European Trash Cinema 21
THE LEE VAN CLEEF INTERVIEW
CONDUCTED BY MAX ALLAN COLLINS
When I heard
Lee Van Cleef was being brought in as
one of the
celebrities at an area golf tournament, 1 rushed
to the phone to
arrange an interview. Not only had Lee
Van Cleef been
my favorite actor for longer than I care to
remember (did
you drive fifty miles to see Death Rides A
Horse at a drive-in?),
I went so far as to pattern Nolan,
the anti-hero
of my first novel. Bait Money (1973), after
the Van Cleef
screen persona. That novel led to a series
of Nolan novels;
so, by interviewing Van Cleef, I’d be
meeting one of
ray heroes - in more ways than one.
Van Cleef's
leading role in a local production of Heaven
Can Wait back
east led to a role in the louring company
of Mr Roberts,
which brought him to Los Angeles and to
the attention
of Stanley Kramer. The role that followed -
in High Noon
(Fred Zinneraann, 1952), which opens on
his face -
marked the first in a long line of memorable
Van Cleef
heavies in ’50s crime films and westerns.
With Neville
Brand and Jack Elam he made up one third
of the sinister
trio who made John Payne’s life miserable
in Kansas City
Confidential (Phil Karlson, 1952); and he
and Earl
Holliman made Cornell Wilde’s life equally
miserable in
the haunting film noir. The Big Combo
(1955),
directed by Joseph L. Lewis, of Gun Crazy fame.
An Indo-Chinese
"commie" in Sara Fuller’s China Gate
(1957) was a
change of pace for Van Cleef from such
typically
menacing gunman types as those he portrayed in
Gunfight At The
OK Corral (John Slurges, 1957), Ride
Lonesome (Budd
Boetticher, 1959) and The Man Who
Shot Liberty
Valance (John Ford, 1962). Such minor, but
memorable,
roles made Van Qeef a virtual icon of the
Hollywood
western, undoubtedly leading to his
breakthrough
leading role in Sergio Leone’s Italian
western. For A
Few Dollars More (1965).
From this (and
it’s 1966 follow-up. The Good, The Bad
And The Ugly,
in which he did not repeal his sympathetic
bounty-hunter
role but rather played perhaps his vilest
villain, the 'bad" of the title) came
stardom, and major
roles in
tailor-made Italian westerns, and many American
films as well.
At the time of
this interview (Summer of 1982), he’d
more recently
been seen in the Chuck Norris film. The
Octagon (Eric Karson, 1980), and Escape From
New York
(John
Carpenter, 1981) in which he played opposite Kurt
Russell, whose
Eastwood-like performance troubled those
critics not
observant enough to get the in-joke.
After a hot
afternoon on the golf course, amid a hectic,
harried,
demanding schedule. Van Cleef - with only an
hour to freshen
up and drive crosstown to a live TV
interview, half
of that time to sit and chat with me
about his
films, with an ease and graciousness that belied
his
often-sinister screen image. A tall, rugged-looking man,
more youthful
in person than on the screen, Lee Van
Cleef was an
affable enigma - a no-nonsense "tough guy"
riglit out of
his movies - who in his spare time enjoys
painting and
art (a subject we unfortunately did not have
time to
explore).
He seemed vital
and healthy, and the notion that he
might be gone,
in a few short years, never occurred to me.
I’m glad I had
the chance, however briefly, to meet with
him.
INTERVIEW
It seems to me
you've kind of reversed the typical pattern -
the Hollywood
leading man usually ages gracefully into a
character
actor, but you’re a character actor who aged
gracefully into
a leading player. Was that something you set
out to do? Or
did it just evolve?
LVC - Well, that depends on what
you mean when you say"character actor." I mean, they’re all character
actors, ailof ’em, leading men or whatever. So we’ve got a misnomer, there.
