View All Photos (10) Movie Info In the last and the best installment of his so-called "Dollars" trilogy of Sergio Leone-directed "spaghetti westerns," Clint Eastwood reprised the role of a taciturn, enigmatic loner. Here he searches for a cache of stolen gold against rivals the Bad (Lee Van Cleef), a ruthless bounty hunter, and the Ugly (Eli Wallach), a Mexican bandit. Though dubbed "the Good," Eastwood's character is not much better than his opponents -- he is just smarter and shoots faster. The film's title reveals its ironic attitude toward the canonized heroes of the classical western. "The real West was the world of violence, fear, and brutal instincts," claimed Leone. "In pursuit of profit there is no such thing as good and evil, generosity or deviousness; everything depends on chance, and not the best wins but the luckiest." Immensely entertaining and beautifully shot in Techniscope by Tonino Delli Colli, the movie is a virtually definitive "spaghetti western," rivaled only by Leone's own Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

The main musical theme by Ennio Morricone hit #1 on the British pop charts. Originally released in Italy at 177 minutes, the movie was later cut for its international release. ~ Yuri German, Rovi Rating: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Official Trailer #1 - Clint Eastwood Movie (1966) HD - YouTube The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Official Trailer #1 - Clint Eastwood Movie (1966) HD Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Published on Oct 5, 2012 Subscribe to TRAILERS: Subscribe to COMING SOON: Subscribe to CLASSIC TRAILERS: Like us on FACEBOOK: Follow us on TWITTER: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Official Trailer #1 - Clint Eastwood Movie (1966) HD The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Trailer - Directed by Sergio Leone and starring Eli Wallach, Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo GiuffrÈ. A bounty hunting scam joins two men in an uneasy alliance against a third in a race to find a fortune in gold buried in a remote cemetery. MGM - 1966 What's the Big Deal?: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - MTV mtv Eric Snider 07/12/2010 The squinting stares. The tense standoffs. The itchy trigger fingers. Much of our modern view of the American Old West has its roots in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- a movie shot mostly in Spain and financed with Italian money, directed by a man who had never been to America.

How did this famous movie with the memorable title come to be so important? Holster up and let's take a look. The praise: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly appears on numerous "best movies ever made" lists. It's No. 25 on Empire magazine's survey, No. 4 among Internet Movie Database users , and also shows up on Time magazine's alphabetical list of cinema's 100 greatest triumphs. Quentin Tarantino considers it the best movie ever made (but take that with a grain of salt; his No. 10 choice is Dazed and Confused). The context: Westerns have been a staple of American filmmaking since the beginning, but the genre started to fall out of fashion in the 1950s. By 1960, a glut of Western TV series had made it easy for people to satisfy their cowboys-and-Indians cravings without leaving the house, and the old-fashioned themes associated with Westerns -- clearly defined heroes and villains, chivalry and morality, etc. -- didn't gibe with Hollywood's increasingly modern viewpoint. Meanwhile, in a seemingly unrelated set of circumstances, Italian cinema was having a brief crisis.

The country's film industry had been the most robust of any in Western Europe since World War II, churning out dozens of popular sword-and-sandal pictures and lavish costume epics, but a series of expensive flops in the early 1960s killed the momentum. Young filmmakers had to get creative (at least financially speaking) by turning to low-budget productions of horror films, James Bond rip-offs, and -- wait for it -- Westerns. Why would the Italians be interested in such a distinctly American genre? To appeal to American audiences, of course. Italian movies did well at home, but the real money was in exporting them to other countries, and the United States was the most lucrative foreign market. These Italian-produced Old West pictures came to be known as "spaghetti Westerns." They were frequently shot in the parts of Spain that resemble the American Southwest, with Italian and Spanish actors playing the smaller roles while American actors -- usually either up-and-coming or washed-up -- took the leads. Spaghetti Westerns were plentiful -- David A.

