Sometimes, our idea of a show isn’t the same as the actual show itself. We might misremember certain details because of the way the show has grown in the zeitgeist. Certain aspects make their way into the culture, while other parts fall by the wayside. Some of us remember Gilligan’s Island as being a show that was broadcast in color. However, its first season was originally broadcast in black and white.
We might look back on Rawhide and think that Clint Eastwood was the lead the whole time. He’s grown to be one of the biggest stars in the world, so it should follow that he was the biggest star of his show. Surely, Eastwood’s Rowdy Yates received top billing throughout the entire series, right?
The truth, though, is that for seasons 1 through 7, the star of Rawhide was Eric Fleming, the actor who played Gil Favor. Favor, the trail boss, began most episodes with a monologue. It was Favor who led the drovers, driving the cattle from town to town along each path they encountered. Especially in the earliest episodes, Clint Eastwood’s Rowdy Yates was young and impulsive. Gil Favor, as the leader, had to keep Yates under control.
As the show progressed, though, the network began making a few decisions about the direction the series would head in. Specifically, in 1965, CBS began shaking up the cast to better suit their vision. Rawhide wasn’t alone. That year, CBS also dramatically changed its show Hazel, switching up the family that Shirley Booth worked for as the title character. The series, to network executives, had grown stale, and the bright and shiny new couple was supposed to breathe fresh life into the show.
Rawhide saw some big changes at the behest of those same network executives. Eric Fleming was out, and newcomers Raymond St. Jacques and David Watson were in. These new faces were meant to punch up the series to hopefully attract new audiences.
Who was there to lead the new herd? Why, naturally, it was Rowdy Yates! Clint Eastwood became the top-billed star on Rawhide thanks to CBS interference. Yates was trail boss for Rawhide‘s eighth and final season.

Very few actors in the history of cinema can compare to the sheer cultural might of Clint Eastwood, with only a few American stars able to rub shoulders with the western icon, including John Wayne, Marlon Brando and James Dean. One of the few actors to successfully transition into being a director, Eastwood never won an Oscar for any of his performances but has claimed four Academy Awards for his directing over the years.
As one of America’s greatest actors, there’s no surprise that he has featured in some of Hollywood’s very best movies, including Sergio Leone’s seminal Dollars trilogy and Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry. But, just like every actor, not every single one of his movies was perfect, and, in 1969, he made the surprising decision to feature in a musical, namely Joshua Logan’s Paint Your Wagon.
Based on the Broadway show of the name, the musical tells the story of the survivor of a wagon crash who discovers gold before engaging in a love triangle where he and another man are vying for the love of a woman, Paint Your Wagon is never talked about for a reason. Criticised by movie fans and critics alike, one of the most highly probed aspects of the film was Eastwood’s dodgy vocal performance.
“I was crazy enough to try anything,” the actor later admitted, “I’ve always been interested in music, my father was a singer, and I had some knowledge of it. Although what I was doing in that picture was not singing”.
The actor had thought he was signing up for a gritty musical, having read the script, which he liked very much. Yet, further down the line, the screenplay became targeted at a much more general audience, with Eastwood admitting that the script got “much lighter, it just didn’t have the dynamics that the original script did. And that was another long shoot”.
Eastwood later admitted, “That was not as pleasant an experience as I was used to,” in relation to his role in the misguided musical, with the actor listing it alongside some of his least favourite movies of his entire career.
Paint Your Wagon certainly ranks beside Ambush at Cimarron Pass, a film that the actor calls, “probably the worst film ever made” before saying in caveat, “But I had the second lead in it, and an actor named Scott Brady was the lead. And the film was made in eight days. So it was really el speedo grande”.

Clint Eastwood has been known around the world as a veteran director beyond all means. Eastwood, however, started his journey as an actor portraying several iconic and notable roles over the years.
Starring in Sergio Leone’s The Dollars Trilogy, Clint Eastwood starred in a genre of movies called Western spaghetti. Portraying the role of The Man with No Name, Eastwood’s dedication to the role is both commendable and a bit disgusting as he reportedly never washed his character’s cape over the course of three years!

Clint Eastwood in a still from The Mule
Clint Eastwood Wore An Unwashed Serape For Three Years!
Back in 1964, Italian director Sergio Leone released the iconic film A Fistful of Dollars. Portraying the story of an unknown riding into town with two opposing factions, the movie was essentially a cowboy movie with plenty of action scenes for people to enjoy.
In the movie, Clint Eastwood portrayed the role of The Man with No Name. Wearing a serape around his neck and carrying pistols in his holster, Eastwood’s character became notoriously famous from the movie. A year later, Leone released For a Few Dollars More, a sequel to the 1964 film, and Clint Eastwood reprised his role of The Man with No Name.
Finally, in 1966, Sergio Leone released The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, thus completing The Dollars Trilogy. As per a report by Outsider.com, Eastwood never washed his iconic cape throughout the shooting of The Dollars Trilogy. Alleging that the cape was a memorabilia of how far the character had come throughout these movies, Eastwood wore the same cape for three years without washing it once!
Sergio Leone Talked About Working With Clint Eastwood
Although it was Leone’s movies that made Eastwood famous in Hollywood, the director has had some complaints with the veteran actor. Comparing him to Robert de Niro, Sergio Leone revealed in an interview with American Film that Eastwood was like a block of marble!
“Robert De Niro throws him­self into this or that role, putting on a personality the way someone else might put on his coat, naturally and with ele­gance, while Clint Eastwood throws himself into a suit of armor and lowers the visor with a rusty clang.”
He further continued,
“[Clint] East­wood moves like a sleepwalker between explosions and hails of bullets, and he is always the same — a block of marble. Bobby [Robert De Niro], first of all, is an actor. Clint, first of all, is a star. Bobby suffers, Clint yawns.”
Despite whatever the director and Clint Eastwood had between them, the two went their separate ways at the end of The Dollars Trilogy. Eastwood went on to become an iconic actor with his portrayal of action characters and then later became a veteran director with a unique take on movies.