If you were a fan of the TV western Rawhide, which starred Eric Fleming as Trial Boss Gil Faver and a very young Clint Eastwood as ramrod Rowdy Yates, you should remember an episode where Rowdy acquired the Colt six-gun with the silver rattlesnakes on the grips. In the second episode, “Incident at Alabaster Plain,” which aired on Jan. 16, 1959, guest star Mark Richman played Mastic, a vicious killer who challenged Rowdy to a gunfight. Faver intervened but in the end Rowdy went after Mastic, who fled to the bell tower of a mission after robbing and murdering his stepfather. Faver yanked on the bell rope and the bell knocked Mystic out of the tower and he fell to his death. Faver retrieved Mastic’s Colt, which had the silver rattlesnakes on the grips, and gave it to Rowdy. Clint Eastwood used the snake-handled Colt, a 5.5-inch barrel .45 for the rest of the Rawhide series.
When Eastwood was hired by Sergio Leone to star in A Fistful
of Dollars, he used the snake-handled Colt with his personal Andy Anderson
custom Walk-and-Draw rig. He continued to use the snake-handled Colt in For A
Few Dollars More. The sterling silver rattlesnakes, coiled and ready to strike,
were supplied on the custom grips by Andy Anderson of the North Hollywood
Gunfighter shop. It is unknown who crafted the original snakes, but they were
definitely professionally made by a silversmith.
Very interesting history. Is the whereabouts of the Eastwood/Rowdy Yates Colt known today? Any idea what the serial number was?
ReplyDeleteEastwood still owns them. They were loaned to the Autry Museum along with his poncho and boots for the 2005 Sergio Leone exhibit.
ReplyDeleteCan you cite your source for this tidbit?
ReplyDelete"The sterling silver rattlesnakes, coiled and ready to strike, were supplied on the custom grips by Andy Anderson of the North Hollywood Gunfighter shop"
As far as I know Clint owns the guns. He's loaned them out several times to Sir Christopher Frayling for his Sergio Leone exhibits in Los Angeles, Rome, and Paris.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I’m doing a ton of research right now on the dollars trilogy costume and I’m looking for all the minutia I can find. I wonder who inherited all of Andy Anderson’s stuff?
ReplyDeleteSince Sept I’ve been hunting for any other source on the internet saying the that the snakes were supplied by Andy Anderson and so far this page and your comment on it is the only citation of this that I can find. Really curious to know more about the basis of this statement.
ReplyDeleteThe article doesn't say Anderson supplied the snakes, it says Clint used Anderson's "custom Walk-and-Draw rig". In other words his holster and belt.
ReplyDelete