. But it's a silly assumption many people have made in their lives. So when the man she intended to spend her life with insisted there would be no children, she allowed herself to be bullied into the operation

He gave her a house as a reward for having the operation (which he tried to take back after they split up). And when he saw that she had decorated it to her own taste, went ballistic. "This is not a Clint Eastwood house," he is reported to have screamed at her.

She found out that in the years after her surgery, he had two children with another women while they were still together. she was a fool to let herself be taken in by this egotistical, self centered jerk. But it's not uncommon for a person in love to learn the hard way. And she was still young when she fell in love with him.

I find it ridiculous that people excuse his behavior because of his far greater wealth and power. Maybe she never would have had a top notch film career. But to say that she should be grateful for what she did get because he was a rich and powerful Hollywood celebrity and she was not is lame. She was a fool and he was a jerk.

Wasn't she with him for 16 years? I know she didn't really live with him full time, how would that fall under a common law marriage.

I don't think it's really love for a movie star unless they jump up and down on a sofa in front of a national TV audience.

What's the actual rumours surrounding Eastwood and Lubin?

Are there any gay rumors in this thread?

....

.....

I find it hard to believe with Eastwood, however I was amazed to find out that Clark Gable was a hustler back in the day, and got fucked up the ass.

Common law marriage is not recognized in CA, so she would have been out of luck.

I always thought she looked like a ferret, in fact she could have saved money and played the title role in (ratboy) they could have saved a lot of money on the makeup.

[quote] He gave her a house as a reward for having the operation (which he tried to take back after they split up).

He didn't give her a house. He told her he did but it was in his name. And he kicked her out of it and moved in the woman he was cheating on her with (Frances Fisher). He had some flunkies box up her stuff and put it out on the curb. Then he had his lawyer call Sondra on the set of a film she was directing and tell her he just kicked her out and her stuff was on the curb

And Frances Fisher is a damned liar when she says she didn't know about Clint and Sondra. I was a 16 yr old kid who lived in Florida and I knew about Clint and Sondra. Everybody knew it. They dated for years and she was in most of his movies

I agree he was completely out of order throwing her out of the house. However, I fail to see how he owed her a directing career, and don't tell if he hadn't stood in her way she would have thrived, two of the more mainstream movies she directed bombed.

I know she says she turned down work while she was with Eastwood, but to be frank, her career was in the toilet when they got together. She most probably had a longer, higher profile career, while she was with Eastwood than she would have done otherwise.

As to her having the abortions and her tubes tied, well, she shouldn't have caved into his demands. She wanted to stay with him, and she knew he was already married when they hooked up. She tries to come across as whiter than white: 'what about him being married during the majority of their relationship'. Know one forced her to do the things she did while she was with him, she was a grown woman and probably stayed due to her lifestyle and career being wrapped up in the relationship as much as she did for Clint Eastwood.

"Know one forced her to do the things she did while she was with him, she was a grown woman and probably stayed due to her lifestyle and career being wrapped up in the relationship as much as she did for Clint Eastwood."

That still.doesnt excuse the fact that Eastwood was a manipulative, egocentric and cold bully and, on occasion, a man who punched women.

This is a good cautionary tale on the pitfalls of letting your hopes and dreams get closely tied to a more powerful romantic partner. You'll always be the plus one and you'll never get credit for any help you gave them. It also shows how it's a bad idea to get very financially dependent on someone you aren't married too. If you're married you get community property.

I remember reading on some blog years ago that Locke was considered quite the bitch, stuck up and full of herself by some people who knew her quite well. She was also said to be cold towards any female cast/crewmembers while she was filming with Eastwood, due to her being paranoid he might be cheating on her(which turned out to be true).

I read her book. she does sound sincere that she really did or was in love with him. Those are truly the risks one takes when they give without being calculating and scheming. obviously frances the next woman or the airline stewardess were more calculating and got pregnant and secured their futures. In hindsight Locke should have done the same and popped out a kid or two as leaverage. so many women have with powerful men. Eliz hurley secured hers by tampering with the condom with steven bing. and got $50k per month child support. in hollywood, you cant be sincere with sharks and everyone especially the big stars are sharks

R170 Well Said

Did Eastwood really put out for Lubin to get his start in Hollywood?

Sounds like she was a shark herself and has refused to take 100% responsibility for her decisions in life.

Extra! Extra! Movie Star is a Manipulative Wife Beating Shit!

Extra! Extra! Director Thinks She Would Have Had A Great Career Without Manipulative Shit! Delusional!

R173. put down your crack pipe troll. she got abortions for a man she loved. she did trick a man into a child. she was , a talented actress and director and she felt she deserved credit for that and she sued and got what she was due or he would not have settled. she was probably due much more. Then she was tricked by both Eastwood and Warner bros......so shut your twat you moron 173

There is no way to "trick" a man into a child. Men need to use reliable birt control instead of being so ladida about it.

oh yea. talk to eliz hurley about pin pricks in condoms, worked out very nicely for her

R176:. Were you there?

r177. did not need to be, it happened. if you were not such an idiot you would realize there are tons of documented events which neither you or I have attended , but happened. god your dumb

"god your dumb"

Alrightie then.

Abortions for the man she loved?

That is as fucking sick as it comes.

She is scum.

It should be her decision not his and if she claims he forced her emotionally as in I'm such a victim! she is beyond contempt.

R180. she is scum because she had an abortion. wake up twat

R152...wake up. no one said Clint Eastwood is gay.....jeeez. you guys. go out into the world . most people ESPECIALLY PEOPLE in the entertainment business are whores. people do a lot to get ahead in all kinds of business especially the entertainment business. obviously Clint made the right decision. read up on it. he was also loyal to the two gay jews who helped him in life. the director and the accountant business manager. they helped him get to where he is and in return he stuck with both of them. letting a couple of old homos suck you off every now and then DOES NOT MAKE YOU GAY.

Sondra is a lovely woman and friend to the gays. Here she is talking about her pets.

bump

[quote]r95 Does anyone think that Clint Eastwood had sex with Marisa Berenson during the filming of White Hunter Black Heart in 1990? Clint was still seeing Sondra at that time.

I think she is too sophisticated for him. Locke, Brolin and Fisher all have a cornfed, Midwestern look. He also prefers the actresses he directs wear little to no makeup onscreen - which Jessica Walter and Donna Mills discovered to their horror in PLAY MISTY FOR ME.

So, I don't see him with a jet set former fashion model like Bereson.

[quote]r10 I love that she and the gay husband best friend never divorced.

A film should be made about how her best friend Gordon Anderson helped her go after her debut role in THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. He stuck by her all through the audition and testing process, constantly sholing her up and helping her come up with ideas and approaches. He knew for one meeting she should appear perfectly natural, like an outdoorsy teen, and even applied Elmers glue to the bridge of her nose then partially peeling it off, so she'd look windblown and sunburnt, like a girl might look in the country.

She truly loved his devotion and support. She writes about it in her book, how they were two kids going after a dream. It's sweet. I almost get little shades of how Valerie Cherish was devoted to her hairdresser/best friend Mickey on THE COMEBACK... though Gordon Anderson wasn't that effeminate.

It's interesting that Locke never turned her back on her old friend Gordon, whereas Eastwook virtually threw Locke away and tried to destroy her career. Very different people.