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.
