Lee Van Cleef

The Accident That Nearly Dimmed His Gaze

Lee Van Cleef didn't need to speak for the audience to know someone was going to die. He had a face built from impossible angles and eyes that looked carved with a scalpel. In his first major film, he didn't say a single word.

In 1952, he made his film debut in High Noon. Fred Zinnemann was looking for a man who could be menacing just by standing still in a train station, and Van Cleef delivered without complaint. But that promising start in Hollywood quickly stalled into supporting roles as B-movie villains.

During World War II he served in the Navy, and that gave him a steely composure that casting directors recognized from day one. But life had a tripwire waiting for him in the form of asphalt.

In 1958 a car accident shattered his left knee, and doctors assured him he would never ride a horse again. It was a hard blow for an actor who had built his career on Western and cowboy films. He had to step away from acting for a while to devote himself to landscape painting and interior design at his home in California.

His knee was never the same again.

Sergio Leone's Rescue

In 1965, Italian director Sergio Leone traveled to Los Angeles looking for an actor who could hold his own against Clint Eastwood. Leone remembered the hawk-nosed type who appeared in the fifties westerns, and he found him nearly broke. He offered him 50,000 dollars to shoot The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and Van Cleef accepted before even reading the script.

And the gamble paid off.

European audiences were blown away by that man in black who handled a revolver with surgical precision. Leone knew how to exploit his unsettling image and cast him again in 1966 to play Sentencia in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. That's where he earned the nickname El Malo, even though in real life he was a calm man who preferred fishing to shooting.

His success in Italy allowed him to star in his own franchises, such as Sabata in 1969. He got rich playing antiheroes who always had an ace up their sleeve and a cutting line ready. But European cinema began to lose steam in the late 1970s, and the actor had to seek refuge in television.

In 1981, he appeared in Escape from New York under the direction of John Carpenter. He played Commissioner Hauk, and his presence reminded audiences that the veteran tough guys of action cinema still had something to say. It was one of his last major moments before he slid into extremely low-budget productions.

But money was what mattered.

In 1984 he starred in the series The Master, playing a war veteran who becomes a ninja master. Critics showed no mercy toward the series, but his face kept selling videotapes in video rental stores around the world. Despite chronic pain in his leg and heart problems, Van Cleef worked until his body told him to stop.

He died of a heart attack on December 16, 1989, at his home in Oxnard. His grave at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills bears an epitaph that sums up his screen career: Best of the Bad. The United States Postal Service never issued a commemorative stamp in his honor, despite requests from his fans in 1990.