The near-death incident that occurred during the making of ‘The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly’
The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly remains the most definitive entry within the spaghetti western epics. This is partly due to how actor Eli Wallach captured the audiences’ hearts and reversed any animosity they may have harboured due to his previous villainous roles. Having previously established himself as a despicable baddie in The Magnificent Seven, Wallach proved equally capable of playing a loveable and charming character in Sergio Leone‘s 1966 classic.
Behind the scenes, however, Wallach had to endure several dangerous encounters which saw him teeter on the edge of life and death. One such incident involved a horse he was tied to, which, due to a misfired stunt, dragged him unceremoniously (and near-fatally) across the set. This, however, wasn’t even the most dangerous incident that the poor actor was subjected to.
The truly death-defying moment came during a scene where Wallach’s character had to use a passing locomotive to break the chain of the handcuffs binding him after escaping a POW camp. The train, however, was fitted with low steel steps that were overlooked during the scene’s planning stages. This oversight nearly cost Wallach his life, as he found himself alarmingly close to being decapitated.
The scene has Tuco showcasing his ingenuity as he escapes from his Union army captors. Chained to a soldier he has just killed, he awaits the next train’s arrival to sever the binding chain. Using a real locomotive was risky enough, yet the filmmakers failed to consider lowered metal steps protruding from the oncoming vehicle. In a bid to stress that it was indeed Wallach himself in this risky situation and not a stunt double, director Leone instructed Wallach to turn his face towards the camera – oblivious that something akin to a guillotine was hurtling towards his actor’s head.
Wallach recalled the harrowing experience in his autobiography, describing his protestations to Leone about the danger the train steps posed. “Leone said that the cameraman couldn’t see my face because I was too far down in the hole. ‘Did you see that goddamn step on the train?’ I asked. ‘Do you want me to finish the movie without a head?’ Leone stopped and stared as the train disappeared in the distance. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll use the first take.'”
Even as Wallach encountered life-threatening moments on set, his relationship with director Leone remained largely unscathed, although Wallach wouldn’t appear in the director’s next film. It wasn’t the near-death experiences – the rogue horse or the potentially lethal train – that strained their bond.
It was a matter of contracts and studio politics that ultimately kept Wallach from participating in Leone’s subsequent project, Duck, You Sucker. Considering the near-beheading Wallach had experienced, it’s easy to imagine the title of Leone’s new film being off-putting enough. Undoubtedly, his time on The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly was more than enough Leone for a lifetime.
