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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly - Color Press Stills
Of course picture number one is from one of the important scenes which was CUT from the English language version in 1967 by United Artists which Eli Wallach said made Leone furious!
ReplyDeletePicture number four, which I've seen several times before shows the care United Artists gave to the picture when they first released it in December 1967. Clearly the suites at UA were only wanting to "cash in" without any concern to Leone as an artist as picture number four is NOT a scene from the film. If you look carefully, it is Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef on a lunch break. Clint is already lying in the grass at Sad Hill Cemetary eating his sandwich (holding it with his right hand & feeding himself a portion with his left hand )& Lee has his plus some kind of drink in his right arm as he is sitting down himself to join Eastwood. It also looks as if Lee is talking to Clint as Clint is looking straight at Lee. Eli Wallach said Leone had plenty of a kind of lemon-lime soda that Eli liked but he was fooled thinking a bottle was ready for his consumption at Sad Hill & when he took off the top & drank, it was some kind of poision that was poured on the money bags so Eli could break them open easily with his shovel. Eli said he instantly got a big bottle of milk & drank the entire bottle as fast as he could to fight the little bit of poision that ran into his stomach when he tasted how horrible they liquid was & spit it out. Eli said he refused to shoot anymore that day even though Leone was pleading with him to get back to work.