''Coogan's Bluff'' is a 1968 American
crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...
thriller film directed and produced by
Don Siegel
Donald Siegel ( ; October 26, 1912 – April 20, 1991) was an American film director and producer.
Siegel was described by ''The New York Times'' as "a director of tough, cynical and forthright action-adventure films whose taut plots centered o ...
. It stars
Clint Eastwood
Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western (genre), Western TV series ''Rawhide (TV series), Rawhide'', Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Ma ...
,
Susan Clark
Susan Clark (born Nora Golding; March 8, 1943) is a Canadians, Canadian actress. She made her big screen debut in the 1967 drama film ''Banning (film), Banning'' and the following year played the female lead in the crime thriller ''Coogan's Bluf ...
,
Don Stroud,
Tisha Sterling,
Betty Field and
Lee J. Cobb. The film marks the first of five collaborations between Siegel and Eastwood, which continued with ''
Two Mules for Sister Sara
''Two Mules for Sister Sara'' is a 1970 American-Mexican Western film in Panavision directed by Don Siegel and starring Shirley MacLaine and Clint Eastwood set during the French intervention in Mexico (1861–1867). The film was to have been t ...
'' (1970), ''
The Beguiled'' (1971), ''
Dirty Harry'' (1971) and ''
Escape from Alcatraz'' (1979).
Eastwood plays the part of a veteran deputy sheriff from a rural county in
Arizona
Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...
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
A promontory is a raised mass of land that projects into a lowland or a body of water (in which case it is a peninsula). Most promontories either are formed from a hard ridge of rock that has resisted the erosive forces that have removed the s ...
in upper
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
overlooking the site of the former long-time home of the
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC East, East division. The ...
baseball club, the
Polo Grounds
The Polo Grounds was the name of three stadiums in Upper Manhattan, New York City, used mainly for professional baseball and American football from 1880 to 1963. The original Polo Grounds, opened in 1876 and demolished in 1889, was built for the ...
, with a double meaning derived from the name of the lead character.
Plot
Walter "Walt" Coogan, a deputy sheriff of fictional Piute County, Arizona, is sent to New York City to extradite escaped killer James Ringerman. NYPD Detective Lieutenant McElroy informs him that Ringerman is recovering from an overdose of
LSD and refuses to release him into Coogan's custody without extradition papers stamped by the New York State Supreme Court.
Coogan flirts with probation officer Julie Roth and takes her out for lunch. He goes to the prison hospital and bluffs his way to Ringerman, tricks the attendants into turning him over, and sets out to catch a plane for Arizona. Before he can get to the airport, Ringerman's girlfriend Linny and his associate Pushie ambush Coogan and enable Ringerman to escape. Detective McElroy is furious with Coogan and warns him against playing policeman in New York.
Coogan learns Linny's name from a visit to Ringerman's mother. While he is at Roth's apartment for supper, Coogan learns that Linny is on probation, and he finds her address in Roth's home files. He tracks Linny to a nightclub, where she offers to lead him to Ringerman. Instead, she takes Coogan to a pool hall, where he is attacked by Pushie and a dozen men in a bloody fistfight. Coogan holds his own for a while but is eventually overpowered. After hearing sirens, the men take off, but not before the beaten Coogan kills Pushie and two others. Detective McElroy finds the bar in pieces and Coogan's cowboy hat on the floor.
Coogan finds Linny and threatens to kill her if she does not lead him to Ringerman. She takes him to Ringerman, who is hiding out at
the Cloisters and carrying Coogan's stolen service weapon. Ringerman empties the gun trying to shoot Coogan and tosses it before fleeing on a motorcycle. Coogan steals one of his own and gives chase through
Fort Tryon Park,
before eventually capturing Ringerman.
He hands the fugitive over to McElroy, who once again tells him to go to the DA's office and to let "the system handle this." Some time later Coogan, with Ringerman in cuffs, prepares to leave for the airport via helicopter from the helipad atop the
Pan Am building. At the last minute, Julie Roth runs up to the helicopter to give Coogan a long good-bye kiss. Coogan's last view is Roth waving goodbye from the helipad as the helicopter lifts off.
Cast
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 salary for the previous film.
