He started as a low down supporting actor in films like High Noon. But in 1964 Lee Van Cleef clawed a whole new career as the king of the Spaghetti Western. Heres how
Lee Van Cleef decided to call it a day. Hell, hed been getting tired anyway. The parts were no good and he was sick of playing two-bit snakes in countless big and small screen Westerns. Sure hed been in some classics classics like High Noon (1952) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) but he was always too ugly to play the hero.
In just about every film I ever made I was killed off by John Wayne or Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper, he recalled without nostalgia.
See his ce was frontier mean: narrow eyes, taught skin, mouth curled in a half amused snarl. He was told if he wanted better parts hed have to get that hawk nose of his fixed. So he gave it up; took to painting and living off unemployment checks and his wifes job as a secretary. Making the phone bill every month became a struggle. Hard times as they say.
Then in the mid sixties, out of nowhere, hot shot Italian director Sergio Leone went looking for him. The previous year his A Fistful of Dollars had been a colossal hit, despite being an Italian western, shot in Spain with German money and starring a nobody from American TV. In the States the genre had grown stale, but this was ruthless, bloody and cool as hell. When it came time to make a sequel Leone knew Van Cleefs cragged ce would fit right in.
In For a Few Dollars More (1965) Clint Eastwood was back, this time as a bounty killer forced to team up with a rival in pursuit of the Mexican desperado El Indio. That rival was Colonel Mortimer (Van Cleef), an aging soldier with a cunning professionalism and saddlebag full of weapons.
We first meet Mortimer on a train, his ce hidden by the Holy Bible. Hes clad head to foot in black and a fellow passenger mistakes him for a preacher that is until he lowers the good book and reveals his devil eyes. Hes on the train to Tucumcari, hunting a man in exchange for dollars.
As the gentleman killer Van Cleef knows all the angles, executing his prey with an impassive precision. On this sounds like Van Cleef was back to square one still the low down bad man but behind his stone cool is a barely checked in grief for the sister raped and murdered by El Indio.
As the final showdown looms, he finds himself unarmed and in Indios sights. The bandit produces a musical watch stolen from the Colonels sister and the chimes remind Mortimer of everything Indio has taken from him. This is all in Van Cleefs ce: a history, a loss and the pain of ultimate ilure.
In Italy the film broke box office records and other Italian filmmakers clamoured for a piece of the action. They called these films Spaghetti Westerns and Van Cleef was about to become its biggest star. For Leones The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (an epic tale of three men driven by geed) the director once again teamed him with Eastwood, this time throwing in veteran character actor Eli Wallach as the dangerous buffoon Tuco (aka The Ugly).
Van Cleef is Angel Eyes, a corrupt Union Sergeant moonlighting as a hired killer. Though still clad in black, he is less refined than Mortimer, his shabby clothes covered in a desert filth that wont wash off. But this isnt just another run of the mill heavy, in Van Cleefs hands hes the personification of evil, each line filled with malevolent intent.
he speaks his voice is bone dry, like a lizard gasping in the desert heat. Hes the kind of man whod kill you just to see the look on your ce and he commits countless atrocities - beating women and shooting children - with a Machiavellian smile. He may be called Angel Eyes, but he has the devils heart.
Following the movies worldwide success, Eastwood made a triumphant return to Hollywood but Van Cleef stayed behind. After all, he was a star there an above the title player. Back in the US he had been overlooked and ignored.
And so he rode out into the Spanish desert: usually clad in black, sometimes gnawing at a pipe, always one step ahead of his enemy and packing a loaded pistol. His characters were hard to tell apart from the criminals and he became an anti-hero for a generation grown cynical of the Wayne and Cooper brand of righteousness.
In 67s Death Rides a Horse he played a no good outlaw who after 15 years in jail pays penance for his sins by hunting down his former gang. In Sabata (1969) hes like an Old West James Bond, suavely dressed, relaxing in casinos, and with a host of gadgets to get his man. When hes attacked by an assassin Padre, he uses a bullet dispatching hold all to send the holy man to his maker.
He submerged these characters in mystery, playing with that good/bad ambiguity that delighted audiences. In Sabata we dont know if hes a lawman, an assassin or just an opportunist. The closest we get to an answer is when one hood screams, Who the hell are you? to which the town drunk replies:
The amount of corpses Sabata leaves behind make this the most resonate explanation.
He played Sabata once more (in 1971s The Return of Sabata) but in an unusual twist gave the role up to Yul Brenner while he took over The Magnificent Seven. By this point Leones Dollars Trilogy had become a global phenomenon and US studios could no longer overlook his stoic power.
With an open riff of 1967s The Dirty Dozen (criminals recruited to fight for law and order) The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972) marks perhaps the best of the Seven sequels. This is largely down to Van Cleef, older here, but still monolithic. His Chris is a staunch believer in capital punishment:
In 1981 he got his last great role in John Carpenters Escape from New York, playing Hauk, the police commissioner antagonist to Kurt Russells snarling outlaw. So excited was Russell by the prospect of working with Van Cleef that he decided to base his performance on Clint Eastwood, allowing Carpenter his dream of:
As Snake Plissken Russell is one tough hombre, but Van Cleefs ce tells us that hes seen his kind before. Hell at one time or another he probably was Snake. When Plissken threatens murder alls Van Cleef does is grin. Give it your best shot, his smile suggests. I can take it.
When Lee Van Cleef died of heart ilure in December 1989 the newss focused on his work prior to For a Few Dollars More. To them he was still the heavy of American Westerns. If it didnt happen in Hollywood it didnt happen, right?
But the second half of his career allowed him to become the versatile actor he always knew he could be. When remembering a time when studios asked him to fix his hawk nose to get leading parts, Lee Van Cleef, typically, grinned.
And theyll never forget it.
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