Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef Jr. was an American actor. He appeared in over 170 film and television roles in a career spanning nearly 40 years, but is best known as a star of Italian Spaghetti Westerns, particularly the Sergio Leone-directed Dollars Trilogy films For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). He received a Golden Boot Award in 1983 for his contribution to the Western film and television genre.
Van Cleef in Death Rides a Horse (1967)
Van Cleef in Kansas City Confidential (1952)
Van Cleef (l.), Jean Wallace and Earl Holliman in The Big Combo (1955)
Mural depicting Van Cleef as Jonathan Corbett in The Big Gundown (1967)
The spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's filmmaking style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most of these Westerns were produced and directed by Italians.
Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name in a publicity image for A Fistful of Dollars, directed by Sergio Leone
Decorations from the film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by Sergio Leone in Almería, Andalusia, Spain
Sergio Leone, one of the most representative directors of the genre
A Pistol for Ringo by Duccio Tessari
