Early Smith: "You always gotta do things your own way, don't you?"
Harry Callahan: "You do things someone else's way and you take your life into your own hands."
-Early to Callahan after confronting Palancio and his bodyguards.
Early
Status: Deceased
Cause of death: Blown up by a mailbox bomb planted by the vigilante rookie cops.
Weapons: Colt Diamondback, Ithaca 37
Earlington "Early" Smith was Harry Callahan's second partner and the dueteragonist in Magnum Force. Smith was partnered with Harry on stakeout at the beginning of the film.
Early was a bit sensitive to violence when he was at a murder scene. He accompanied Harry on various stakeouts and learned how he did things, he was highly respected by Harry. Although when Harry gets transferred back to Homicide so does Smith.
At one point him and Callahan had to stop a violent store robbery where he had a shotgun pointed straight to his face. Harry shot and killed the criminals while Early managed to chase one outside and shoot him dead in self defense. Early also had to assist Harry on watching and follow criminal Frank Palancio. Eventually Early went along with Harry to arrest Palancio to which Harry told him to keep his eye on Davis and Sweet. The latter was killed however by Palancio who shot Sweet in the chest with a shot gun. This starts a shootout until it is brought to an end by Davis and Callahan. After the shootout, Harry reveals to Early everything he suspected about the rookie cops and warns him to be careful. In the end Early is killed by the vigilante cops, because of his knowledge of them. He was killed by a bomb in his mailbox as Harry was trying to warn him by telephone.
Early was played by Felton Perry who has been in movies such as Sudden Death, the Robocop trilogy and Dumb and Dumber.
Trivia[]
- In the third film The Enforcer, Tyne Daly as Kate Moore mentions Smith when bringing up Harry’s previous dead partners.
- Kate Moore's weapon of choice in The Enforcer is a Colt Diamondback much like Early.
- Unlike most of Callahan's partners with the exception of Horace King in Sudden Impact, Early is respected by Harry right from the start of the film. This is most likely because Early has shown to hold his ground in the toughest situations. Harry even compliments how well he handled the store robbery.