Sondra Locke: Death Game, Clint Eastwood and a Lost Career
Sondra Locke: The Fragile Blonde Who Survived Death Game and Clint Eastwood
When I was young, I thought Sondra Locke was Clint Eastwood's wife. She was always there beside him: in Bronco Billy, which I saw on television, and in The Gauntlet, which I watched on VHS. She was also in The Outlaw Josey Wales, which I knew too. It took me years to learn that she was his longtime girlfriend, not his wife, and that it was Eastwood who ended it. This is the story of the pale, fine-boned blonde before him, beside him and after him.
How I Met Sondra Locke
Category: personal experience, early career, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Willard
Who was Sondra Locke? Sondra Locke (1944–2018) was an American actress and director from Shelbyville, Tennessee. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her first feature, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), starred in six films with Clint Eastwood, his partner from 1975 to 1989, and later directed Ratboy and Impulse.
The Eastwood Films I Grew Up With
I met her through Eastwood. Bronco Billy came to me on television, The Gauntlet on a VHS tape, and I knew The Outlaw Josey Wales too. In all three she seemed fixed at his side, so naturally that I took her for his wife. The truth was more complicated, and sadder: they were never married, and when the relationship ended, it was his decision.
Shelbyville, 1944: The Birth Year She Hid
She was born Sandra Louise Smith on 28 May 1944 in Shelbyville, Tennessee, and took her stepfather's surname, Locke, when her mother remarried in 1948. For most of her career the press gave her birth year as 1947. Her publicist repeated that date, and other sources drifted even later. Her marriage licence, yearbooks and death certificate all say 1944. In her 1997 memoir she admitted shaving years off her age, though she claimed only three. Hollywood rewarded actresses who could look younger, and Locke, small and delicate, with enormous eyes, could play girls long after she stopped being one. The lie was a career tool, and she kept it to the end.
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
In July 1967 she competed with hundreds of Southern actresses for the part of Mick Kelly, the teenage girl at the centre of the film of Carson McCullers' novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, opposite Alan Arkin as the deaf John Singer. She won it. She was 23, playing a lonely adolescent who finds in a silent man the only adult who listens. For her first feature she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, losing to Ruth Gordon for Rosemary's Baby, and for two Golden Globes, Best Supporting Actress and New Star of the Year. Warner Bros.-Seven Arts had campaigned for her in the supporting category, although Mick is the female lead.
Willard (1971): A Surprise Hit
The awards didn't bring the roles they should have. In 1971 she played Joan Simms, the young woman who befriends the lonely title character, in Willard, with Bruce Davison and Ernest Borgnine. The psychological thriller about a young man and his army of rats became a surprise box-office smash. Locke reportedly felt overqualified for the part and took it as a favour to Davison. Even in a rat movie she brought that fragile, luminous stillness, the quality that, a few years later, Eastwood would put at the centre of his films.
Death Game (1977) and Knock Knock (2015): The Seducers and the Remake
Category: Death Game, Knock Knock, home-invasion thriller, personal experience
What is Death Game? Death Game (1977), also released as The Seducers, is a home-invasion thriller directed by Peter S. Traynor. Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp play two drifters who seduce and then torment a married man, Seymour Cassel. Eli Roth remade it in 2015 as Knock Knock, with Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas.
Two Wet Strangers at the Door
George Manning (Cassel) is a prosperous San Francisco businessman, home alone on his 40th birthday while his wife Karen deals with a family emergency. A storm breaks. Two women knock, soaked through, claiming their car has broken down: Agatha Jackson (Locke) and Donna (Camp). He lets them in to dry off. They slip into the sauna and the hot tub, and the night ends in bed. By morning they won't leave. They wear his wife's clothes, wreck the house, and when he reaches for the phone, they falsely claim to be underage, turning his evening into blackmail. Then the game turns cruel: they tie him up, kill a delivery boy, and stage a mock trial in his living room. One of them says, in a single plain line, that her own father abused her. Their wild flight ends under the wheels of a speeding van.
