Clint Eastwood at Home: The Spaghetti Western Legend’s Off-Set Life in 10 Photos
When a 20-year-old Clint Eastwood was drafted into the army and stationed at California’s Fort Ord, his longtime love affair with Carmel-by-the-Sea and the Monterey Bay area began. “The first time I saw the place I thought it was terrific,” he told AD in 1993. “Visually it was something else, and I thought it was the place I’d like to call home. So I kind of adopted Carmel.”
But long before the star owned property in the serene coastal region—located about five and a half hours northwest of Los Angeles—he couldn’t imagine it was where he’d actually settle down. “Back then I didn’t plan on owning too much of anything,” he said in 2007. After his time in the armed forces, he studied business administration at Los Angeles City College and spent his evenings at acting class. It wasn’t long before Eastwood landed his big break as Rowdy Yates in the CBS Western series Rawhide.
Hollywood was home during the early days of his career in spaghetti Westerns, but Eastwood was never able to shake his love for Carmel. Here, we look at 10 photographs of the film legend in his happy place when the cameras stopped rolling.
Apartment living
Eastwood’s acting career began in the mid-1950s with some minor film roles before he landed a supporting part in the 1956 Western comedy The First Traveling Saleslady, which starred Ginger Rogers, Carol Channing, and Barry Nelson. At the time, Eastwood and his first wife, Maggie Johnson—whom he married in 1953—were living near Universal’s lot at the Valli Sands, a U-shaped, two-story apartment complex in Studio City. According to Patrick McGilligan’s Clint: The Life and Legend, they paid $125 a month in rent for the pad. In this 1956 shot, Eastwood is pictured out front of the building in his Austin-Healey 100M sports car. Actors Gia Scala and Lili Kardell also had apartments there, per McGilligan, and when Kardell was dating James Dean, he’d allegedly come speeding up the street in his Porsche.
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