Happy Clint Eastwood's Birthday!

How are you going to celebrate? I'm going to try and watch The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly again, Then maybe Unforgiven, and High Plains Drifter if I can. So a typical weekend.

I did have thought this morning while scrambling through the woods trying to beat the rain, that's there's a certain similarity between Callie Travers (played by Marianna Hill) in High Plains Drifter, and W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) in Unforgiven. They both tend to latch onto the coattails of whoever is on top at the moment. Callie was apparently with Stacey Bridges when he was originally in the town of Lago. After he and the Carlins were framed for robbery and sent to prison, she took up with Morg Allen, who was sort of top dog in town now that the gunfighters were gone. When Bridges returned (and Morg had fled, leaving her behind), she tried to work her way back into Stacey's good graces, unsuccessfully.  This was apparently an obvious (or well-known) enough character trait of hers that the Stranger figured she'd overlook his raping her since he was clearly running things at that point*.

With Beauchamp, he makes his living writing up the stories of these aging gunfighters, and he starts off with English Bob. Then he learns the "Duke of Death" really is more of a Duck, and latches on to Little Bill instead. And ultimately, Little Bill's corpse isn't even cold (heck, he isn't even a corpse yet!) before Beauchamp is trying to get details of the gunfight out of William Munny.

I was trying to think if that kind of a character - not simply someone who feeds off another's success, but may use it for their own purposes - is common in Westerns, but I'm drawing a blank. There are the comic sidekicks, the Gabby Hayes and Rio Bravo's Stumpy, but for all their humor factor, they're still presented as good people out to help the hero. There are plenty of opportunistic businessmen and politicians in Westerns, but they're usually presented as being evil, out to manipulate the hero. Beauchamp and Callie are, the word that comes to mind is "pathetic", but that feels wrong. They're more survival driven than anything else, it's just the path they've chosen to that end is one that requires taking a subservient position to another, while constantly being ready to jump ship at a sign of weakness. It's one that demands an appearance of loyalty, or at least fealty, while really being entirely self-serving.

* I think he knew she was still pissed about that, and just didn't care. It was all part of his ongoing plan to let the citizens of Lago's own worst impulses destroy themselves.