Two Weeks, $150,000 and a Federal Investigation
Traynor, a former California real-estate financier, bought the script by Anthony Overman and Michael Ronald Ross as his directing debut. It was shot in about two weeks in 1974, mostly inside one large Los Angeles house, on a budget of roughly $150,000, with David Worth as cinematographer and editor. Shooting was reportedly full of fights between the first-time director and his cast, and a federal investigation into Traynor's financing stopped the production. The film did not reach cinemas until 13 April 1977, by which time Locke was already Eastwood's partner.
Mixed Reviews, Avant-Garde Nerve
Reviewers split. Some saw social commentary, others empty exploitation. The critic John Kenneth Muir read it as a feminist revenge story about male infidelity and abusive fathers, with the two women as its true protagonists. I see it as avant-garde for its time. It takes the soft-focus seduction fantasy of the seventies and lets it curdle into something feral. Locke, nearly 30 but still playing a waif, is the film's live wire, her porcelain fragility turned into menace. Camp is the giggling, dangerous partner.
A Cult Afterlife
Its first run earned little, but home video found it an audience, and the film was remade twice: in Spain in 1980, directed by Manuel Esteba, and in 2015 by Eli Roth.
Knock Knock (2015): Eli Roth's Remake
In Knock Knock, shot in Santiago, Chile, Keanu Reeves plays Evan Webber, an architect left alone on Father's Day weekend. Lorenza Izzo as Genesis and Ana de Armas as Bel are the women at the door. Colleen Camp produced, Locke was an executive producer, and Camp plays a small role as Vivian. The film premiered at Sundance on 23 January 2015 and was released in the US on 9 October 2015. I saw Knock Knock without knowing it was a remake. Look out for our next feature on Ana de Armas.
The Original and the Remake
Roth made it glossier and played it for satire and black comedy, ending with a social-media humiliation. The 1977 film is rougher and stranger, and its menace feels homemade. Roth keeps the premise of a man undone by his own desire, but Traynor's film has something the remake can't buy: Locke's eerie fragility, which makes the cruelty all the more shocking. Hollywood's habit of reworking the seventies is a story in itself, which I explored in Hollywood's 1970s film remakes.
The Allure on Camera: The Second Coming of Suzanne
Category: The Second Coming of Suzanne, screen sensuality, 1970s, critic's analysis
What is The Second Coming of Suzanne? It is a 1974 avant-garde drama written and directed by Michael Barry and inspired by Leonard Cohen's song "Suzanne". Sondra Locke plays a woman whom an obsessed San Francisco filmmaker casts as a female Christ. Shot from July 1972, when she was 28, it is best known for a love scene between Locke and Paul Sand that was racy for its time.
A Film Made from a Song
Cohen's "Suzanne" plays on the soundtrack, and the film takes its mood from the song: a woman half saint, half mystery, who draws men down to the river. Jared Martin plays Logan, an underground filmmaker who hires Suzanne to play Christ in his next picture. Paul Sand is Lee Simon, her artist boyfriend. A young Richard Dreyfuss plays Clavius, the crew member who grows alarmed as the shoot turns stranger and ends with Suzanne crucified on a hill above the city. The director's father, Gene Barry, raised the money and appears as a TV presenter. Filming began on 31 July 1972 and lasted six to eight weeks, around San Francisco, Angel Island, Tiburon and Berkeley. Isidore Mankofsky shot it, and it sat on the shelf for two years before its release on 14 August 1974.
The Scene I Want to Talk About
The scene I want to talk about is the love scene between Locke and Paul Sand, the one that gave the film its small notoriety. In 1974 it counted as daring, and it still says a lot about what made her so unusual. Locke did not have a pin-up's body or a starlet's swagger. She was small, fine-boned and pale, with eyes too big for her face, and her sensuality came from that fragility. Her persona, a woman who seems to give herself and hold something back at once, is exactly what charges a scene like this. Sand is no matinee idol either, and that is part of the point: this is intimacy between two odd, tender people, not a centrefold fantasy. In a film about a woman turned into an icon by a man's camera, the love scene is the one stretch where she is simply a woman with a lover.