Cook's A History of Narrative Film says more than 400 of them were produced from 1963 to 1973 -- and the man credited with making the genre a success is Sergio Leone . The son of a director and actress and a film buff since childhood, Leone was every bit as enthusiastic about cinema as his French New Wave contemporaries were. He loved American comic strips, as can be seen in his movies' close-ups and careful framing. He also had a thing for film noir and (of course) Westerns. His Westerns fused the two genres. Where previous cowboy heroes were unambiguously good, clean, and noble, Leone's good guys were nearly as grimy, rough, and self-interested as his bad guys -- just like the heroes in film noir. Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) comprise a loosely connected trilogy in which a lone gunman, played by Clint Eastwood , roams the Old West. (He has a different nickname in each one; it's only by implication that he's even the same character.

You could see the films in any order without being lost.) All three films were successful in Europe before they opened in America. When they premiered here -- in rapid succession, each a few months after the last, over the course of 1967 -- they were huge hits. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (which is actually a prequel to the other films) was the most popular, the most technically accomplished, and the most critically acclaimed of the three. According to Box Office Mojo , it eventually grossed $25.1 million in the U.S. alone (around $160 million at today's ticket prices). That's a pretty solid return on its $1.3 million budget. TGTBATU wasn't universally beloved, though. Several prominent critics despised the film and were unable to resist spoofing its unique title.

The New York Times' Renata Adler called it "The burn, the gouge, and the mangle"; her counterpart at the Los Angeles Times, Charles Champlin, dubbed it "The bad, the dull, and the interminable." Variety's review said that, in accordance with its title, the movie is a mix of "the visually striking, the dramatically feeble and the offensively sadistic." Time magazine said the good was "Leone's camera work," the bad was the "wooden acting" and the storyline's "stretched probabilities," and the ugly was Leone's "insatiable appetite for beatings, disembowlings and mutiliations." In the New Yorker, Pauline Kael called it "garish," "gruesome," and "stupid," and criticized it because "what the American Western hero stands for -- everything that audiences are supposed to identify with ... has simply been omitted" (March 2, 1968, pp. 125-126). But Kael's frequent sparring partner, Andrew Sarris, writing for the Village Voice, viewed the spin on traditional Westerns more favorably.

"What [Akira] Kurosawa and [Sergio] Leone share is a sentimental nihilism that ranks survival above honor and revenge above morality.... The spaghetti western is ultimately a lower-class entertainment and, as such, functions as an epic of violent revenge" (quoted in Marc Eliot, American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood, p. 88). Thanks in part to Sarris' praise, it became cool for New York hipsters to enjoy Leone's movies: "If it still wasn't okay to laud the films at cocktail parties on Fifth Avenue, after Sarris it was the essential stuff of coffee shop and kitchen counters" (Eliot, p. 88). Roger Ebert, less than a year on the job at the Chicago Sun-Times, praised The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for freshening up the stale Western genre with its authenticity and ruthlessness. Leone's movies "have no good guys to dilute the action," he wrote.

When he reflected on the film in 2003, Ebert wrote, "Looking up my old review, I see I described a four-star movie but only gave it three stars, perhaps because it was a 'spaghetti Western' and so could not be art." The movie: A good guy called Blondie (Clint Eastwood), a bad guy called Angel Eyes ( Lee Van Cleef ), and an ugly guy named Tuco ( Eli Wallach ) -- though truth be told, each man is actually a fairly healthy mix of all three traits -- cross paths in the Old West during the Civil War, searching for a missing box of Confederate gold. What it influenced: Ennio Morricone's musical score is iconic, in particular its main theme (which you can listen to here ). That brief snippet of music is so famous that it's now often used as shorthand to establish an Old West setting, especially a showdown. It's up there with Psycho's shrieking-violins shower motif and Jaws' here-comes-the-shark music for recognizability. Even people who haven't seen the movies in question know what the music means. Another element of the movie that has become iconic independent of the film's content is its title.

