Friday, May 27, 2016

Spaghetti Western Trivia – Lee Van Cleef on Horseback




In 1959 after returning from a movie “Ride Lonesome” with Randolph Scott shot in Lone Pine, California, Lee Van Cleef was involved with a head-on car crash. The results were a broken leg and other internal injuries that put him in the hospital for a month and almost a year layoff from making films. You can see a noticeable limp in TV series and films he made in the year after Lee returned to work.

When Lee went to Spain to make “For a Few Dollars More” for Sergio Leone he still had a problem with riding as it caused him discomfort. To solve the problem they gave him a beautiful circus horse to ride and hired actor and stuntman Romano Puppo to double Lee in riding long shots.

So when you see Van Cleef riding a horse across a valley or far way ridge, most likely it’s Romano Puppo doing the riding. In close-up shots it’s Lee on a circus horse which gave him a much gentler ride.  

 

2 comments:

  1. My wife watched recently The Big Gundown, Sabata, and finally, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, remarking that in all three movies Van Cleef rides a handsome black horse (probably an Arabian). Was this then the same circus horse which you mentioned in your post?

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