How Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone’s fractious chemistry made A Fistful of Dollars into a classic

Geoffrey Macnab explores how the films revolving around Eastwood’s ‘man with no name’ became one of cinema’s unlikeliest success stories

The hombre sin nombre: Clint Eastwood in ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ (Unidis)

Would you believe me if I told you that one of the most important films ever made was a low-budget Italian movie from 1964, directed by a then-unknown filmmaker called Bob Robertson? Well, it’s true.

Of course, you probably know Robertson by his real name: Sergio Leone. The Italian filmmaker chose the pseudonym partly as a tribute to his father (who had acted under the name Roberto Roberti) and partly because he felt it might improve the international prospects for A Fistful of Dollars (1964).

By all accounts, Leone and his leading actor Clint Eastwood couldn’t understand each other. The former didn’t speak English and the latter didn’t speak Italian. Leone had wanted Henry Fonda but couldn’t afford him. Eastwood, then co-starring as “the dumb sidekick” Rowdy Yates in US TV show Rawhide, wasn’t even second choice – but he came cheap.