"The good, the bad, and the ugly" -- not a common expression before Leone used it -- pops up frequently in discussions of complicated or multifaceted issues, used to suggest that the matter has pros, cons, and unpleasant facts. It's no surprise that Quentin Tarantino calls this the best film ever made. Watching it, I get the sense that if it didn't exist, Tarantino wouldn't exist either. (I don't just mean Tarantino wouldn't have become a filmmaker. I mean he never would have been born. The fact that he was born three years before TGTBATU came out is all part of the paradox.) Nearly all of Tarantino's films have homages to TGTBATU: Reservoir Dogs has a Mexican standoff and a man being tortured while incongruous music plays; the entire structure of Kill Bill is like a Spaghetti Western, complete with a nameless main character who goes around doling out justice; Pulp Fiction has a gunman eating a victim's food before killing him; the tense scene of Col. Hans Landa visiting a man's house to ask about the some missing Jews in Inglourious Basterds recalls a similar scene near the beginning of TGTBATU.

Clint Eastwood had starred in TV's Rawhide and appeared in a few American films, but it was this trilogy that made him a big star. His other famous character, "Dirty" Harry Callahan, was basically the Man With No Name transported to the present and given a police badge, and this persona would define Eastwood's career. When he made his own anti-Western, Unforgiven , he dedicated it to Leone. What to look for: It was common practice in those days for low-budget films to be shot silently, with the dialogue and sound effects added later. That way, directors didn't have to deal with the expense and hassle of recording sound live, which is particularly difficult when you're shooting outdoors rather than in a studio. It also meant the actors could speak their native languages, since everyone would have to be dubbed later anyway. As a result, some characters' lips match their words better than others. The best are Eastwood and his two American co-stars, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach, who were speaking English to begin with and simply had to repeat their lines in a recording studio.

The actors who spoke only Italian or Spanish had their dialogue dubbed by English-speakers, with mixed results in the lips-matching-the-words department. So it's not for nothing that Leone tends to keep the dialogue to a minimum. In fact, the film is 11 minutes old before anyone says anything, and Eastwood remains fairly taciturn (in that classic Eastwood way) the rest of the time. The chatterbox is Wallach, who plays Tuco, the "ugly" man and the film's comic relief. What may be surprising to first-time viewers is just how funny the movie is, though it's usually grim, deadpan comedy rather than outright slapstick or one-liners. Inspired by Japanese samurai films, Leone made the Western a more formal, stylized thing -- and would then frequently deflate the tension with dark humor. TGTBATU is also rather violent for its time (though it would probably only get a PG-13 rating today). Note that Eastwood's character shoots three men before we even see his face. Hollywood was starting to experiment with more graphic content, and the popularity of this film helped open the door for Bonnie and Clyde and its successors.

What's the big deal: Leone's Dollars trilogy helped bring Westerns into the modern era. Heroes became more ambiguous, the situations more grim, the depictions more graphic. But the artistry became more impressive, too, and Leone's stylish editing and cinematography drew in younger viewers, many of whom previously thought of Westerns as belonging to their parents' generation. Many films that define the 1970s have similar characteristics (shades-of-gray heroes, stylized direction, gritty content, etc.), and TGTBATU was a significant influence on them. * * * * Eric D. Snider ( website ) is more good than bad, and not at all ugly, except his feet. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Buy, Rent, and Watch Movies & TV on Flixster Tom Huddlestone Time Out Sergio Leone's grandiose 1966 western epic is nothing less than a masterclass in movie storytelling, a dynamic testament to the sheer, invigorating uniqueness of cinema. Sean Axmaker Seanax.com There are two kinds of people, my friend.

Those who love Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and those who resist the machismo and gallows humor of what is arguably the definitive spaghetti western. Variety Staff Variety The third in the Clint Eastwood series of Italo westerns, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is exactly that -- a curious amalgam of the visually striking, the dramatically feeble and the offensively sadistic. Sergio Leone's epic looks good, almost great, restored to its original running time. Cole Smithey ColeSmithey.com Leone's liberal use of widescreen shots in conjunction with extreme close-ups gives the movie an epic quality that is matched in scope by a skeletal narrative structure that breathes with a poker-faced mood, tone, and personality. Dave Kehr Chicago Reader Though ordained from the beginning, the three-way showdown that climaxes the film is tense and thoroughly astonishing. John Monaghan Detroit Free Press Of all the great films of the 1960s, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of a fistful that can be truly appreciated only on the big screen.

