Although Clint Eastwood has starred in more than a dozen Western films, this is the reason he filed a lawsuit to stop The Magnificent Stranger from being published. Prior to being featured in 1964's A Fistful Of Dollars, Eastwood was most recognised for his role as Rawhide's Rowdy Yates. Eastwood received a meagre compensation for this low-budget Italian Western, but both the movie and Eastwood's character, The Man with No Name, became instantly recognisable. Before rising to prominence in the US, Eastwood appeared in two additional Dollars films, including The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
He also developed a strong connection to Westerns as a result of films like Hang 'Em High and The Outlaw Josey Wales. The Magnificent Stranger, also known as El Magnifico Extranjero, is a mystery movie that fans of the actor may notice while perusing his career. This was A Fistful Of Dollars' original title, despite the fact that Magnificent Stranger from 1966 has no additional connections to it other than Clint Eastwood. The Magnificent Stranger isn't even a movie; it's two Clint Eastwood-focused episodes of Rawhide, "The Backshooter" and "Incident of the Running Man," that were stitched together to capitalise on his rising Western stardom. When the actor learned about the movie, he wasn't happy and filed a lawsuit to stop its release.
No one can watch The Magnificent Stranger at this time.
Sadly, information regarding The Magnificent Stranger is hard to come by, despite the fact that it appears to have been released in West Germany in 1967 and Italy in 1966. The fact that the movie hasn't been seen since the 1960s and is now impossible to find suggests that Eastwood was successful in his lawsuit. To have a similar impact to just watching the missing "movie," inquisitive viewers might simply watch "The Backshooter" and "Incident of the Running Man" episodes of Rawhide back-to-back.
Eastwood received his first major role from Rawhide.
Eastwood had acted in a Western called Ambush at Cimarron Pass in 1958 before being cast as Yates in Rawhide. The actor afterwards referred to it as "perhaps the worst Western ever made" and thought about giving up acting altogether. That was altered by Rawhide, an eight-season television series that gave the budding actor his first significant role. He also transported certain Rawhide items, such as the handgun with the snake grip handle and Yates' boots, to Italy when he appeared in A Fistful Of Dollars.
With the poster selling it on Eastwood's anti-hero reputation, it would have been another way The Magnificent Stranger would have tried to connect itself into the Dollars trilogy. Considering how drastically different in tone Rawhide and A Fistful Of Dollars are, people who saw The Magnificent Stranger in cinemas were undoubtedly disappointed by its lack of a sharper edge.
