“The prop person probably thought he was going to sit in it,” a baffled senior aide said on Thursday night. 
 
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 Mr. Eastwood’s rambling and off-color appearance just moments before the biggest speech of Mr. Romney’s life instantly became a Twitter and cable-news sensation, which drowned out much of the usual postconvention analysis that his campaign had hoped to bask in. 
 
 It also startled and unsettled Mr. Romney’s top advisers and prompted a blame game among them. “Not me,” an exasperated-looking senior adviser said when asked who was responsible for Mr. Eastwood’s speech. In interviews, aides called the speech “strange” and “weird.” One described it as “theater of the absurd.” 
 
 Ann Romney, who made the rounds of the three network morning shows, hardly pretended that she was happy as she was repeatedly asked about the speech. “I was thrilled for his support,” she said on NBC, trying to be positive. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said on MSNBC that he “cringed” as he sat in the hall during Mr. Eastwood’s performance. 
 
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 The speech was a reminder of how fleeting a successful political moment can be, and how carefully staged events can be upset by an unpredictable turn. And it suggested a slip-up inside the button-down, corporate-style headquarters of the Romney campaign in Boston. 
 
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 Romney advisers so trusted Mr. Eastwood, 82, that unlike with other speakers, they said they did not conduct rehearsals or insist on a script or communicate guidelines for the style or format of his remarks. For Mr. Eastwood, the convention speech was a bit part in a career that has had its political moments. Angered by zoning laws he did not like, he served one two-year term as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in California. In 1988, George Bush briefly considered choosing him as his running mate; he picked Dan Quayle instead. 
 
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 During the weeks after Mr. Romney extended the invitation in Idaho, the actor’s role in the convention lineup was kept secret. On the public schedule, his slot was listed as “to be announced.” 
 
 As the last night of the convention approached, planners tried to keep a lid on the story even as Mr. Eastwood’s name leaked out on the Internet, hoping his appearance would be the good kind of a surprise, not the bad kind. 
 
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 “If we announced it, it wouldn’t be a mystery anymore,” Mr. Schriefer told reporters, playfully. 
 
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 Another adviser said that several top aides had reviewed the talking points given to Mr. Eastwood just a few hours before his appearance. They included a request to mention the millions of people who remain unemployed — something Mr. Eastwood did, though he misstated the number. 
 
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 As actors sometimes do, he improvised. 
 
 Instead of reading off a teleprompter — something Mr. Eastwood is said to despise — he pretended to have a sarcasm-filled conversation with President Obama, seated by his side. 
 
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 “What do you mean, shut up?” Mr. Eastwood said, mumbling to a befuddled audience. A moment later, he stopped again, saying, “What do you want me to tell Mr. Romney?” 
 
 “I can’t tell him that. He can’t do that to himself,” Mr. Eastwood said. “You’re getting as bad as Biden.” 
 
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 Initially, there were no plans for Mr. Eastwood to take a chair onstage. But at the last minute, the actor asked the production staff backstage if he could use one but did not explain why. 
 
 Had Mr. Eastwood appeared earlier, many fewer people might have noticed. The networks began their hour of convention coverage at 10 p.m. Eastern time, which meant that Mr. Eastwood was the first act of the night for their millions of viewers. 
 
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 He was scheduled to speak for about five minutes but stayed onstage for more than twice as long, throwing off the schedule for Mr. Romney. 
 
 Mr. Stevens, in an interview, said he would not discuss internal decision making, but he said that Mr. Romney was backstage during Mr. Eastwood’s remarks. 
 
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 “He spoke from the heart with a classic improv sketch which everyone at the convention loved,” Mr. Stevens said, calling it “an honor that a great American icon would come and talk about the failure of the current president.” 
 
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 Rush Limbaugh called Mr. Eastwood’s performance “bold.” But other members of the party faithful were not so sure. As they flew home from Tampa on Friday, some delegates grumbled that Mr. Eastwood was a waste of a prime-time slot that might have been better used to feature other speakers or the biographical video of Mr. Romney’s life. 
 
 Mr. Eastwood is generally liked and respected in Hollywood, where his colleagues often do not agree with his politics. Leonard Hirshan, Mr. Eastwood’s manager, said the actor was traveling and would not be available for interviews. 
 
 Mr. Hirshan said he had heard a chorus of response since the speech, divided evenly between those supportive and those critical. Mr. Eastwood’s next film, “Trouble With the Curve,” is set for release on Sept. 21. 
 
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 “He does these things for himself,” Mr. Hirshan said. “It’s his private life. He believes in what he’s doing.” 

 Moments before Clint Eastwood approached the lectern at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night, he asked a stagehand to get him a chair. 
 
 Everyone just assumed he was going to sit in it. 
 
 Fans that night may have expected to hear from “Dirty Harry”: the cool, controlled enforcer, as deft with a quip as with a gun, effortlessly and eternally hip. Instead, they got something closer to Walt Kowalski, the grizzled old cuss of Eastwood’s 2008 “Gran Torino”: raw, unpolished, a little angry and suddenly much older than you realized. 
 
 Senior campaign aides said Friday that the unscripted routine by the actor-director — easily the biggest show-biz heavyweight to stand up for a GOP candidate since Frank Sinatra did it for Ronald Reagan — was something of a surprise. 
 
 The Oscar winner, 82, spoke off the cuff, having discussed a few talking points with campaign advisers and sketched out some rough remarks but preparing nothing for the prompters. Organizers were comfortable with this setup: At the early August fundraiser in Idaho where Eastwood first came out publicly for Mitt Romney, he delivered suave impromptu remarks that had other guests raving. 
 