Tim Brayton Antagony & Ecstasy A unique vision of the American West as place of desolation and ruin on a truly epic scale. One of the best films I ever saw!. Fresh. Directors Cat [img] Graham Jones The definitive Italian western.The most epic of all Leone's films. Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood all are brilliant but Leone's camera… More The definitive Italian western.The most epic of all Leone's films. Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood all are brilliant but Leone's camera is the real star of this classic. Chris Garman Everything Sergio Leone did before 1966 built up to The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. A Fistful Of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More steadily increased the epic… More Everything Sergio Leone did before 1966 built up to The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. A Fistful Of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More steadily increased the epic western that Leone envisioned until he released what is probably his greatest creation and the film that sealed Clint Eastwood's star power.

As gritty as its predecessors, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is set during the Civil War as the title trio goes on the hunt for $200,000 dollars in stolen gold. The Good is Blondie, played by Eastwood as he reprises his Man With No Name character. The Bad is Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef), a cold blooded killer who happens upon the gold story while working for another man. The Ugly is Tuco (Eli Wallach), a degenerate criminal hell bent on getting vengeance on Blondie, but is forced to change his tune when Blondie gains the key information to the hidden gold. The quest for gold begins in front of the back drop of the Civil War as battles impede the movement toward the buried coins and the gritty, bombed out towns serve as a refuge to the treasure hunters. This is the third and final film in the Dollars trilogy and shows how popular and profitable Leone's vision had become. Given a larger budget for TGTBATU, Leone builds a larger world than in any previous dollars film. As in the others the west is a dirty place where there are no cowboys in black and white, just everyone wearing a shade of gray.

The Good really isn't very good, he's just a man in his element. Of course all of the Leone trademarks are present; the close ups and the grand vistas borrowed from John Ford. It's a drastic change from the almost crystal clean westerns of decades before. Is it realistic? Probably not, but life appears a lot closer to real human nature than other westerns. Survival of the fittest is the main theme in these films. When looking at the cast the three leads are perfect. Eastwood's character is obviously a very good rehash from the previous dollars films, but Eli Wallach's Tuco is a sight to be believed. He appears to be bungling, but is actually way ahead when you really delve deeper into his character. "If you're going to shoot, shoot. Don't talk." The real switch is Lee Van Cleef, who played the fatherly Mortimer in For A Few Dollars More. In TGTBATU he is one of cinemas first natural born killers. A professional at what he does in every sense of the word. The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly has a legacy that has followed it since its release almost two generations ago. The west got harsher.

The line between good and bad became blurred, bringing on a decade of the anti-hero. This film still influences directors and writers throughout the world. It is a masterpiece of film making with a story that is epic. Not only one of the greatest westerns ever made, one of the greatest films ever made. Carlos Magalhï¿½es Leone reaches the level of absolute perfection in this third film of his Dollar Trilogy, a magnificent Spaghetti Western - arguably the best of them all - that… More Leone reaches the level of absolute perfection in this third film of his Dollar Trilogy, a magnificent Spaghetti Western - arguably the best of them all - that features fantastic performances, an unforgettable score and a sublime, breathtaking cinematography. xGary Xx The final part of "the man with no name" trilogy sees Clint competing with his erstwhile partner and a coldly vicious mercenary for some buried stolen… More The final part of "the man with no name" trilogy sees Clint competing with his erstwhile partner and a coldly vicious mercenary for some buried stolen loot.

