Clint Eastwood's Most Famous Western Role Was Almost Named After His Biggest Hollywood Rival

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To this day, Clint Eastwood's most recognizable role is arguably the Man with No Name from the "Dollars" trilogy. That very same trilogy helped bolster the then-burgeoning revisionist movement that would soon make the more simplistic Westerns of the John Wayne era obsolete. It's ironic, then, that Eastwood's nameless anti-hero was originally supposed to be named after one of the Duke's most important characters: Henry, the "Ringo Kid" from "Stagecoach."

Clint Eastwood and John Wayne's feud is well-established at this point. The two screen legends simply came from different generations with very different ideas of what constituted a hero and how Westerns should evolve (or, in the Duke's case, stay exactly the same). Wayne never held back when criticizing the new crop of Western filmmakers, reserving specific ire for Sam Peckinpah and his violent 1968 effort "The Wild Bunch." He also sent a letter to Eastwood decrying the actor's 1973 film "High Plains Drifter." For better or worse, the Duke simply couldn't abide the new guard's more cynical view of the Old West.

It's not really surprising considering the man came to prominence in the 1940s following his breakthrough role in John Ford's seminal 1939 Western "Stagecoach." Playing outlaw Henry the "Ringo Kid" not only made Wayne a star, it helped restore Westerns to prominence and re-establish the gunslinger as a popular heroic archetype. Much of that legacy was undermined by 1964's "A Fistful of Dollars." Eastwood's taciturn, often brutal Man with No Name was the opposite of Wayne's more obviously good-hearted heroes. Which is why it's probably for the best he wasn't named after the role that made Wayne a star. 

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Patrick McGilligan's "Clint: The Life and Legend," discusses how The Man with No Name — the role that helped shift Westerns away from the Black Hat vs. White Hat simplicity of the John Wayne era — was originally named Ringo after Wayne's legendary breakthrough performance.

Alongside Sergio Leone, Duccio Tessari was one of several scenarists credited with writing the original "A Fistful of Dollars" script. In McGilligan's book it's claimed that in an early draft, Tessari dubbed Eastwood's character "Ringo" as an "homage to John Wayne's character in John Ford's 'Stagecoach.'" According to McGilligan, it was only after Leone insisted that the character remain nameless that this original moniker was scrapped. "Not a name," Leone is quoted as saying. "Not a past, not a future, only the present." 

Meanwhile, Eastwood fought to make The Man with No Name even more of a mystery, resulting in a protagonist unlike any that had come before. As such, naming Eastwood's character after a legendary figure in Western film history could have been seen less as an homage and more of a subversion. That's almost certainly how Wayne would have taken it. The demonstrably reactionary star never took kindly to the deconstruction of the myth of the Old West anyway. Seeing a character named after his breakthrough role killing indiscriminately would have ensured the Wayne/Eastwood rivalry flared up much earlier.