![once upon a time in the west once upon a time in the west](https://bookanista.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Once_Upon_a_slider.jpg)
He made his way to Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio in NYC before moving to Europe, where he worked in British films for a few years before a role in Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly led to a brief run of parts in other "spaghetti westerns." Al Mulock was born in Toronto, the great-grandson of a postmaster-general and chief justice of Ontario.
![once upon a time in the west once upon a time in the west](http://designmcr.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/onceuponatimeinthewestsmall.jpg)
The third gunfighter – the apparently demented bird-threatener called Knuckles in the credits – was less well known to US audiences. The black gunman – Stony in the credits – was none other than Woody Strode, one of the first African-American players in the NFL, whose celebrity and imposing demeanor had helped launch a film career, with parts in The Ten Commandments, Spartacus, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the heroic title role in John Ford's Sergeant Rutledge.
#Once upon a time in the west tv#
The cockeyed gunman – called Snaky in the credits – was played by character actor Jack Elam, who had been a heavy in every TV western show from Gunsmoke to Bonanza to The Rifleman to F Troop to Have Gun, Will Travel. They're watched impassively by a tall, powerful-looking black man, who takes off his duster and wraps it around the pommel of his saddle as the three settle in to wait for the train.Īt least two of the gunmen would have been familiar to moviegoers or fans of TV westerns.
![once upon a time in the west once upon a time in the west](https://lwlies.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/once_upon_a_time.jpg)
The wizened stationmaster – the first of many grotesque background characters we'll meet in Leone's film – tries to sell them tickets for the next train, but the leader of the group, a cockeyed older man, locks the stationmaster in his own safe while another man bares his teeth and chatters dementedly at a songbird in a cage. These are dangerous men, each one radiating some particular aspect of menace. Three men ride up wearing long yellow dusters. It begins at the railway station in Cattle Corner – a windswept outpost in the American southwestern desert with an improbably vast train platform made of wooden railroad sleepers laid out in endless rows. Luckily those people have the film's opening credit sequence, a magnificent scene that sums up what westerns are all about in fifteen of the greatest minutes ever put on film. No wonder many critics described the film as an operatic masterpiece.People who complain about Sergio Leone's western epic Once Upon a Time in the West being too long – and they've been complaining about that since it came out in 1968 – obviously value their precious time. The screenplay was based on an original treatment by Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento and Leone himself despite such impressive credentials, however, much of the action was improvised around the mood of the score, which Ennio Morricone had composed in advance. However, Frank must also deal with a mysterious harmonica player (Charles Bronson), as well as sympathetic outlaw Cheyenne (Jason Robards), if he is to achieve his goal. The story focuses on brutish gunfighter Frank (Henry Fonda), who dreams of becoming a tycoon, but is still prepared to resort to trusted methods to drive widow Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale) off the land coveted by a ruthless railroad company. Set at the time when the dollar replaced the bullet as the currency of the frontier, this breathtaking tale of progress, greed and revenge clearly bears the influence of John Ford's seminal silent western The Iron Horse (1924). In seeking to paint "a fresco on the birth of a great nation", Sergio Leone turned to the Hollywood western, rather than American history, for his inspiration.