The true reason why Audie Murphy did not antagonize Clint Eastwood in ‘Dirty Harry’

A 1961 publicity still for “Whispering Smith,” Audie Murphy’s sole TV series, was taken on his 848-acre ranch situated seven miles south of Perris in Southern California. Designed to stable as many as 30 quarter horses, including this magnificent palomino, Murphy often spent his weekends at the remote getaway. The Technicolor wool coat was designed by renowned celebrity tailor Nudie Cohn. Image Credit: NBCUniversal / eBay

“Audie Murphy read the Dirty Harry script and told eldest son Terry that he couldn’t do it as the role of Scorpio would have blown his image wide open.” So goes Robert Nott’s 2015 tome Last of the Cowboy Heroes: The Westerns of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy.

However, in a first-hand account much closer to the event in question, Dirty Harry director Don Siegel sat down with Stuart M. Kaminsky for a 1974 biography as sourced in Don Graham’s No Name on the Bullet: A Biography of Audie Murphy. “I hadn’t seen Audie for awhile, and I met him on a plane on the way back from the Dallas Film Festival where I had been with The Beguiled,” recalled Siegel [the chambered psychodrama starred Clint Eastwood as a manipulative Yankee soldier recuperated by a band of lonely school girls and opened the festival on March 8, 1971].

Siegel elaborated, “Audie seemed genuinely happy to see me, as I was to see him. Audie didn’t want to bother me because he could see I was reading a script. I told him to sit down. We started to talk and I suddenly realized, ‘My God, I’m looking for a killer who could be lost in a crowd, a man who wears suits, a man who might sell you insurance. And here’s the killer of all time — a World War II hero who had killed over 250 Germans.’