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60 years ago this September, Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name stepped on screen for the first time in Sergio Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars.” It would be a few more years until the low-budget Spaghetti Western made it to America, but the actor’s star power and the director’s talents were instantly recognizable for early adopters – even if critics took longer to get on board. By the time Leone had released two more Eastwood-led films, rounding out what became known as the Dollars Trilogy, Eastwood’s narrowed eyes and steely attitude had become a fundamental image of the movie cowboy.
The Dollars trilogy, which continued with “For A Few Dollars More” and concluded in 1966 with “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” is now celebrated as one of the best on-screen Western sagas of all time. The genre would soon die out (or at least go into a deep hibernation), but Leone’s singular cinematic gaze and Eastwood’s antihero framing would endure. Yet despite the movie’s legacy, history almost went very differently. According to a recent BBC retrospective, Leone didn’t have Eastwood in mind for the trilogy’s lead role, and initially wanted a different actor for the part.
Before approaching Eastwood, Leone was reportedly considering hiring James Coburn. Despite not exactly being a household name among modern audiences, Coburn was the bigger star of the two options at the time, known for his role as the group’s tool manufacturer in “The Great Escape” and as the knife-throwing Britt in “The Magnificent Seven” (pictured below). According to Robert C. Cumbow’s book “The Films of Sergio Leone,” Coburn was “the epitome of hard heroism and sex-symbol machismo” in the ’60s. He was, as the author put it, “tall, gray, cold, and stony as a monument” — a description that could also, for the most part, fit Eastwood. Unfortunately for Coburn, he was also apparently too expensive for Leone around the time that the director began looking to cast his unofficial cowboy remake of “Yojimbo.”
James Coburn wasn’t in Leone’s budget
According to the BBC (and biographers David Downing and Gary Herman), casting Coburn in the role would’ve come with a $25,000 price tag, which translates to a quarter of a million dollars in today’s money. In contrast, Eastwood’s bill would only come to $15,000, or $152,000 today. Eastwood was the more affordable option, as he had fewer major roles under his belt to bargain with. He’d already cut his teeth on the popular Western TV show “Rawhide,” and had appeared in shows like “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “Maverick,” but outside of uncredited roles in 1950s B-movies like “Tarantula!” and “Revenge of The Creature,” his big screen resume was sparser than Coburn’s.
“I didn’t see any character in ‘Rawhide,’ only a physical figure,” Leone, who died in 1989, is quoted as saying in the BBC piece. On the Western show, Eastwood played cowpoke supervisor (or “ramrod,” as they say in the biz) Rowdy Yates for 8 seasons, continuing in the fairly thin role even after his first turn as the Man With No Name. “What struck me most about Clint was his indolent way of moving. It seemed to me Clint closely resembled a cat,” Leone once said. That early feline physicality gave way to a series of gritty tough-guy performances that defined masculinity for a generation — or several.
“A Fistful of Dollars” made money internationally upon release — though, as the BBC notes, it didn’t make its way to American audiences until 1967, after “Rawhide” had ended. Today, all three entries in Leone’s trilogy have gained the appreciation they deserve. Its conclusion, “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly,” is frequently cited as one of the best movies ever made (it’s also Quentin Tarntino’s favorite).
Coburn did eventually work with Leone, but money and availability concerns meant the pair wouldn’t make a movie together until 1971’s “Duck, You Sucker!” That movie obviously didn’t reach the heights of the ones Coburn had passed years earlier, but you might know it by its other name: “A Fistful of Dynamite.”