That is also the film's irony. Logan wants to make Suzanne a symbol, and the movie sells her as one. The love scene is where she stops being a symbol. Whatever the film's other flaws, it understood that Locke was most alive on screen when she was most exposed: not only in the literal sense, but emotionally, a woman with no armour.
Poetic Puzzle or Self-Indulgence?
Critics could not agree. Rex Reed called it "an arresting, poetic puzzle of a film", and Kathleen Carroll of the New York Daily News called it "an artistic triumph". Joe Pollack of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch found it "extremely self-indulgent", and Michele Lomax of the San Francisco Examiner said it was "without soul". It won three medals at the Atlanta Film Festival, for best first feature, editing and cinematography, and today it is filed among the decade's avant-garde experiments.
The Seventies Allure of Sondra Locke
Readers searching for "Sondra Locke sexy" usually mean the seventies, and Suzanne is where that image starts on screen, after her 1969 Playboy pictorial had first sold her as a sex symbol. Her appeal was the opposite of the decade's bombshells. Europe offered the sunlit, playful curves of stars like the ones in my portrait of Nadia Cassini, the spicy sex symbol of the 1970s. Locke offered something cooler and more unsettling: a waif with a secret, hot and remote at the same time. It made her perfect for Death Game, and later for Eastwood, who kept casting her as a fragile woman with a hidden spine.
Exploitation or Drama? Nudity, Consent and Context in Sondra Locke's Films
Category: exploitation or drama, Playboy 1969, critical analysis
Was Sondra Locke exploited? The record points to a woman who used her image strategically more than one who was used. She chose a semi-nude Playboy pictorial at 24 to change her image, and her love scene and seduction scenes at 28 and 30 belong to the stories they serve.
Playboy, December 1969: Remaking the Image
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter had made her famous as a plain, awkward girl, a role she played at 23. In January 1969, at 24, she posed for a semi-nude pictorial by the photographer Frank Bez, a Lady Godiva-style series published in the December issue of Playboy. The aim was to shed that plain image and show Hollywood a grown woman. It worked. The layout established her as a sex symbol, and men's magazines recycled the photographs as her fame grew. Nearly three decades later, she said fans were still sending her those photos to autograph. When people search for "Sondra Locke nude", this adult pictorial is mostly what they mean. It was a career decision made by an adult actress, in the language the late sixties offered.
The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974): Nudity as Meaning
Her love scene with Paul Sand, shot in 1972 when she was 28, was racy for its time. It isn't a commercial insert. The film is about a man who turns a woman into an image, and her intimacy is the counterweight to that. The scene serves the film's argument. You can find the film pretentious, as many critics did, but not cynical.
Death Game (1977): Seduction as Trap
Shot in 1974, when she was about 30, Death Game is the closest she came to exploitation cinema: a $150,000 thriller built on a seduction, a hot tub and a sadistic home invasion. Its sensual scenes are the bait in the plot. The seduction is what traps the man, and the film punishes his desire. The provocation is the point, and it is the women who hold the power. This is the kind of material I have explored in my piece on Pam Grier and the drive-in vixens of the 1970s, where provocative women were selling points and, sometimes, the ones in control.
Sudden Impact (1983)
In Sudden Impact, the highest-grossing film in the Dirty Harry series, she plays Jennifer Spencer, an artist who takes revenge on the men who raped her and her sister. It is a rape-revenge drama, and nothing about it belongs in a discussion of allure.
Her Own View
Locke left few public words on her nude scenes. What she did say points to choice: she posed for Playboy to change how Hollywood saw her, and decades later she talked about the fan mail those photos still brought her. In her memoir and interviews her anger was aimed at Eastwood and the studio system, not at the camera.
