Trial Opens in 2nd Locke Suit Against Eastwood

Trial opened Monday for actress Sondra Locke’s claim that former lover Clint Eastwood sabotaged her screen career after the two split.

The case is the legal coda to Locke’s original 1989 palimony lawsuit, in which she claimed a right to houses and cash the couple had accumulated during their 13-year relationship.

Neither Eastwood, 66, nor Locke, 49, or their attorneys would comment. During the daylong jury selection proceedings, the tall, gray-haired Eastwood, wearing a plain gray suit and tie, joked occasionally with his attorneys while the diminutive Locke, wearing a pink dress, sat silently across the courtroom.

Locke alleged that Eastwood “secretly” interfered at Warner Bros. Pictures and undermined her contract to direct movies there. Because of Eastwood’s alleged actions, the studio “rejected and refused to develop” all films she proposed, the suit alleges.

The legal battle between the former celebrity couple began with the palimony lawsuit, in which she accused him of persuading her to have two abortions and a tubal ligation.

Locke later dropped the lawsuit when Eastwood agreed to secure a director’s contract for her at Warner Bros., the studio for which Eastwood had directed several films including “Bird,” about the life of musician Charlie Parker.

Locke claimed that Eastwood’s meddling destroyed her career, and that he sent a message “to the film industry and the world at large . . . that Locke was not to be taken seriously,” according to court records.

Eastwood rose to fame in the 1970s for his portrayals of rogue San Francisco police detective Harry Callahan in the “Dirty Harry” movies, and more recently has gained fame for his directorial efforts, including “The Unforgiven” and “The Bridges of Madison County.” Locke was nominated for an Oscar for her first role, in the 1968 film “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.”

The two met in 1975 while making “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” in which he played a post-Civil War farmer-turned-vigilante. She portrayed a girl who survived an attack against her family by bandits.

They began living together in 1976, while Eastwood was still married to his wife of 25 years, Maggie Eastwood, mother of his two children, according to previous court testimony. Eastwood and Locke worked on six films together and lived at a number of residences in San Francisco, Sherman Oaks, Carmel, and Sun Valley, Idaho.

In depositions for the 1989 lawsuit, Locke said her relationship with Eastwood soured in the mid-1980s after he became mayor of Carmel and began to spend more time there, while she remained in Los Angeles. Around the same time, she launched her career as a director with the 1986 film “Ratboy,” which Eastwood produced, followed by the psychological thriller “Impulse” in 1989. Neither film was commercially successful.

Testimony in the trial was expected to begin today, court officials said.