[McGillagan (1999), p.165] Jennings Lang
Jennings Lang (May 28, 1915, New York City – May 29, 1996, Palm Desert, California) was an American film producer, screenwriter, and actor.
Early life and career
Lang was born to a Jewish family in New York City. Originally a lawyer, practicin ...
was responsible for the deal. Lang was a former agent of
Don Siegel
Donald Siegel ( ; October 26, 1912 – April 20, 1991) was an American film director and producer.
Siegel was described by ''The New York Times'' as "a director of tough, cynical and forthright action-adventure films whose taut plots centered o ...
, a Universal contract director who had been eyed to handle ''Coogan's Bluff'', which would be 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, having seen three of Siegel's earlier films by then, was impressed with his directing and the two became friends, forming a close partnership in the years that followed.
[McGillagan (1999), p.167]
The idea for ''Coogan's Bluff'' originated in early 1967 as a pilot for a potential TV series and the first draft was drawn up by
Herman Miller and
Jack Laird, screenwriters for Eastwood's old show ''Rawhide''.
[McGillagan (1999), p.166] The basic premise concerned a character named "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 City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
and the
Mojave desert
The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...
.
However, Eastwood surprised the team one day by calling an abrupt meeting where he admitted his strong dislike of the script (which by now had gone through seven drafts) and a preference for Miller's original concept.
This experience would also shape Eastwood's distaste for redrafting scripts in his later career.
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".
[McGillagan (1999), p.169]
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
NYPD
The City of New York Police Department, also referred to as New York City Police Department (NYPD), is the primary law enforcement agency within New York City. Established on May 23, 1845, the NYPD is the largest, and one of the oldest, munic ...
lieutenant he has to deal with,
Susan Clark
Susan Clark (born Nora Golding; March 8, 1943) is a Canadians, Canadian actress. She made her big screen debut in the 1967 drama film ''Banning (film), Banning'' and the following year played the female lead in the crime thriller ''Coogan's Bluf ...
as a probation officer who falls for Coogan, and
Tisha Sterling as the drug-using lover of Stroud's character. ''Coogan's Bluff'' was the final film appearance of actress Betty Field (who played the mother of Stroud's character) before her death in 1973.
Filming began in November 1967 even before the full script had been finalized.
Reception
''Coogan's Bluff'' was released in the United States in October 1968, where it grossed over $3.1 million. The film was controversial for its portrayal of violence, but it 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 inspired the ''
McCloud'' television series that starred
Dennis Weaver
Billy Dennis Weaver (June 4, 1924 – February 24, 2006) was an American actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild, best known for his work in television and films from the early 1950s until just before his death in 2006. Weaver's two most ...
.
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on reviews from 19 critics.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
of ''The Chicago Sun-Times'' gave it 3 out of 4 stars, stating the film was in some ways formulaic but nonetheless well-made and acted: "Siegel knows what he wants and gets it."
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who was the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in 2000. ...
of
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
gave it a negative review, and wrote: "The screenplay is so predictable in situation and so arch in its supposedly tough, blunt, wise talk that it turns into a joke told by someone with no sense of humor."
In 2006 Kim Newman of
Empire
An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outpost (military), outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a hegemony, dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the ...
magazine, gave the film 4 out of 5, calling it a "New York cop thriller with a touch of the Western and a touch of the Eastwood...and all the better for it."
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American filmmaker, actor, and author. Quentin Tarantino filmography, His films are characterized by graphic violence, extended dialogue often featuring much profanity, and references to ...
said the film "plays like a trial run for the next twenty years of action cinema. It's with Coogan's Bluff that Eastwood would establish his post Leone persona. A persona that would dominate action cinema for the next twenty-five years."
Home media
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
*
List of American films of 1968
*
New York Airways
*
Pan Am Building
Footnotes
Sources
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External links
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{{Don Siegel
1968 films
1960s action thriller films
1960s chase films
1960s crime thriller films
American action thriller films
American crime thriller films
American chase films
American police detective films
Films directed by Don Siegel
Universal Pictures films
Fictional portrayals of the New York City Police Department
Films about the New York City Police Department
Films set in Manhattan
Films set in New York City
Films set in Arizona
Films shot in California
Films scored by Lalo Schifrin
1960s English-language films
1960s American films
English-language action thriller films
English-language crime thriller films
Malpaso Productions films