The Verdict
My judgement is drama, with one calculated provocation. The Playboy pictorial was image-making, done knowingly and on her terms. Suzanne used her body to say something about how men look at women. Death Game used seduction as a weapon pointed at the man watching. The real exploitation in Locke's career was not about nudity at all. It was the pressure to stay young that pushed her into lying about her age, and, as she alleged in court, the way a powerful man could shut down her career once she was no longer his.
Eastwood's Muse: Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Bronco Billy and Sudden Impact
Category: Clint Eastwood films, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Bronco Billy, personal experience
Which films did Sondra Locke make with Clint Eastwood? Six: The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), The Gauntlet (1977), Every Which Way but Loose (1978), Bronco Billy (1980), Any Which Way You Can (1980) and Sudden Impact (1983). Eastwood directed four of them, and together they made her one of the most visible actresses of the era.
| Film | Year | Her role | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Outlaw Josey Wales | 1976 | Laura Lee | Clint Eastwood |
| The Gauntlet | 1977 | Augustina "Gus" Mally | Clint Eastwood |
| Every Which Way but Loose | 1978 | Lynn Halsey-Taylor | James Fargo |
| Bronco Billy | 1980 | Antoinette Lily | Clint Eastwood |
| Any Which Way You Can | 1980 | Lynn Halsey-Taylor | Buddy Van Horn |
| Sudden Impact | 1983 | Jennifer Spencer | Clint Eastwood |
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976): The Beginning
In mid-1975 Eastwood cast her as Laura Lee, the love interest of his Confederate outlaw. She said she took the part for the exposure, and she accepted a pay cut to get it: $18,000, less than half her previous fee. Laura Lee survives an attempted rape before Josey rescues her. Made for $3.7 million, the film grossed about $31.8 million, ranked among the top 15 films of 1976 and revived her career. On screen she is pale and watchful against the dust, a frontier waif Eastwood clearly could not stop looking at. Their offscreen relationship began around the time of that shoot. For the late years of the western, see my review of The Last Spaghetti Western documentary.
The Gauntlet (1977): Equal Billing
She plays Gus Mally, a prostitute and witness whom Eastwood's drunken Phoenix cop, Ben Shockley, must bring back from Las Vegas. The roles had been meant for Steve McQueen and Barbra Streisand. The publicity boasted that she was the first actress to get equal billing with Eastwood. She is sharp-tongued, sexy and tougher than the cop, and the film gave her the most substantial part she ever had with him. It grossed about $35.4 million on a $5.5 million budget. I watched it on VHS.
Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980)
In the orangutan comedies she plays Lynn Halsey-Taylor, a country singer who leads Eastwood's bare-knuckle trucker on a merry chase. Every Which Way but Loose was the fourth-highest-grossing film of 1978. The sequel, directed by Buddy Van Horn, earned about $70.7 million in North America, and she had a six-figure fee plus a share of profits. She also sang on the soundtracks.
Bronco Billy (1980): Her Favourite
Locke named Bronco Billy and Josey Wales as her favourites of their films. She plays Antoinette Lily, a spoiled heiress stranded with Eastwood's travelling Wild West show, and she melts from brittle to tender. It earned $24.3 million domestically. She was also nominated for a Golden Raspberry for Worst Actress, a verdict that has aged badly. I saw it on television, at an age when I still took her for his wife.
Sudden Impact (1983): The Last Collaboration
Their last film together was the fourth Dirty Harry picture, in which she plays the artist Jennifer Spencer. It was the highest-grossing film of the series, about $150 million, and her fee was reported at $350,000. She was approaching 40, and her acting career never regained that momentum. That is the paradox of the partnership: Eastwood made her a star of the late seventies, a fixture of the studio era I wrote about in US studio movies of the 1970s, and he also defined her so completely that, without him, Hollywood didn't seem to know what to do with her.
