To New Yorkers, Coogan’s Bluff is a natural promontory by the Harlem River, think 150th to 160th St, then big apartment buildings West to St. Nicolas Ave. Old timers remember the Polo Grounds in Washington Heights. Not movie mavens. For them, COOGAN’S BLUFF is where Don met Clint; that’s Don Siegel & Clint Eastwood. Siegel becoming, along with Sergio Leone, one of Eastwood’s two directorial father-figures. Leone for vision & ambition; Siegel for tools & efficiency. Yet it almost didn’t happen when studio execs put up either DON Taylor or Alex SEGAL to direct Eastwood’s first Universal project. Luckily, the memo split the difference and Don Siegel got the call. Siegel claimed not to have even seen an Eastwood pic. Together they worked up a shootable script from five drafts and got along fine.* But how hard could it have been? The story no more than a fish-out-of-water/bull-in-a-china-shop story about a lean/mean Arizona Sheriff Coogan losing his extradition in those tough Manhattan streets and overstepping his authority to get him back between stare downs with Lt. Lee J. Cobb (pleasingly reserved), pushy romantic passes at criminal psychologist Susan Clark (giving as good as she gets), and the general mayhem of Manhattan in its Fun City days. Check out the Swingin’ Discotheque Club. Boobs and LGTB action. Neatly run, as expected by Siegel, though don’t look for the actual Coogan’s Bluff, the big action finale filmed in Fort Tryon Park below the Cloisters Museum far West of Coogan’s Bluff.
READ ALL ABOUT IT: *This out of Don Siegel’s excellent auto-bio A SIEGEL FILM.
DOUBLE-BILL: BLUFF not only an unplanned trial-run for Siegel/Eastwood’s era-defining DIRTY HARRY/’71, it also served as a stealth-pilot for tv’s McCLOUD, a six-yr run with Dennis Weaver, nicer/less sexy.
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