 Instead, Eastwood’s wacky conversation with the empty chair (standing in for President Obama — and viewed by about 33 million people, according to Nielsen) became an instant Internet meme. His rambling style triggered snark about his health and his age. His old-timey lawyer jokes brought on a wave of triumphant fact-checking/rebuttal (Romney, like Obama, has a JD). 
 
 Inside the Tampa convention hall, the crowd roared with delight at Eastwood’s humor. But as Thursday night turned into Friday, Twitter and talking heads piled on the mockery, some claiming Eastwood had managed to upstage and undercut the Republican nominee’s acceptance speech. Ann Romney coolly deemed the actor’s performance “unique” Friday on “CBS This Morning.” 
 
 “I didn’t know it was coming,” she said with a nervous laugh. 
 
 Don’t look for Eastwood on the campaign trail this fall. His longtime manager said Friday that the star was traveling back from Florida and unavailable for interview requests or comments — and that hewill not speak to the press at all until he hits the promotional circuit for his next movie, “Trouble With the Curve,” opening Sept. 21. 
 
 When Eastwood gives his next interviews, manager Leonard Hirshan said,“he’s speaking about the picture, not everything else.” 
 
 On Friday, the Romney campaign expressed gratitude for the support of a beloved screen icon — no matter how quirky his delivery. 
 
 “He went out and did what actors do sometimes: He did a little improv,” said Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist. 
 
 Convention producers warily eyed the clock as Eastwood ran over his allotted five minutes by six or seven minutes. And the empty-chair gimmick was a complete surprise. 
 
 “This was an idea, a moment that moved him, I would say, and he went with it,” Stevens said. 
 
 He said Romney, standing backstage, laughed appreciatively through Eastwood’s talk. And Stevens praised Eastwood for hitting key talking points: “For him to go out there and to say that there’s a need to change presidents and that he supports Mitt Romney and talk about 23 million people out of work as he did and talk about when someone doesn’t do their job you need to change, that’s a powerful message.” 
 
 Questioned by a reporter from an NBC affiliate in Hampton Roads, Va., Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, said, “I think Clint Eastwood was just being Clint Eastwood.” 
 
 A rumored Eastwood appearance had been the buzz of the convention from Day 1, after several decades of the Hollywood establishment closing ranks behind Democrats. Entertainers have been especially helpful to the Obama administration, with A-listers such as George Clooney and Sarah Jessica Parker mounting mega-dollar fundraisers for his reelection. 
 
 “I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking: ‘What’s a movie tradesman doing out here? They’re all left-wingers out there!’ ” Eastwood told the convention hall audience Thursday. But there are indeed “conservative people, moderate people” in Hollywood, he said. They just “play it closer to the vest.” 
 
 Despite dabbling in politics for years — most notably as the nonpartisan mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif., from 1986 to 1988 — Eastwood’s evolving and hard-to-pin-down views have added to his superstar mystique. An occasional Republican voter who allies with many socially liberal causes, he has long resembled a screenwriter’s fantasy of the perfect square-jawed candidate, which may be why many fans project their beliefs onto him. His evocative but cryptic Chrysler ad that aired during this year’s Super Bowl was interpreted by many pundits as a celebration of the Obama auto-industry bailout — although Eastwood, in fact, opposed it. 
 
 In an interview with The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday in November, Eastwood happily talked politics but made no pretense of being a wonk. 
 
 Many Hollywood types dabbling in advocacy love to show off their mastery of policy, but Eastwood (“I’ve never been a really astute political person”) uttered the simple hopes and gripes of your typical man-on-the-street interview. 
 
 “They all come up now and they all say the same thing,” he said of politicians, Republican and Democratic alike. “They tell you what they want to get in, and when they get in, they all do something different, so you get the futility aspect of it all.” 
 
 Although he endorsed Republican John McCain in 2008, Eastwood said he felt good about Obama’s election, at first. “I thought: ‘Well, that’s cool. . . . That’ll be nice for the country and maybe it’ll settle down a lot of racial issues.’ ” Instead, “it kind of went the other way,” he told Hornaday, citing his frustration with how Obama seemed to pick sides in the hot-button dispute when African American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested by a white police officer in Cambridge, Mass. “Just a bad way to jump into it,” Eastwood said. 
 
 Romney didn’t seem to be on Eastwood’s agenda last fall. (“I liked that fellow from New Jersey, [Gov. Chris] Christie,” he told Hornaday.) It was just over a month ago that he approached the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign to express his support, and he got invited to a pair of Sun Valley, Idaho, events on Aug. 3. 
 
 “He didn’t act like a Hollywood star,” one guest said. The fundraiser, who was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly, noted that Eastwood had no entourage and made no demands. He posed for pictures with police officers and Secret Service agents and sat at a table eating dinner and conversing with other supporters. 
 
 “He really wowed both audiences in Sun Valley and could not have been more gracious to the attendees and to Mitt Romney and to the staff,” the fundraiser said. 
 
 As for the speech Thursday night, the fundraiser said, “I think the nature of Clint Eastwood is he is unpredictable.”
– Nobody knew about the chair. In post-mortems on Clint Eastwood's "unique" convention speech, the Washington Post and the New York Times say the actor asked for the prop just before going on without explaining what he was going to do. He's 82, after all, and "everyone just assumed he was going to sit in it," writes the Post. Instead, he launched his unscripted "invisible Obama" shtick—"a little improv," in the words of Romney strategist Stuart Stevens. He also went on for more than 10 minutes, double his allotted time. It turns out that Romney himself privately invited Eastwood to speak, says the Times, after the actor did a nice job endorsing Romney at fundraiser in Idaho. On Thursday, Eastwood cleared some main talking points with Romney aides a few hours ahead of time but didn't go into detail about the speech, which he delivered without a teleprompter. On the record, the campaign is saying appreciative, if restrained, things about the appearance. But off the record, the Times says a "blame game" is under way among top advisers.