Women’s Boxing NOT new to Clint Eastwood who Produced “Million Dollar Baby” – by Sue TL Fox

(APR 8, 2005) In the “Movie Land” news this week, it has been reported that actor Clint Eastwood is set to direct and star  in a boxing-themed ‘Million Dollar Baby’ based on a movie about a fighter-turned-trainer who ends up training a woman in her early 30’s who wants to box.

BUT this will NOT be Eastwood’s first exposure to the world of women wanting to box!  In the late 1970’s, he attended fights that featured Lavonne Ludian who happened to be “very good” friends with Eastwood, according to Ludian.  Ludian told WBAN that when he was making a movie that the whole crew attended one of her fights.

©Photos courtesy of Lavonne Ludian.

In 2005, as there was a lot of hype over the “Million Dollar Baby” movie, about a female boxer, who was struggling in a boxing gym to be a boxer, Lavonne Ludian, a past female boxer from the 1970s and early 1980s told WBAN about her friendship with Clint Eastwood as he would come to her fights when she was fighting in Las Vegas, Nevada.  In the photo(s) he is standing with Ludian and Ken Norton, heavyweight boxer at the time.