The 1989 Split, the Lawsuits and the Unforgiven Connection
Category: Clint Eastwood, lawsuits, Unforgiven, Frances Fisher, personal experience
Why did Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke split? Their relationship collapsed in early 1989. In April, Eastwood had her locked out of their Bel-Air home, and she sued him for $70 million in palimony. They settled in 1990 with a $1.5 million Warner Bros. development deal. In 1995 she sued him again for fraud, saying the deal had been a sham, and she settled again in 1996 for an undisclosed sum.
What I Thought, and What Was True
As a young viewer I thought she was Eastwood's wife. They were never married. She had married the sculptor Gordon Anderson in 1967, her friend since adolescence. She never divorced him, and in a 1989 affidavit she described the marriage as "tantamount to sister and brother". Eastwood, for his part, was still married when their relationship began. Their fourteen years together ended in court.
The Lockout and the Palimony Suit
After the relationship cooled over the winter of 1988–89, Eastwood effectively moved out of the house. On 10 April 1989, while she was shooting Impulse, employees of his company Malpaso changed the locks on the Bel-Air house, put her belongings into storage and posted guards at the gate. On 26 April she filed a $70 million palimony suit, alleging breach of contract, emotional distress and forcible entry. In the 19 months of litigation she developed breast cancer, and she said the treatment drained her will to fight. Eastwood dismissed her case as a "dime-novel plot".
Did They Have a Child?
No. Locke said she had two abortions during the relationship and a tubal ligation in 1979, at 35, citing Eastwood's view that parenthood didn't fit their life. Her first court filings presented these as forced. She later called them a "mutual decision". Eastwood publicly denied that any of the procedures were done at his request.
The Warner Deal and the Fraud Trial
In November 1990 they settled privately. Eastwood arranged a $1.5 million, multi-year development and directing deal for her at Warner Bros. She later alleged, citing studio bookkeeping records, that the money had really come from Eastwood himself and had been passed through the budget of Unforgiven. In June 1995 she sued him for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty, arguing that the deal had been a fake designed to keep her out of work. The case went to trial in September 1996. One juror later said the jury favoured Locke 10 to 2 and was only debating damages, but she settled before a verdict, for an undisclosed amount. She also sued Warner Bros. separately. How much Eastwood paid her in total has never been made public.
I Long Connected Her with Unforgiven
I long connected Sondra Locke with Unforgiven, and with an Oscar-winning co-star. In fact she isn't in it. The film is linked to her in two real ways. First, her fraud suit alleged that her Warner money had been passed through its budget. Second, its cast includes Frances Fisher, who plays Strawberry Alice and was Eastwood's partner from 1990 to 1995. Fisher is the mother of his daughter Francesca, and she has praised Locke's work as a director. Unforgiven (1992) won four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director for Eastwood, Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman, and Best Film Editing for Joel Cox. My memory of an Oscar-winning co-star most likely blends those Oscars with Fisher's role. Locke is the actress who wasn't there.
The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly
In 1997 William Morrow published her memoir, The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly: A Hollywood Journey. In it she called Eastwood "a completely evil, manipulating, lying excuse for a man". His lawyers sent the publisher a warning letter, but no case followed. For the rest of her life Locke maintained that she had been blacklisted after the split, while his career carried on untouched.
Behind the Camera: Ratboy, Impulse, Death in Small Doses and Trading Favors
Category: Sondra Locke director, Ratboy, Impulse, critic's assessment
What films did Sondra Locke direct? Four: Ratboy (1986), which she also starred in; the neo-noir Impulse (1990) with Theresa Russell; the ABC true-crime TV film Death in Small Doses (1995); and Trading Favors (1997) with Rosanna Arquette. None became a hit, and her directing career stalled after the 1989 split from Clint Eastwood.
