Roles alongside Clint Eastwood in the Sergio Leone Spaghetti westerns For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) make Lee Van Cleef one of the more recognizable names from some of the best and bloodiest Westerns. Yet neither classic was the first or last high-profile role for one of the all-time greats in the Western and action genres.

Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef Jr. was born on Jan. 9, 1925 in Somerville, New Jersey. He was the son of Marion Lavinia Van Fleet and Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef Sr.After serving in the Navy during World War II, Van Cleef took roles in such plays as Mister Roberts. The stage paved a path to the silver screen, with Van Cleef’s film debut coming in the 1952 Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly film High Noon. That same year, he was first typecast as a villain in the gangster film Kansas City Confidential.

After two more gangster films (Vice Squad (1953) and The Big Combo (1955)), Van Cleef started appearing in Western TV series as a character actor. He made appearances on Stories of the Century, The Rifleman, Maverick, Frontier Doctor, The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Bonanza and other classic shows. He even pops up in an Andy Griffith Show episode.

A couple of late ’50s health scares–a car wreck and damage to a hand suffered while building his daughter a playhouse–proved to be minor setbacks as Van Cleef entered the decade that’d define his career.A more famous gig as a henchman came alongside John Wayne and Lee Marvin in the John Ford Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). He appeared that same year in another Ford film, How the West Was Won.

Leone turned Van Cleef into a star when he cast him as the bounty hunter Colonel Douglas Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More, the sequel to Eastwood’s first of three films as the Man With No Name, A Fistful of Dollars. A year later, Van Cleef’s Angel Eyes represented “the bad,” opposite Eastwood as “the good” and Eli Wallach as “the ugly.”Van Cleef became a regular in Italian spaghetti Westerns, often as a good guy, in such films as The Big Gundown (1966), Day of Anger (1967), The Grand Duel (1972), Sabata (1969), Take a Hard Ride (1975) and God’s Gun (1976).

Over the years, Van Cleef appeared not just in Westerns (Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), Barquero (1970), El Condor (1970) and The Magnificent Seven Ride (1972)) but also action films (Chuck Norris’ The Octagon (1980)), war movies (Commandos (1968)) and even one of the great cult favorites of the ’80s (John Carpenter’s Escape From New York (1981)).

In 1984, he returned to the small screen as one of the stars of NBC’s short-lived, ninja-themed TV series The Master. The very ’80s attempt at building off the network’s success with the A-Team featured a future film star, Demi Moore.Van Cleef died in his Oxnard, California home on Dec. 16, 1989. The 64-year old’s death was attributed to a heart attack, with throat cancer as the secondary cause of death. He’s buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California. His tombstone reads “Best of the Bad.”

Believe it or not, actor Clint Eastwood and the “Dollars” trilogy director Sergio Leone never actually had a conversation while filming the classic westerns. A language barrier was to blame.They don’t call the trilogy “Spaghetti westerns” for nothing. Leone was Italian and spoke very little English. Meanwhile, Eastwood accepted to film the trilogy in Italy. But he spoke little to no Italian at the time. The two communicated through a series of hand signals and also an interpreter.

“Sergio spoke very little English. And I didn’t speak any Italian at that time,” Eastwood told The Independent. The actor remembered the Italian auteur fondly. “So we got together with an interpreter when I reached Rome. And through the interpreter – plus a lot of hand signals – we kind of got the idea.”

Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone Communicated Through Food and Film : Despite the language barrier, both Eastwood and Leone had a fruitful partnership. The director trusted the actor to figure out the character, even down to the wardrobe. While Leone hired Eastwood because he was cheap, the two ended up being successful when the film was a hit. After “A Fistful of Dollars,” Leon invited the ac tor back twice more to complete his trilogy.

Eastwood remembered the director as being very visual. Through film and the camera, Eastwood often knew exactly what Leone wanted to do.

“Sergio was visual from the very beginning,” Eastwood said. “He had an interesting approach. He tied things up very well. I was used to filming where the shooting was on a much smaller scale, and he seemed to shoot things in a fairly large scope, which I liked. He was a big fan of John Ford, people like that. He wanted to be a director of size, so to speak. But I was always amazed that Sergio was never very prolific after that.”

As for how they spent their downtime, Eastwood doesn’t remember any awkwardness from the language barrier. He said that Leone was a funny guy, and they would often have lavish production lunches.

“And he loved food. He loved food,” Eastwood said. “The first day we filmed, we were shooting in a studio outside of Rome, and we sat down for lunch. We had this huge meal. Spaghetti. I love spaghetti, so I loaded myself up. And then they served wine. Everybody was having wine. So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll have a few glasses of wine, too.’ Well, we went back to work, and suddenly I realized, ‘I’m not going to be able to do this.’ For that first hour or two after lunch, everything was pretty much done in slow motion!”

1 . Clint Eastwood built the entire town from scratch :

Initially, Universal Pictures wanted the movie to be shot entirely in the studio lot. Clint Eastwood though, had other plans in mind. He decided to build the town of Lago, which was located around three hundred miles away from Hollywood and near the Mono Lake in the California Sierras.

In the movie set, you had as many as fourteen houses and a two-story hotel built with proper interiors for location shoots. There were ten laborers and a forty-six-man crew of technicians working together for over eighteen days to make it possible. Sadly, after the movie was completed, the entire town was burnt down.

2. John Wayne denounced the movie for its violence

After the movie’s release, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood seemed to be caught up in a feud with each other. As sources suggested, John received a letter from Eastwood suggesting to cast him in High Plains Drifter as Wayne’s career had started to fade.

Perhaps, the idea of that wasn’t as appealing to John. John responded back with an angry letter, publicly denouncing the movie for its violence. Apparently, Wayne viewed the film as an un-American and he swore to never star in an Eastwood film. However, Clint didn’t seem to care about the criticism and, in fact, found his response quite hilarious.

3, Clint Eastwood often told his crew and cast to “Go to hell”

The name of the town had actually changed from Lago to Hell. Clint had quite a sense of humor as he would tease the crew and cast, asking them to go to hell each time they were required to go to set.

4, The cast of “High Plains Drifter” painted the town red, literally

For the movie, actors and actresses initially started painting the houses of Lago red for the shoot. However, the task was then taken over and completed by professionals. Word has it, around three hundred and eighty gallons of paint was used to paint Lago red.

5, The western mystery was filmed in just six weeks

Did you think that creating an entire town would make the shooting time go up? Not quite. Ever since Clint read the Universal Studios nine-page proposal, he decided he had to direct this movie. One of the more versatile directors, Clint is also a very efficient director and producer.

6, Clinton would drive around in a pick-up truck, picking filming locations himself

Apart from directing, producing, and starring, Clint Eastwood was also picking set locations for the western himself. His pick-up truck covered the whole of Oregon, Nevada and California in search of the perfect location – eventually, he chose the shores of Mono Lake.There were also additional locations added for particular shots.

7, Only three sections of the movie were shot at night

High Plains Drifter was mostly filmed during the daytime. The Lago town looked different in daylight due to the variety of strange colors. Clint added a supernatural touch to the movie by inserting eerie music and a spooky dream sequence into it.