The remarkable thing about Leone's series is the fact that even the best film trilogies (ie The Godfather, the original Star Wars et al) good as they were, never quite captured the magic of the original. Leone's however began brilliantly, and just kept getting better. The trio are introduced in highly effective opening scenes once again, often using only eye contact and body language to convey their personalities; it's actually 10 full minutes into the film before a single syllable is uttered. Leone continues the theme of the old west as an environment of "every man for himself" as the characters are constantly backstabbing and lying to each other, even "the good" is an immoral con man who betrays his partner as soon as it is convenient (but I guess "The bad, the bad and the bad" didn't have the same ring to it!) All of this is set to a backdrop of the American Civil war which is treated in a way that has far more in common with Apocalypse Now than John Ford. The scene in which a drunken Union captain prays for the destruction of a vital bridge to end the carnage is particularly memorable.

But it is Eli Wallach's Tuco that virtually steals the film out from under Clint; his immoral and cowardly double crosser brings a lot of humour to the film and was surely a big influence on Johnny Depp whilst creating the character of Captain Jack. My one gripe is that the second act is rather weaker than the opening and conclusion, which is particularly apparent when Morricone's otherwise excellent score descends into conspicuous sappiness. Despite this, The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is a clear contender for the best western ever made. Tim Salmons Sergio Leone not only turned his classic "Dollars trilogy" around with a great final part, but he also managed to create one of the greatest films… More Sergio Leone not only turned his classic "Dollars trilogy" around with a great final part, but he also managed to create one of the greatest films ever made. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has always been one of my favorite films, and for good reason. There are things about it that would definitely rub the critically inclined, like myself, the wrong way. Thankfully, none of that seems to matter in this film. I feel transported everytime I see it.

The dirt and the grit seep out of every pore of every frame of film. It's also superbly acted, especially from Eastwood who gives one of his greatest performances (rarely topped). There's also the wonderful Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef rounding out the film's namesake characters. This is just a perfect entry into the Spaghetti Western genre. The iconic score (by the eminent Ennio Morricone), the beautiful images and the great storyline make it one of the all time greats. Jim Careter The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is the conclusion to the Man With No Name Trilogy, and is in my opinion the greatest western ever made (next to the 2010 True… More The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is the conclusion to the Man With No Name Trilogy, and is in my opinion the greatest western ever made (next to the 2010 True Grit). The Good (Clint Eastwood), The Bad (Lee Van Cleef), and The Ugly (Eli Wallach) are three men, greedy and selfish men in the west during the time of American Civil War.

All three get caught in trying to find confederate gold, and will kill eachother for it. The plot is much more than it sounds, its a journey through the west as we see the true violence, terror, beauty, hate, and sadness that the world was really like in that time, espically in the west. Clint Eastwood is one of the most famous actors and directors in history, and we get to see him at his best in his golden days when he was a big rising star, and just having a star like him in this makes it feel even greater because we're not watching a old western film with some random actors, we're watching the king of westerns at his greatest. Eli Wallach is amazing as well, he plays one of the cheatiest and stupididest people there is, and he fits the role to perfection. Lee Van Cleef scared me as a kid, he played a ruthless bastard who was always one step ahead and he always played a great role with a straight face that made him one of the most remembered actors ever by being in this film.

The music in this film is its trademark, when people remember this film they sing the famous and amazingly made score that people remember to this day, and the rest of this music is tremendous as well. The production of the film is great, they really tried hard to make this a spaghetti western. There never was a moment that we are not supposed to watch because every moment is important to get the full feel of the film, and this is why The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is the most famous western (and one of the most famous films) of all time. Jim Hunter Three outlaws pursue a cache of gold hidden in a grave. While canonical, this film is oddly structured with its inciting incident pushed to an hour and fifteen… More Three outlaws pursue a cache of gold hidden in a grave. While canonical, this film is oddly structured with its inciting incident pushed to an hour and fifteen minutes into its three-hour run time.