| Film | Year | Type | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ratboy | 1986 | Feature, comedy-drama (Malpaso/Warner Bros.) | Sondra Locke, Sharon Baird, Robert Townsend |
| Impulse | 1990 | Feature, neo-noir (Warner Bros.) | Theresa Russell, Jeff Fahey, George Dzundza |
| Death in Small Doses | 1995 | TV film, true crime (ABC) | Richard Thomas, Tess Harper, Glynnis O'Connor |
| Trading Favors | 1997 | Feature, crime drama | Rosanna Arquette, George Dzundza, Devon Gummersall |
Ratboy (1986): A Fable from Malpaso
Her directing debut was made by Eastwood's company, Malpaso, and released by Warner Bros. on 17 October 1986. She plays Nikki Morrison, who finds a creature that is half boy and half rat and tries to make her fortune from him. The fable is about fame and how people consume the strange and the fragile. Rick Baker designed the make-up, Sharon Baird played the boy, and her husband Gordon Anderson voiced him. It was shot in the autumn of 1985 on a budget of about $8 million, had a troubled production, and failed with both critics and audiences. She was also nominated for a Golden Raspberry for her performance.
Impulse (1990): Theresa Russell Undercover
Theresa Russell plays Lottie Mason, a Los Angeles police officer who works undercover as a prostitute, and the neo-noir follows the pull of that double life, with Jeff Fahey and George Dzundza. Warner Bros. released it on 6 April 1990, a year after the lockout, and Locke was in the middle of the palimony suit while the film was finished and released. It cost about $9 million and grossed only about $2.4 million. Its studio was the one Eastwood called home, and the timing could not have been worse.
Death in Small Doses (1995) and Trading Favors (1997)
After a long gap, filled by the lawsuits and her cancer, she returned with Death in Small Doses, an ABC true-crime TV film starring Richard Thomas as Richard Lyon and Glynnis O'Connor as his wife. Its premiere was delayed for a year until 16 January 1995, and it drew mixed reviews. Critics who liked it gave much of the credit to Locke's direction and to Thomas. Her last directing job was Trading Favors (1997), a small crime drama with Rosanna Arquette, Devon Gummersall and, notably, Frances Fisher. It barely surfaced in cinemas and went mostly to video.
Why Her Directing Career Stalled
Locke believed she was blacklisted after the split with Eastwood, and the timeline fits her story: her fraud suit argued that the Warner deal was never meant to produce anything. Her films also had real limits. Ratboy was too odd to find an audience, and Impulse had no box-office pull. Women directors in late-eighties Hollywood got very few second chances.
My own assessment is simple. She tried to become a director, and she did make films, but they were not very successful.
Ray Meets Helen (2018): The Final Role
She came back once more, in front of the camera, for Alan Rudolph's romantic drama Ray Meets Helen, as Helen opposite Keith Carradine. She was also an executive producer. The film premiered at the Haifa International Film Festival in October 2017, opened in the US in May 2018, and played in only three theatres. Six months later she was dead.
Her Secret Death in 2018 and Her Legacy
Category: Sondra Locke death, cause of death, legacy
How did Sondra Locke die? She died at her Los Angeles home on 3 November 2018, aged 74, of cardiac arrest related to breast and bone cancer. Her death stayed secret for nearly six weeks, until Radar Online reported it on 13 December, citing Los Angeles County public-health records.
A Death Kept Quiet
She was cremated on 9 November at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, and her ashes were given to her husband, Gordon Anderson, who registered her death. Then, nothing. The news broke on 13 December, the day before Eastwood's The Mule opened nationwide. The Associated Press said it was not clear why it had taken nearly six weeks to come to light. Anderson could not be reached, and her representative did not answer People. Television gave her almost nothing, and four months later the 91st Academy Awards left her out of the In Memoriam segment. With no explanation, some people suspected she had asked for the silence herself, perhaps to keep her real age hidden to the end.
Did Clint Eastwood Comment or Attend Her Funeral?
Eastwood did not comment publicly on her death, and there is no public record that he attended any service. Her cremation was private, and no public funeral was reported.
