Coogan's Bluff (film)

Coogan's Bluff
film poster
Directed by	Don Siegel
Produced by	Don Siegel
Written by	Herman Miller
Starring	Clint Eastwood Lee J. Cobb Susan Clark Don Stroud
Music by	Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography	Bud Thackery
Editing by	Sam E. Waxman
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	October 2, 1968
Running time	93 min.
Country	United States
Language	English

Coogan's Bluff is a 1968 American Universal film directed by Don Siegel and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee J. Cobb, Don Stroud, and Susan Clark. The film marks the first of five collaborations between Siegel and Eastwood, which continued with Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), The Beguiled and Dirty Harry (both 1971), and finally Escape from Alcatraz (1979).

Eastwood plays the part of a young veteran deputy sheriff from a rural county in Arizona who travels to New York City to extradite an apprehended fugitive named Jimmy Ringerman, played by Stroud, who is wanted for murder.

The name of the film itself is a reference to a New York City natural landmark, Coogan's Bluff, a promontory in upper Manhattan overlooking the site of the former long-time home of the New York Giants baseball club, the Polo Grounds. The television series McCloud starring Dennis Weaver was loosely based on this story.

Plot

Arizona deputy sheriff Walt Coogan, wearing boots and a cowboy hat, is sent to New York City to extradite escaped killer James Ringerman. He is up against the slow legal meanderings of New York when grumpy NYPD Detective Lieutenant McElroy informs him Ringerman is at Bellevue Hospital recovering from an overdose of LSD and cannot be moved until the doctors release him. Coogan is also told he needs to get extradition papers from the New York State Supreme Court.

Coogan has a flirtation with probation officer Julie Roth. Then he bluffs his way into Bellevue, tricks the attendants into turning Ringerman over to him, and sets out to catch a plane for Arizona.

Before he can get to the airport, Ringerman’s hippie girlfriend Linny Raven and a tavern owner called Pushie slip up behind Coogan, beat him unconscious and enable Ringerman to escape. Lt. McElroy is furious with Coogan for acting on his own and letting a prisoner go free.

Coogan tries to find Ringerman's hideout from his mother, Ellen Ringerman. He learns Linny's name, then obtains her address from Julie's home files while getting to know the probation officer better, sneaking out while Julie is making dinner.

He tracks Linny to a psychedelic-themed nightclub called The Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel. There he has a fight with someone known as Wonderful Digby, then ends up making love to Linny at her apartment.

Linny offers to lead him to Ringerman, but instead takes him to a pool hall where Coogan is attacked by Pushie and a dozen men in a bloody battle with billiard balls and cues. Coogan holds his own for awhile but is eventually overpowered. The men take off after hearing sirens, but not before the beaten Coogan exacts justice on Pushie. McElroy finds the bar in pieces, three men dead, and a cowboy hat.

Coogan goes back to Linny's and threatens to kill her if she does not lead him to Ringerman. She takes him to the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park where Ringerman, armed with a gun stolen from Coogan, gets away on his motorcycle. After commandeering the bike of a passing motor cyclist, who was run into by Ringerman, Coogan gives chase through the park's Heather Gardens and captures him by making a "citizen's arrest."

Coogan hands over the fugitive to McElroy, who once again tells him to go to the DA's office, then to the State Supreme Court, then let "the system" handle this. A contrite Coogan, now with Ringerman in cuffs, takes the helicopter from atop of the Pan Am Building to the airport while Julie is waving goodbye.

