Clint Eastwood: Icon: The Essential Film Art Collection

By Insight Editions

Featuring rare, outstanding additional content, Clint Eastwood: Icon is the definitive collection of film art and material representing Clint Eastwood’s legendary career as seen through the original iconic artwork.

Clint Eastwood is a nameless vigilante, a vengeful detective, a bare-knuckle boxer, a Secret Service agent, and countless other definitive screen archetypes now embedded in our shared pop-culture consciousness. However you define him, Clint Eastwood has a powerful and extremely recognizable image that exists as something beyond the narratives of his films.

Featuring a wealth of additional content, this new edition of Clint Eastwood: Icon presents an unprecedented collection of film art and rare material surrounding the legendary actor. This comprehensive trove gathers together poster art, lobby cards, standees, Italian Spaghetti Western Premier posters, studio ads, and esoteric film memorabilia from around the world. From his early roles as the nameless gunslinger in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, to the vigilante films of the 1970s and 1980s, through his directorial roles and latest releases, Clint Eastwood: Icon captures the powerful presence that turned Eastwood into the definitive American hero.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Insight Editions
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781647229801

Insight Editions

Insight Editions is a pop-culture publisher based in San Rafael, CA.

Book preview

Cover: Clint Eastwood: Icon, by Insight Editions

Clint Eastwood: Icon

The Essential Film Art Collection

Revised and Expanded Edition

David Frangioni

Essays by Thomas Schatz

Clint Eastwood: Icon, by Insight Editions, Insight Editions

I dedicate this book to my mother and father, the late Rita C. Frangioni & Silviano J. Frangioni. You are with me every day. Love, David

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

David Frangioni

INTRODUCTION

Thomas Schatz

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

APPENDICES

Clint Eastwood Filmography

Poster Details

Poster Collector Resources

Frangioni’s Want List

Acknowledgments

DAVID FRANGIONI FOREWORD

What a difference nearly ten years can make, as when I originally wrote Icon, in 2009, I said that there are two types of people in the world: those who collect and those who don’t. How very true those words have resonated with me over the years, and with my fellow collectors worldwide. And yet, I believe that a growing number of people today can relate to the kinds of experiences and pleasures that collecting offers. Since the first edition of this book, the world has gravitated more and more toward gaming, movies, and internet consumption, and people spend a lot of time in their private environments with their personal devices enjoying the peace and comfort those activities bring. Collecting, which is community-based but also very private and personal, is a natural extension of these activities. It creates that same soothing feeling. The collecting gene—whatever drives it in each individual—is unique because those who don’t share this passion can’t understand why someone would spend hard-earned money, including dedicating valuable space and buying costly insurance, simply to own items whose only purpose is to be displayed or even just stored away. Where is the enjoyment and fulfillment in that? Considered that way, collecting generates piles of junk that cost a lot of money with no return. But collectors—more of whom join the community every day—know that the items they have so carefully selected mean so much more.

So here we are, many years into our collecting universe and wiser as the years go on. Personally, I have refined and shifted my collector ambitions since starting the Frangioni Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on sharing my artistic collections with people in need. In time, my philosophy has evolved from acquiring interesting new pieces for their intrinsic appeal to seeing each acquisition as a piece of a puzzle that serves a greater purpose. How can my collections serve people? By bringing them inspiration through the items that have captivated me throughout my life. The key step is to share what I have gathered in a meaningful and rewarding way. I see this endeavor through the eyes of my mother and father, who raised me to use collecting, at least partially, as an escape from a fairly rough childhood. They taught me how to heal from negative experiences by not only pouring my energies into collecting, but also finding value in the time and effort I put forth. Collecting has been a means of experiencing happiness and engagement for me. I don’t know if I was born with the collector’s bug, but I certainly caught it at a very early age. From there, my collecting journey has had fits and starts. Depending on how busy I have been with my career (I’m a self-professed workaholic), I have devoted some of my time to collecting. It takes energy and time, both of which become more and more valuable as we get older. I think that collectors are better understood today than they were even ten years ago, and I believe that many people have found collecting to be an individually rewarding and valuable part of their life, as have I—and all the more rewarding when we can share it with others.

You’re probably wondering, though, how I discovered my passion for movie posters, and particularly Clint Eastwood memorabilia. It actually started very early on—when I was eight. It was 1975, and my amazing mother Rita had begun taking me to the twenty-five-cent Saturday matinees at the Regent Theater in my hometown of Arlington, Massachusetts. The Regent was a second-run movie house, but the movies were new to me, and there was no home video at the time.

Every Saturday, like clockwork, I’d see a new movie—and a new movie poster. Admiring these objects was a special ritual for me; the movie posters with their different styles of artwork became important features of my weekly pastime. I remember seeing the coming soon posters outside the theater and in the lobby and being overcome by excitement. All of the cool pop-culture graphics would pump me up for the movie I was going to see next week or next month. I loved the art, the emotions that it evoked, and the promise of big-screen excitement that it represented. To me, the posters were an integral part of the film-going experience. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was already hooked.

The manager of the Regent Theater was a man named Mr. Gunn. He and I would chat every week and eventually got to know each other pretty well. One day, I started talking to him about my interest in the posters that were on display at his theater. He kindly offered to give me the posters for films whose runs had finished at the Regent. He did this nearly every week for two years. Thanks to his generosity, I had started a collection—without even realizing it.

Francis in the Navy (1955)

Lobby card, 11 × 14

This is the only card from a set of eight promotional cards for Francis in the Navy that depicts Eastwood.

Around the age of fifteen, it became apparent that I’d begun gravitating toward Eastwood movie posters, and my collection began to take focus. It was the 1980s, and Eastwood was one of the most popular (and prolific) stars in the United States. Like many people, I really connected with the characters that he played on-screen. Bronco Billy, for example, was a character I was touched by—and could relate to. I completely understood how a guy with an undying passion for Westerns and cowboys could pursue his dreams at all costs and still never lose his heart and compassion. Billy would do anything to break out of his mundane, dead-end city life in order to follow his dream.

Eastwood’s other iconic characters also resonated with me: the Man with No Name’s isolated, no-nonsense approach to life; Harry Callahan’s rebel with a cause attitude; Terry McCaleb’s