Basically,
everybody’s playing a character because we’re acting. So we’re doing somebody
else, which is a character, and that’s characterization, right? You take the
roles you like, or you take what you can get, it depends on the situation... if
you can take what you like, fine, then you don’t take the things you don’t care
to play. Now, I’ll play the heavy - or the villain, whatever you want to call
it - I’ll play that just as fast as I’ll play a leading man. Again, it depends
upon the script. It depends on the story.
You’ve worked
with a list of directors that sounds like the
Director’s Hall
Of fame - people like Raoul Walsh, Robert
Wise, Samuel
Fuller, Anthony Mann, John Ford, of course
Sergio Leone.
Not too long ago you worked with John
Carpenter, on
Escape From New York. How did working with
him compare to
working with the old pros?
LVC - Beautiful ! Absolutely
beautiful. He knew what he wanted; he got what he wanted. He had a manner of
handling people that was absolutely beautiful. I felt like 1 was working with
an old pro. He is a pro - the fact that he was younger, well... I respect the
young.
Speaking of
directors, some of the movies you made in the
1950s - which
then might’ve been considered B movies or
programmers -
had directors like Budd Boetticher and Joseph
E. Lewis,
who’ve really come to be highly regarded in recent
years. When you
see a movie like Ride Lonesome or say. The
Big Combo,
being taken very seriously these days, do you
think,
"It’s about time we got some credit for the good work"
or do you
sometimes feel they’re coming back to haunt
you?
LVC - Haunt me? No, not at all. I
feel the public is accepting mediocrity these days - and when you see the old
movies, you see what it’s possible to do on a small budget. So it doesn’t haunt
me. The only thing that hurts is the fact that they don’t have the quality in
the new movies. Some of them do, I guess... but they’re the exception today.
Well, The Big
Combo has really gotten to have quite a
reputation. And the characters
you and Earl Holliman played are
considered
classic heavies.
LVC - I wasn’t aware of it. I
didn’t know it made any kind of come-back.
I've read that
Clint Eastwood has said that the Man With
No Name
character in A Fistful Of Dollar (1964) and the
other Leone
movies was something he, to a degree, developed
himself. And I
wondered if the Man In Black character in
For A Few
Dollars More was something you developed
yourself to a
similar degree?
LVC -
Well, when you read a script you try to visualize it. And when you go
working with a director that doesn’t speak good English, nor do I speak
Italian, you gotta kinda get along together. So I did what I wanted to do, and
if he didn’t like it, he corrected me - that is, when I could understand him.
And I really tried to. But we’d do it with gestures, and finally I began to
learn a little bit of his language, and he mine. In fact, when we did the
second one, when we did The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, we didn’t even use an
interpreter on the set. As far as characterization is concerned, I don’t
believe he ever changed any of my concepts.
For example,
the wardrobe - how much of that was your
idea?
LVC
- None. In fact, I balked on some of it. I thought it was a little
outlandish, but I wasn’t used to this operatic Italian approach. I found after
I got into it, after I was into the character and that sort of thing, I liked
it. I liked the machismo. It was probably a little dressier than what may have
been worn back then... I don’t know, I wasn’t around in 18-something. But I
think it kind of fit the guy, and I began to enjoy what the Italians were
doing, and the attitudes and everything that went into their filmmaking. They
ultimately made a kind of western that we never made in the United States. The
dirt and the crud and the nihilistic characters are something we avoided. If
you look at some of the Errol Flynn westerns and some of the other ones —
Very clean-cut.
LVC - Yes. Precisely. They’re polished.
They’re too sparkling clean. But the Italians brought the realism to the genre.
Something else
that seems to have come out of the Italian
Westerns, is
the dark humor, to various degrees.
LVC - (Nodding) Yeah.
It seems to me
that even before the Italian Westerns, you
always brought
a certain land of wry, masculine sense of
humor to what
you were doing
LVC - (Laughs) Perhaps I thought they
were funny.
