Trivia for
Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. (1966) More at IMDbPro »

• In the theatrical trailer, Angel Eyes is "The Ugly" and Tuco "The Bad," which is the reverse of their designations in the actual film. This is because the Italian title translated into English is actually The Good, the Ugly, the Bad, not The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and the Italian trailer had "The Ugly" and "The Bad" in that order. When the trailer was transferred to English, The Ugly and The Bad were not reversed to coincide with the altered title, causing the incorrect designations.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Sergio Leone] [theme] The Blonde, Sentenza, and Tuco.
  
  
• After Eli Wallach agreed with Sergio Leone that Tuco would carry his pistol on a lanyard, the director asked him to grasp the gun by shaking his neck, thus making the gun land in his hand. Wallach claimed that he wasn't able to do the intended action, and asked Leone to demonstrate it. When Leone tried, the pistol missed the director's hand and hit his crotch. Leone then told Wallach to hold the gun in the belt.
  
  
• The price of gold in 1862 was US$20.672 an ounce. As of 13 January 2009 it is US$821.77 an ounce. So the $200,000 Tuco, Angel Eyes and Blondie are after would be worth $7,950,561.15 on 13 January 2009.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Sergio Leone] [close-up]
  
  
• Because Sergio Leone spoke barely any English and Eli Wallach spoke barely any Italian, the two communicated in French.
  
  
• Sergio Leone first had Gian Maria Volonté in mind as "The Ugly".
  
  
• Jack Elam turned down the role of Elam, the one-armed gunslinger who attempts to kill Tuco in the bathtub.
  
  
• The three principal actors are the only ones who speak actual English in the film: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, with the exceptions of Al Mulock (the one-armed man) and John Bartha (the sheriff). Everyone else in the film is really speaking their native language, mostly Italian and Spanish, and was later dubbed into English.
  
  
• During the scene right before the final duel where Tuco (Eli Wallach) is running frantically through the cemetery, a dog can be seen running on-screen at the beginning of the scene. In reality, that was improvised on the spot. Sergio Leone, who was afraid that the scene was going to slip into melodrama, released the dog without informing Eli Wallach first - thus, his look of surprise is quite genuine.
  
  
• Ennio Morricone's iconic theme music was designed in places to mimic the sound of crying hyena.
  
  
• The film was shot with a process called Techniscope. This process means that you can shoot without an anamorphic lens, and only use half as much film as you would normally use. The Techniscope process places two widescreen frames on a single 35 mm frame.
  
  
• Clint Eastwood wore the same poncho through all three "Man with No Name" movies without replacement or cleaning.
  
  
• Eli Wallach would have been decapitated during the train scene if he had lifted his head up. In the wide-shot, you can see the step that would have impacted his head.
  
  
• Orson Welles warned Sergio Leone not to make this movie on the grounds that Civil War pictures were box office poison.
  
  
• According to Eli Wallach's autobiography "The Good, the Bad and Me", Sergio Leone picked him for the role of Tuco not because of his role as Calvera in The Magnificent Seven (1960) as most people assumed but rather because of his brief role as a Tuco-like bandit in How the West Was Won (1962).
  
  
• The trim on Confederate soldiers' uniforms identified the type of unit they were assigned to. Blue indicated infantry, gold cavalry and red artillery. Most of the soldiers in the prison camp wore historically accurate uniforms.
  
  
• Eli Wallach claims that Sergio Leone decided that Tuco would carry his pistol on a lanyard and stuck in his belt rather than a holster because Wallach told him he always had trouble putting a pistol in a holster without looking at it.
  
  
• In the gun store, everything Eli Wallach does with the guns is completely unscripted. Eli knew little about the guns, so he was instructed to do whatever he wanted.
  
  
• The following guns are used in this movie. 1.Blondie uses: A Colt 1851 cartridge conversion revolver (with silver snake grips), and a Winchester 1866 "yellow boy" with ladder elevated sights. 2. Tuco uses: A Colt 1851 Navy cartridge conversion revolver with a lanyard. 3. Angel Eyes uses: A Remington 1858 Army percussion revolver. 4. Soldiers used: Gatling guns with drum magazines, and Howitzer cannons.
  
  
• Sad Hill Cemetery was a very-convincing set piece constructed by the pyrotechnic crew and not a real cemetery. Today the site is marked as a local point of interest. Though the central stone 'proscenium' and parapet are gone, the circles of grave-mounds are still quite prominent.
  
  
• Al Mulock, Elam, the one-armed gunslinger trying to kill Tuco when he is taking a bath, could never remember his lines correctly. Finally, Sergio Leone told him to count from one to ten in Italian while attempting a fierce look. The proper dialog was added to the footage by dubbing it during the editing process later on.
  