What the film is saying about goodness (or ugliness or badness) is unclear as the "good" is just as bad as the "ugly," but I can imagine that it's attempting to show that morality is more contextual than absolute, creating, as it does, an environment in which everybody is immoral even the Union and Confederate troops, who seem to be passing through this film on their way to another. Beautifully shot and operatic in scope, the filmmaking is remarkable even if the story-telling is perplexing. Overall, this classic western isn't bad or good or ugly, just moderately interesting. KJ Proulx I may be a sucker for Western films, but this one truly lives up to it's spaghetti western feel. Clint Eastwood is great as always, and this time as the… More I may be a sucker for Western films, but this one truly lives up to it's spaghetti western feel. Clint Eastwood is great as always, and this time as the man with no name, he pulls off a haunting character who, even though is tagged as "good," may not have a complete absence of bad.

"The Good the Bad and the Ugly" essentially follows three men who will eventually meet on the same hunt for gold, which is buried in an unknown gravesite with an unknown gravestone. The film revolves around the answers leading up to the finding. While it is a tad long, this film had far too much going for it for that to be a fault. I absolutely loved this movie! Great direction, great cinematography, and the screenplay made the film extremely engaging! Wildaly M Classic western film. Loved it! &quot;If you're gonna shoot, don't talk, shoot.&quot;Well I obviously watched the director's cut (I… More Classic western film. Loved it! &quot;If you're gonna shoot, don't talk, shoot.&quot;Well I obviously watched the director's cut (I didn't realize this until I heard a bit of the commentary... I actually thought the film had been THAT long) and though I think I should've watched the &quot;normal version&quot; first, I absolutely loved this movie. Why?

Well first off, there's Clint Eastwood (the Good) who played a character named Blondie, who by the way was not exactly blond in my opinion, but was absolutely badass and I don't even need to mention handsome. Then there were the showdowns. Phew! I think you can actually sweat while you watch those parts. And finally, the &quot;When you have to shoot, don't talk, shoot&quot; which is a very good lesson for all the bad guys of the world who always feel the need to reveal the way they got to the top and how now they're going to take over the world, blah, blah, blah and the hero, being, of course, smarter and wiser, kills him while he talks. An even better thing about this film is that everyone here is a bad guy and we see none of those repertories before a guy is going to shoot someone, thank you very much. Not only that but I also learned that there's always two kinds of people in this world, my friend... Kristijonas Fussman Gosh, where to start... This movie simply demands to be seen and revered.

Sergio Leone's direction is at once playful and completely timeless, the comedy… More Gosh, where to start... This movie simply demands to be seen and revered. Sergio Leone's direction is at once playful and completely timeless, the comedy is ironic and pitch-black, and the performances are stellar. And the Ennio Morricone score... that man can do no wrong. A modern marvel. 12 Great Facts About ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ | Mental Floss 12 Great Facts About ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ YouTube Like us on Facebook Though it has to forever compete with The Searchers and High Noon, few Western films will ever have the impact of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, the final film in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” and the most famous Spaghetti Western (that is, films in the American Western style made by Italian directors) of all time. It catapulted Clint Eastwood to super-stardom, changed the way countless directors thought about the genre, and continues to influence film to this day.

So, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of its release year, here are a dozen facts about the legendary tale of gunslingers on the hunt for treasure. 1. THE FILM’S STORY WAS IMPROVISED IN A MEETING. In late 1965, A Fistful of Dollars and its sequel, For a Few Dollars More, were not yet available in the United States, but their success in Europe was not lost on American film executives. Hoping to capitalize on the buzz and secure a lucrative American distribution deal, director Sergio Leone and writer Luciano Vincenzoni brought Arthur Krim and Arnold Picker—two United Artists executives—to Rome, where they were treated to a screening of the second film at a massive cinema where For a Few Dollars More was playing to enthusiastic crowds.

