Herbert Eyre Moulton & Clint Eastwood

Herbert Eyre Moulton played a bit part in a 1981 film called Firefox with Clint Eastwood. Here, we hear from himself, in a script from 1998, how it was to work with good old Clint: a good colleague.

The bit part I played in Clint Eastwood’s Cold War adventure melodrama FIREFOX was one of his first times out as both director and star. In it he plays an American pilot disguised as an ordinary businessman and sent to Moscow to steal a new supersonic fighter plane.

           This was Vienna 1981 --- we were living in Sweden at the time, but this didn’t stop me from trundling down to Johann-Strauss-Ville every chance I got --- for theatre work, school radio recordings, translations, or what you will.

           This particular assignment was definately of the what-you-will variety, with myself as a KGB apparatchik hovering ominously in the middle background while “Our Clint” is being interrogated by a cool, polite, and deadly Soviet customs official regarding certain suspicious-looking items in his luggage --- the usual anti-American, anything-to-be-mean hard time those boyos used to specialize in. All I was supposed to do was stand there glowering, but I fear I did considerably more than that, and I’ve got a home video-clip of the scene to prove it. It could serve as a model for all time of how prominent a bit player in the background can be, if he has a mind to, and is sneaky enough to see his chance and take it.

           My bit being so miniscule, such an old ham like myself --- sugar-cured, hickory-smoked, pineapple-glazed --- naturally felt it could use a bit of fleshing out, which is precisely what I proceeded to do, by the simple expedient of staying right on camera the whole time, naughty, unprofessional, but devilishly effective. All it took was swaying back and forth ever so slightly on my two little cloven hooves, whilst staring into the camera with doubt and suspicion in my eyes, real Spy-Who-came-in-from-the-Cold-stuff ... Powerful, stark, menacing.

           But not everybody saw it that way, and my performance did not go completely unnoticed. At length one of the camera crew spoke up rather pointedly: “Clint, please tell that gentleman to stand still ... bobbing back and forth like that, he’s making me dizzy.” A tiny reprimand, and it did no good whatsoever.

Clint for one, being much too preoccupied with his end of the scene and his interrogation, nodded and went on to say nothing but give me a tiny smile. So, accordingly, there’s “Old Herbie” or “Air-Bear”, as my college friends used to call me, in that key opening reel, beginning 21 minutes into the motion picture and going for another full one-and-a-half minutes (the black-haired and elegant gentleman behind the Soviet military official), swaying back and forth, back and forth, gently, quietly, like a padded pendulum, frowning his Filthy-McNasty-Tovaritsch frown, all the while ...

           To show you what a fine gentleman and colleague Clint Eastwood truly is, he came over to me afterwards and --- the very pineapple of politeness (to borrow Mrs. Malaprop’s phrase), thanked me for doing the scene with him. Hmm, doing it? Dear Hearts, it looks from this end like I was doing my damndest to ruin it, though I’d swear a great and terrible oath that such was never my intent.

           Alas, Firefox turned out to be one of the biggest proverbial and monetary duds of Clint’s career. Purest coincidence? As in W.W. Jacobs’ classic horror story “The Monkey’s Paw”, maybe, maybe not. But given my track record before or since, who knows? Mine wasn’t much a part as parts go in “Firefox”, but was it sufficient to jinx the whole operation? If that be the case, sorry about that, Clint. Tough luck that it had to happen at such a vulnerable stage in your endevors. It could have happened to a worse film and as anyone who reads these chronicles can tell --- could, and did.

           Were the fates even then getting me warmed up for a pre-destined role as plague-carrier sui generis? Stay tuned.

           I only knew that in the bad old days they used to toss types like me overboard to placate the angry Gods causing all the shipwrecks: “And Jonah said unto them, take me and cast me forth into the sea, for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.”

           I guess I’m lucky I’m still more or less intact.

           Let’s see, how things stand now? I shot my first motion picture in Ardmore Studios in Bray, Ireland, as a seaman, with dear Cy Knapp. Between that film (1961) and Firefox lay three thousand concerts, maybe one hundred stage productions and a few dozen commercials, one or two episodes in a local TV-series, not counting the radio-programmes.

           But as far as the motion pictures go, one vanished into the Bermuda Triangle as if it never existed, the other internationally distributed, but still a moderate flop --- 2 films, 2 flops, a perfect score. Where would the Moulton Menace strike next?

The body count continues. Stay tuned.

           All joking aside, of all the celebrities I have had as colleagues Clint was the most supreme gentleman of them all. Alan Rickman, for his part, was very pleasant and soft-spoken intellectual, Mickey Rourke the cool buddy-type character, David Warner the friendly thespian, Zsa-Zsa Gabor the temperamentful diva par excellance, Viggo Mortensen the consummate professional.

           Clint? He was, remains and always will be the prince of politeness.