Locke Says She Was ‘Humiliated’

Actor-director Sondra Locke testified Thursday in her fraud lawsuit against former co-star and lover Clint Eastwood that she felt “amazed . . . embarrassed . . . humiliated” when she learned that the development deal she had with Warner Bros. was a “sham.”

Taking the witness stand in Superior Court in Burbank, Locke described her efforts as a fledgling director, a career that never quite got off the ground while she was at Warner Bros.

Locke had dropped a 1989 palimony suit she’d filed against Eastwood after she accepted a film deal he helped negotiate. But she testified that she later discovered he had been paying her himself, under the table.

She had been puzzled by her inability sell Warner Bros. on any of the 30 or so projects she’d pitched, Locke said. The reason for her struggle became clear, she told the jury, when she learned in 1994 of Eastwood’s unwritten agreement with Warner Bros.’ executives.

During an exchange with defense attorney Raymond Fisher, Locke acknowledged that she had been given an office on the Warner Bros. lot, and “a parking space with my name on it.”

Judge David M. Schacter admonished jurors as he dismissed them for the weekend, “Don’t look at that tabloid stuff when you go through the shopping line.”