This is a
possibility. (Van Cleef laughs again.) But even in
movies like
Death Rides A Horse (Giuilo Petroni, 1969) and
The Big Gundown
(Sergio Sollima, 1968), there’s black
humor; and then
in the Sabaia films, besides the dark
humor, there's
a kind of "James Bond" spoofing.
LVC
- Yeah. Yeah. You caught it, because what we’re trying to do is more or
less right on the borderline of tongue-in-cheek. Sometimes we went a little bit
more than tongue-in-cheek, but it was on the borderline at least.
In El Condor
(John Guillerman, 1970) there’s even
certain
elements of slapstick humor—
LVC - There’s a lot of comedy in El
Condor. Almost slapstick. Yes.
Even in a movie
like Barquero (Gordon Douglas,
1970), with you
and Forrest Tucker, there’s a lot of
humorous
by-play going on.
LVC
- There was some by-play off the screen, too. If you ever worked with
Forrest Tucker, you know what I mean, he’s quite a guy.
So, is humor
something you look for in a script?
LVC - I do, because I look for more than
one dimension in a character, I like to get humor, I like to get alittle
sympathy going for him if I can - some script smake that virtually impossible -
for instance, I don’t see much sympathy for my character in The Good,The Bad
And The Ugly.
But in For A
Few Dollars More—
LVC - In For A Few Dollars More you can
find the synipatliy. But he wasn’t a heavy, either. He was just a bounty hunter.
Getting back to
the Sabata movies, for a minute - 1 know
of two. Were
there more?
LVC - I only made two (Sabata, 1970;
Return Of Sabata, 1972).
Both were
directed by Gianfranco Parolini.)
Were there
others in the series?
LVC - There was another one that Yul
Brynner did instead of me. (Adios, Sabata 1971)
And,
ironically, you did Yul Brynner’s character once, too.
In a remake of
Magnificent 7 {The Magnificent Seven Ridel,
1972).
LVC - That’s absolutely right, I was
getting around to that; everytime the Sabata movies are brought up I mention that.
You were ahead of me. I didn’t like the script to the Sabata that Brynner did.
So I turned it down —
Was the Brynner
Sabata movie also directed by Parolini?
LVC - Yeah. He’s quite a stylish
director. Gianfranco Parolini.But he signs his name as "Frank Kramer"
to all his productions, enjoyed working with him.
You’ve been one
of the big box office stars in Europe for
years. Are
there many films made over there that haven’t
been released
here in the United States yet?
LVC - There are quite a few. Although
it’s very confusing.There’s a war story I don’t think has been released here. At
least I’m not aware of it.
Could that be
Commandos? With Jack Kelly?
LVC
- Yes. I think that’s the title.
{Editor note:
Unfortunately, many Lee Van Cleef films
remain
unreleased on video in the United States, including
such classic
Spaghetti Westerns as The Big Gundown and
Sabata.)
Did you dub
your own voice for the films you made in
Europe?
LVC
- Yeah. I think I dubbed everything myself. Yeah, I’m sure of it.
Let me ask you
about Lee Van Cleef and posterity. Okay?
LVC - (Laughs) Okay.
You have been
in a certain number of movies that by
almost any
yardstick are classics; in fact, your very first
movie, High
Noon, is generally considered one of the greatest.
LVC - Yeah. It is.
I don’t think
anyone would argue that a John Ford movie
like Liberty
Valance is anything to take lightly; Gunfight At
The OK Corral
is a heavyweight; the two Leone movies are
already
considered classics. As I say, some of the
programmers,
too • you may be surprised to even consider
The Big Combo —
LVC - I’m still surprised about that
one.
Ride Lonesome,
even Kansas City Confidential—
LVC - I’d like to see that one come
back; a cute little film.
These are
movies that are being talked about a lot. Have you
ever reflected
on the notion that a hundred years from now
some people may
be sitting and looking at your performances
and enjoying
them?
LVC - If I’m still here. I’ll still be
making ’em. I’m watching alt of films starring friends of mine who have passed
away -the movies are still here, which makes them here, as far as I’m
concerned.
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