Gordon Anderson and Her Estate
Anderson, the sculptor she married in 1967 and never left, outlived her and was living at the same address when she died. Locke reportedly left him an estate estimated at about $20 million, and she appears to have supported him financially throughout their marriage.
Her Legacy
Locke's legacy is larger than her filmography. She was an Oscar nominee for her first feature, a star of six Eastwood hits, and a director at a time when women made very few Hollywood films: she was one of only 11 women directors in 1990, the year of Impulse. She was also a woman who took on a superstar in court, twice, and won settlements. In 1989 the Los Angeles Times called her palimony suit a precedent-setting case. Childfree by choice and outspoken about her abortions at a time when few public figures were, she became, in the Guardian's words, a talking point in America's sexual politics. Actresses such as Frances Fisher and Rosanna Arquette have praised her directing. The sad irony is that she spent her career hiding her age, and in the end her death was kept hidden too.
For me she was first the woman beside Eastwood in Bronco Billy and The Gauntlet, the one I took for his wife.
Conclusion: The Woman Beside Eastwood, and Beyond Him
Sondra Locke was an Oscar nominee at the start, an Eastwood leading lady at her peak, a director in a Hollywood that barely made room for women, and a woman who took a superstar to court twice. She hid her age for decades, and her death was hidden too. What survives is a fragile, porcelain presence that could turn tender in Bronco Billy and feral in Death Game, and a story that still says a lot about power and women in the film business.
I saw Bronco Billy on television and The Gauntlet on VHS, and for years I thought she was Eastwood's wife. I see Death Game as avant-garde for its time, and I watched Knock Knock without knowing it was a remake of her film. This portrait is my way of giving her back her own name.
FAQ: Sondra Locke
Who was Sondra Locke?
Sondra Locke (1944–2018) was an American actress and director from Shelbyville, Tennessee. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her first feature, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), starred in six films with Clint Eastwood, and directed four films, including Ratboy and Impulse.
How old was Sondra Locke really?
She was born on 28 May 1944. For most of her career the press gave her birth year as 1947, but her marriage licence, yearbooks and death certificate confirm 1944. She died in 2018 at 74.
What is Death Game, and is Knock Knock a remake of it?
Death Game (1977), also known as The Seducers, is a home-invasion thriller directed by Peter S. Traynor, with Sondra Locke, Colleen Camp and Seymour Cassel. It was shot in 1974. Eli Roth remade it in 2015 as Knock Knock, with Keanu Reeves, Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas; Camp produced, Locke was an executive producer, and Camp has a cameo.
Did Sondra Locke pose nude for Playboy?
Yes. At 24 she posed for a semi-nude, Lady Godiva-style pictorial by the photographer Frank Bez, shot in January 1969 and published in Playboy's December 1969 issue. She did it to shed the plain image of her first film, and it established her as a sex symbol.
Why did Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke split?
Their relationship collapsed in early 1989. On 10 April 1989 Eastwood's company had her locked out of their Bel-Air home, and she filed a $70 million palimony suit. They settled in 1990 with a $1.5 million Warner Bros. development deal; she sued him for fraud in 1995 and settled again in 1996.
Did Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke have a child?
No. Locke said she had two abortions during the relationship and a tubal ligation in 1979. Eastwood publicly denied that any of the procedures were done at his request.
How did Sondra Locke die, and did Eastwood go to her funeral?
She died of cardiac arrest related to breast and bone cancer at her Los Angeles home on 3 November 2018, aged 74. The death was reported only on 13 December. Eastwood made no public comment, there is no public record that he attended any service, and her cremation was private.
What films did Sondra Locke direct?
Four: Ratboy (1986), which she also starred in; Impulse (1990) with Theresa Russell; the ABC TV film Death in Small Doses (1995); and Trading Favors (1997) with Rosanna Arquette. Her final acting role was in Alan Rudolph's Ray Meets Helen (2018).