  
• The bridge that Tuco and Blondie blow was an actual bridge built by Spanish army engineers. The Spanish agreed to blow the bridge only if the their captain could be the one to do it. When it came to blowing the bridge the captain didn't notify Sergio Leone and just blew the bridge up without any cameras rolling. The army was so sorry with what they did that they rebuilt the bridge only to blow it up again.
  
  
• Four scenes were cut from the original English-language release and were never dubbed into English from Italian. When American Movie Classics showed the "Extended English Version", the scenes were restored. Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach dubbed their voices for the movie, but another actor had to be found to dub Angel Eyes' lines, as Lee Van Cleef had died in 1989.
  
  
• There is no dialog for the first 10-1/2 minutes of the film.
  
  
• Charles Bronson was offered both the roles of Tuco and Angel Eyes (the latter because Sergio Leone feared that audiences would not take kindly to Lee Van Cleef going from the fatherly, likable Col. Mortimer to a sneering villain. He declined both.
  
  
• The film was budgeted at an expensive (for the time) $1.6 million.
  
  
• Shot in the deserts of Spain with 1,500 Spanish soldiers as extras.
  
  
• The prison camp "Betterville" was inspired by the actual Confederate prison camp of Andersonville, where thousands of Union prisoners died, and based on steel engravings of Andersonville from August 1864.
  
  
• Eli Wallach was almost poisoned on the set after drinking acid used to burn the bags filled with gold coin to make them rip open easier when struck with the spade. The acid had been poured into a lemon soda bottle and Wallach didn't know it. He drank a lot of milk and filmed the scene with a mouth full of sores.
  
  
• The grips on Clint Eastwood's pistol have an inlaid silver rattlesnake. His pistol in Per qualche dollaro in più (1965) had the same grips. In the TV series "Rawhide" (1959), Rowdy Yates (Eastwood) kills a gunfighter carrying a pistol with the same grips and takes it for his own. Eastwood's character would carry the pistol with the rattlesnake grips for the remainder of the series' run.
  
  
• According to Eli Wallach, when it came time to blow up the bridge, Sergio Leone asked the Spanish army captain in charge to trigger the fuse, as a sign of gratitude for the army's collaboration. They agreed to blow up the bridge when Leone gave the signal "Vai!" (Go!) over the walkie-talkie. Unfortunately, another crew member spoke on the same channel, saying the words "vai, vai!", meaning "it's OK, proceed" to a second crew member. The captain heard this signal, thought it was for him and blew the bridge; unfortunately, no cameras were running at the time. Leone was so upset that he fired the crewman, who promptly fled from the set in his car. The captain was so sorry for what happened that he proposed to Leone that the army would rebuild the bridge to blow it up again, with one condition: that the fired crewman be re-hired. Leone agreed, the crewman was forgiven, the bridge was rebuilt and the scene was successfully shot.
  
  
• In the scene where the bridge is blown up, and Tuco and Blondie are hunkered down behind sandbags waiting for the explosion, Clint Eastwood's career came within 2 feet of ending prematurely. A fist-sized piece of rock shrapnel from the explosion slams into the sandbag right next to Eastwood's head (watch it in slow motion to see the rock flying in).
  
  
• In the scene where Blondie brings a tied-up Tuco into town to claim the bounty on him, Tuco spits out a cigar and yells out something in Spanish. Translated to English, he is yelling out "Son of a bitch that gave birth to you!"
  
  
• Although Clint Eastwood is usually top-billed in this film's credits, Eli Wallach has the most screen-time.
  
  
• The three man gunfight scene is called either a "Mexican standoff" or a truel (game theory). There are several mathematical papers covering the many complex outcomes of a truel. Other movies that use a truel are Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994).
  
  
• Sergio Leone had wanted established star Rory Calhoun for the lead but settled for Eastwood (then 34) because Calhoun's asking price was too prohibitive.
  
  
• This was the first (and to date, the only) film in the Dollars/Man With No Name Trilogy to be released on the Blu-Ray Disc format in America, although the other two films are available in the format in other parts of the world.
  
  
• The train features an armed car with a mortar type cannon. These were actually mounted on trains during the Civil War , especially where railroads had to operate near places where there was heavy fighting.
  
  
• Eli Wallach remembered that when he first came to Madrid all the hotels were full. Clint Eastwood invited him to sleep over at a friend's house and they shared the same bed. Wallach's wife Anne Jackson told him he could boast that he was the only man to sleep with Clint Eastwood.
  
  

Related Links