The American executives were interested, and agreed to pay $900,000 for the American rights (a huge amount at the time, particular considering the fact that Eastwood was not yet the massive star he’d become), but as the principals gathered to sign the deal, Picker asked if Leone, Vicenzoni, and producer Alberto Grimaldi had thought about what they’d be doing next, as he was hoping for yet another Western to package with the first two films. The three men hadn’t thought about it before, but Vincenzoni thought quickly, and improvised an idea. “I don’t know why, but the poster came into my mind—Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly,’” said Vincenzoni . “It’s the story of three bums that go around through the Civil War looking for money.” Based on that short pitch, Picker agreed to fund the film, and the movie was on its way. Eventually, all three films were released in America over the course of a single year. 2. CLINT EASTWOOD’S SALARY DEMANDS DELAYED FILMING.

Eastwood initially agreed to return for a third film, but was disappointed when he read the script and discovered that he’d be sharing the screen with two other major players: Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef (who’d already co-starred with Eastwood in For a Few Dollars More). In Eastwood’s view, the increasing reliance on an ensemble was crowding him out of the movie. “If it goes on this way, in the next one I will be starring with the American cavalry,” Eastwood reportedly said in response to the story. Negotiations for the third film fell apart, and Eastwood’s agents and publicist worked hard to bring him back to the production. What’s most interesting about this was that, because the films still had not come out in America, Eastwood was not yet the huge star that we know him to be today, so he had less negotiating pull than you might expect. Still, his agents were ultimately able to get him a $250,000 salary for the film (more than the entire budget of A Fistful of Dollars), plus 10 percent of the profits when the film was finally released in America. As a cherry on top, he was also promised a new Ferrari.

Of course, he ultimately accepted the job. 3. ELI WALLACH SAID YES AFTER SEEING ONLY MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS FILMS. For the role of Tuco, a.k.a. “The Bad,” Leone initially wanted Italian actor Gian Maria Volontè, who’d played villainous roles in both previous films. When Volontè turned the role down, Leone turned to American actor Eli Wallach, who was at the time best known for his role in The Magnificent Seven. Wallach was skeptical of making a Western with, of all people, an Italian director, but a screening was arranged in an attempt to convince him. After watching just minutes of one of the first two “Dollars” films, Wallach told the projectionist that he could turn the movie off, and accepted the job. 4. SERGIO LEONE DID NOT SPEAK ENGLISH, AND THUS COULD NOT SPEAK DIRECTLY TO EASTWOOD. By the spring of 1966, Sergio Leone had made two films with Eastwood, one film with Van Cleef, and was about to make a third film along with another American actor: Eli Wallach. Despite this, Leone did not speak English, and relied on an interpreter.

Wallach, however, was able to communicate with Leone in French, in which the director was fluent. 5. LEONE DID COPIOUS RESEARCH. Because the film was set during the Civil War, Leone wanted to preserve a certain sense of accuracy, and went to America to research the film. Among his inspirations were Library of Congress documents and the photographs of legendary photographer Mathew Brady . The film is not completely historically accurate, though. It features the use of dynamite before that particular explosive was invented. 6. THE FAMOUS BRIDGE EXPLOSION HAD TO BE SHOT TWICE. For the scene in which Blondie (Eastwood) and Tuco (Wallach) decide to blow up the bridge that leads to the cemetery where they believe the gold they seek is buried, the production hired hundreds of Spanish soldiers to stand in for Civil War fighters. The shoot was complicated. The soldiers all had to be in the right, safe place, and Leone set up several cameras to film the moment while waiting for the perfect light to capture it. As Eastwood and Wallach watched from a nearby hilltop (where Eastwood apparently practiced his golf swing), Leone watched the sky, waiting for the right light.

The signal to blow up the bridge was supposed to be the word “Vaya,” and the crew gave a Spanish officer the honor of igniting the blast. Unfortunately, a member of the crew, while trying to hurry a cameraman, said “Vaya” too quickly. The officer heard the word and blew up the bridge. The special effects expert who accidentally triggered the explosion with his words fled the set quickly, while Leone simply said, “Let’s go eat.” The bridge was rebuilt, and the scene was re-shot, driving up the budget of the film. 7. EASTWOOD HATED HIS CIGARS. Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” character is easily identified by the little cigarillos he’s almost constantly smoking. Unfortunately for Eastwood, he didn’t really have a taste for them, and Leone was a fan of multiple takes. So Eastwood had to smoke quite a bit, and sometimes he felt so bad that he had to lay down an ultimatum. According to Wallach , Eastwood would sometimes tell the director: “You’d better get it this time, because I’m going to throw up.” 8. WALLACH WAS ALMOST SERIOUSLY INJURED THREE TIMES.

