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.
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?
ReplyDeleteIt was a black appaloosa
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