Cast

• Clint Eastwood as Deputy Sheriff Walt Coogan
• Lee J. Cobb as Det. Lt. McElroy, NYPD
• Susan Clark as Julie Roth, Probation Officer
• Tisha Sterling as Linny Raven, Ringerman's Girlfriend
• Don Stroud as James Ringerman
• Betty Field as Ellen Ringerman
• Tom Tully as Sheriff McCrea, Piute County
• Melodie Johnson as Millie, Coogan's Girlfriend
• James Edwards as Sgt. Wallace, Stakeout Cop
• Rudy Diaz as Running Bear
• David Doyle as Pushie, Tavern Owner
• Louis Zorich as Taxi Driver
• Meg Myles as Big Red
• Marjorie Bennett as Mrs. Fowler, Little Old Lady
• Seymour Cassel as Joe, Young Hood
• Albert Popwell as Wonderful Digby

Production

Before Hang 'Em High had been released, Eastwood had set to work on Coogan's Bluff, a project which saw him reunite with Universal Studios after an offer of $1 million, more than doubling his previous salary.^[1][2] Jennings Lang was responsible for the deal. Lang was a former agent of Don Siegel, a Universal contract director who was invited to direct Eastwood's second major American film. Eastwood was not familiar with Siegel's work but Lang arranged for them to meet at Clint's residence in Carmel. Eastwood saw three of Siegel's earlier films, was impressed with his directing and the two became friends, forming a close partnership in the years that followed.^[3]

The idea for Coogan's Bluff originated in early 1967 as a TV series and the first draft was drawn up by Herman Miller and Jack Laird, screenwriters for Rawhide.^[4] It is about a character called Sheriff Walt Coogan, a lonely deputy sheriff working in New York City.

After Siegel and Eastwood had agreed to work together, Howard Rodman and three other writers were hired to devise a new script as the new team scouted for locations including New York and the Mojave desert.^[3] However, Eastwood surprised the team one day by calling an abrupt meeting and professing to strongly disliking the script, which by now had gone through seven drafts, preferring Herman Miller's original concept.^[3] This experience would also shape Eastwood's distaste for redrafting scripts in his later career.^[3]

Eastwood and Siegel hired a new writer, Dean Riesner, who had written for Siegel in the Henry Fonda TV film Stranger on the Run. Eastwood did not communicate with the screenwriter until one day Riesner criticized a scene Eastwood had liked which involved Coogan having sex with Linny Raven in the hope that she would take him to her "boyfriend." According to Riesner, Eastwood's "face went white and gave me one of those Clint looks".^[5]

The two soon reconciled their differences and worked on a script in which Eastwood had considerable input. Don Stroud was cast as the psychopathic criminal Coogan is chasing, Lee J. Cobb as the disagreeable New York City Police Department lieutenant, Susan Clark as a probation officer who falls for Coogan and Tisha Sterling as the drug-using lover of Stroud's character.^[5] Filming began in November 1967 even before the full script had been finalized.^[5]

Reception

Coogan's Bluff was released in the United States in October 1968, where it grossed $3 million.^[6] Its earnings place Coogan's Bluff as the fifth highest grossing film of the year.^[6] The film was controversial for its portrayal of violence, but it had launched a collaboration between Eastwood and Siegel that lasted more than ten years, and set the prototype for the macho hero that Eastwood would play in the Dirty Harry films. The script of the film foreshadows the McCloud television series that starred Dennis Weaver.

Home media releases

The DVD version of Coogan's Bluff is edited by approximately three minutes in all regions for unknown reasons. The missing scenes include Coogan receiving his assignment to return Ringerman from New York, a short scene in a hospital, and a scene in which Julie talks about Coogan's Bluff, a lookout point over the ocean near New York (the real Coogan's Bluff is a site on Manhattan Island between Washington Heights and Harlem), tying the location into the film's title. The earlier video release did not have these edits, and was released uncut.

See also

• New York Airways

References

1. ^ McGillagan (1999), p.165
2. ^ Munn, p. 70
3. ^ ^{a b c d} McGillagan (1999), p.167
4. ^ McGillagan (1999), p.166
5. ^ ^{a b c} McGillagan (1999), p.169
6. ^ ^{a b} Hughes, p.49

Bibliography

• Hughes, Howard (2009). Aim for the Heart. London: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 9781845119027. 
• McGilligan, Patrick (1999). Clint: The Life and Legend. London: Harper Collins. ISBN 0006383548. 
• Munn, Michael (1992). Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner. London: Robson Books. ISBN 086051790x. 

External links

• Clint Eastwood films
• IMDB
• TCM
• NY Times
• Coogan's Bluff at AllRovi