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Back in the late 1960s, Clint Eastwood turned down the infamous flop “Mackenna’s Gold” to star in “Hang ‘Em High.” It was a genius move, especially since the actor could have easily caved to pressure from pretty much everyone around him.

Eastwood is undoubtedly one of the greatest Western actors of all time and an all-around screen legend. But there’s always been somewhat of a question mark hanging over him. This is a man who filed a lawsuit against author Patrick McGilligan, whose book “Clint: The Life and Legend” was, according to the actor’s lawyers, libelous. The unauthorized biography certainly wasn’t the most flattering portrait of the “legend,” with the Los Angeles Times summing up its conclusion on Eastwood thusly: “When one arrives at the heart of Clint Eastwood, one finds, as Gertrude Stein wrote of the Oakland where he grew up, that ‘there is no there there.'” Ouch.

Harsh though that is, “Clint: The Life and Legend” was important in exploding some of the myths surrounding its subject, offering an interesting insight into the life of a man who, for the most part, is almost unanimously celebrated as one of the greats. As “Hang ‘Em High” director Ted Post allegedly told McGilligan when they first spoke, “I’ll be happy to talk to you, but only if you promise not to write the same bulls*** as everyone else.”

But for every hastily glossed-over misstep in his career, there are examples of Eastwood demonstrating remarkable insight and prescience. Take the time he turned down the eventual box office failure “Mackenna’s Gold” to star in a comparatively minuscule project that became one of his most important movies.

If you need proof that Clint Eastwood wasn’t some sort of infallible moviemaking savant, look at the 1984 gangster movie he made that Roger Ebert absolutely hated. Or how about when Eastwood called Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” a “giant failure” and claimed, “there just wasn’t anything at all terrifying about it.” It’s hard to imagine actually holding this opinion, but Eastwood did. Still, he’d earned the right to be wrong.

In the late 1960s, having starred in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy, Eastwood was looking to make his first American film. It was an important moment in the actor’s career, as critics at the time were all too ready to dismiss his Spaghetti Westerns as unserious and unimportant compared with more traditional Hollywood fare. In Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson’s Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979-1983,” the actor recalled being asked to do “Mackenna’s Gold” at the time.

Based on Heck Allen’s novel of the same name, the movie starred Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif as a marshal and bandit on the trail of a mythical gold deposit. It was not well-received. Not only were critics less than impressed (Vincent Canby of the New York Times called “Mackenna’s Gold” “a Western of truly stunning absurdity”), but the film made just $3 million. It wasn’t cheap to make, either. “Mackenna’s Gold” cost Columbia $14 million, which at the time was a considerable amount and part of the reason Eastwood’s agency encouraged him to star.

“When I did ‘Hang ‘Em High,’ it was funny because the agency wanted me to do a film called ‘Mackenna’s Gold,'” said the actor to Paul Nelson. “Oh, that turkey,” replied Nelson. “That was one of the worst.” Indeed, it was.

On paper, “Mackenna’s Gold” was a better option than “Hang ‘Em High.” It was a big-budget picture with established stars that would give Clint Eastwood some much-needed credibility stateside. The problem was, he didn’t like the script. As he recalled in “Conversations with Clint,” “I talked to Carl Foreman [‘Mackenna’s Gold’ producer and screenwriter] on several occasions, but I didn’t care for the script.” The actor’s agency couldn’t understand. Eastwood continued:

“They kept saying, ‘Wow, but you get to work with a lot of well-known actors’— Omar Sharif, who was real hot stuff then — ‘and it will be a big showcase.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but I just don’t like the script.’ I think the agency had a little apoplexy when I turned that down to do a one-and-a-half-million-dollar film, and this picture was a big six-, seven-million-dollar extravaganza.'”

As Eastwood saw it, he was better off doing “a smaller script that had at least some merit.” Ultimately, he was proved right. “Hang ‘Em High” might have been a knockoff “Dollars” movie, but “Mackenna’s Gold” would have been one of the worst Clint Eastwood films ever. What’s more, “Hang ‘Em High” performed very well and established Eastwood as a promising Hollywood star. As Patrick McGilligan notes in “Clint: The Life and Legend,” the film was United Artists’ biggest opening day in history and became profitable after just two weeks. 

Eastwood recalled the success in “Conversations with Clint:” “All of a sudden, everybody started saying, ‘We ought to use this guy. Maybe he isn’t just a European deal.'” He might have gotten plenty wrong in his time, then, but picking “Hang ‘Em High” over “Mackenna’s Gold” was one time the “legend” got it right.