Of all the stars of the film, it seems Wallach had the hardest time while shooting. For the scene in which he’s about to be hanged while sitting atop a horse (the idea was that the horse would be ushered away, thus leaving him to hang), Eastwood was supposed to fire a rifle at the rope. A small explosive charge in the rope would then detonate, thus freeing Wallach. What Leone didn’t count on was that the horse would be spooked by the sound of the rifle, and take off at a dead gallop with Wallach on its back, his hands still tied. “It took me a mile before that horse stopped,” Wallach recalled. For the scene in which Tuco escapes Union captivity by cutting his handcuffs under a moving train, Leone wanted to make sure the audience saw Wallach himself, and not a stuntman, lying beside the train as it sped by. Wallach agreed, then realized after the first take that a metal step affixed to one of the cars had missed his head by inches. “I realized that if I had raised my head four or five inches I’d be decapitated,” Wallach said. His troubles still weren’t done, though.

During the film’s climax, when Tuco unearths the gold hidden in the cemetery, the crew applied acid to one of the bags of gold, so that when Wallach hit it with his shovel it was guaranteed to split open on cue. What the crew didn’t tell Wallach was that they were keeping the acid in a bottle that once held a brand of lemon soda that he enjoyed. Wallach saw the bottle and, thinking it was his favorite drink, took a sip. Luckily, he realized his mistake before it was too late. 9. IT’S TECHNICALLY A PREQUEL. Careful viewers of the “Dollars Trilogy” will note that, though it’s the final film, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly actually takes place prior to the other two films. Among the clues: Eastwood acquires his iconic poncho , worn in both A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, in the final minutes. 10. “THE UGLY” AND “THE BAD” ARE REVERSED IN THE FIRST TRAILER.

In the final film, Tuco is designated as “The Ugly,” while Lee Van Cleef’s character, Angel Eyes, is “The Bad.” In the original trailer for the American release , though, Angel Eyes is “The Ugly” and Tuco is “The Bad.” 11. EASTWOOD TURNED DOWN A FOURTH FILM. By the end of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, Eastwood was done working with Leone—a famous perfectionist—and had resolved that he would form his own company and start making his own movies. Leone, on the other hand, wasn’t necessarily done with Eastwood. He even flew to Los Angeles to pitch him the role of “Harmonica” (ultimately played by Charles Bronson) in Once Upon a Time in the West. Eastwood wasn’t interested. 12. JOHN WAYNE WAS NOT A FAN OF EASTWOOD. Before Leone’s Westerns hit America, heroic gunfighters were almost always portrayed as men who waited for the villain to draw their guns first, the idea being that these were men who wouldn’t kill unless they had to. Among these heroes was John Wayne, whose career was winding down just as Eastwood’s was heating up.

According to Eastwood, director Don Siegel (who made several films with Eastwood, including Dirty Harry ) once tried to get Wayne to be more like the “Dollars Trilogy” star during the filming of Wayne’s final film, The Shootist. Wayne, it turns out, was not a fan of Eastwood’s more ruthless Western style. For a scene in The Shootist in which Wayne was originally supposed to sneak up behind a man and shoot him in the back, Wayne declared “I don’t shoot anyone in the back.” Siegel, according to Eastwood, replied: “Clint Eastwood would’ve shot him in the back.” Wayne’s response: “I don’t care what that kid would’ve done.” Additional Sources:

Question: In the 1966 movie The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Clint Eastwood played the Good" and Lee van Cleef played "the Bad", but who played "the Ugly"?
Answer: Eli Wallach