Home \ Signature Roles \ Every Which Way But Loose (1978) — Clint Eastwood
CLINT EASTWOOD · 1978 · SIGNATURE ROLES
Philo Beddoe is a truck driver and bare-knuckle brawler in California who travels with his best friend and an orangutan named Clyde, chasing a country singer who keeps leaving him.
Philo Beddoe is a truck driver and bare-knuckle brawler in California who travels with his best friend and an orangutan named Clyde, chasing a country singer who keeps leaving him. Clint Eastwood plays Philo as a good-natured bruiser, and the film — a comedy with fights, chases, and a biker gang for villains — became one of the biggest hits of his career, to the bafflement of critics who had typecast him as a grim western hero.
Its success mattered because it proved Eastwood’s range with audiences: the same man who played Dirty Harry could carry a light comedy, and the same audience that loved the squint loved the grin. A sequel followed in 1980, and Clyde the orangutan became, briefly, one of the most famous animals in film.
