Trivia / Once Upon a Time in the West

• Completely Different Title:
  • Denmark - Vestens Hårde Halse (The Hard Necks of the West).
  • Finland - Huuliharppukostaja (The Harmonica Avenger).
  • Germany - Spiel mir das Lied vom Tod (Play the Song of Death for Me).
  • Japan - Western.
  • Spain - Hasta que llegó su hora (Until his hour came).
• Creator Couple: Woody Strode's wife Luukialuana Kalaeloa Strode plays the Indian woman who flees from the train station in the opening sequence.
• Creator's Favorite: A number of the actors claimed it as one of their favorite films/performances:
  • Henry Fonda relished the chance to play so drastically against type, writing in his memoirs that "I loved every minute of it."
  • Claudia Cardinale loved working with Sergio Leone and Tonino delli Colli, along with having the chance to play a strong female lead in a Western.
  • Gabriele Ferzetti once told an interviewer that his performance as Morton was his proudest achievement.
  • And Woody Strode was amazed by the finished film, commenting that he received more close-ups in his brief cameo than he did in most films where he had a major role.
• Deleted Role: Lionel Stander's entire scene as the bartender was initially cut from international prints, but he remained on the credits.
• Deleted Scene:
  • A scene cut from the film has Harmonica being beaten up by the Sheriff. This explains why he has scars on his face.
  • The premiere version featured a long scene between Jill confronting Wobbles and Wobbles reporting to Frank and Morton (as Harmonica follows him). Harmonica chased Wobbles onto a crowded passenger train and searched for him among the passengers, until he notices that Wobbles has slipped away.
  • Another cut scene had Frank getting a shave at a perfume shop where he'd sit in the exact same position as Fonda's Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine. This would have occurred just before the Flagstone auction.
  • Oddly, the brief scene of Harmonica sitting up and nursing his injury after the opening gunfight at the train station was cut from the original Italian version, only to be restored for the shorter American/British cut (probably the only scene unique to the latter). Presumably this was because the tavern scene was cut, and Harmonica's fate would remain unclear until much later in the film.
• Enforced Method Acting: The crew smeared jam onto Jack Elam's face so he'd intentionally attract flies. However, only one fly landed on his face so they just went with it.
• Executive Meddling: Paramount left Sergio Leone alone during the actual production, but they cut over 20 minutes of the film for international distribution, including the entire tavern sequence and Cheyenne's death. This accounted in large parts for the film's cool reception upon release. Nor would West be Leone's last brush with studio editors, either.
• Fake American: Jill is played by Claudia Cardinale, Morton by Gabriele Ferzetti and Sam the stagecoach driver by Paolo Stoppa (all Italian).
• Fatal Method Acting: Al Mulock, a Canadian actor playing one of the gunmen in the opening scene, committed suicide by jumping out a window between takes (in costume, and the production's only one for him, at that). Leone was forced to use a double in order to complete the scene.
• Looping Lines: During post-production, Claudia Cardinale and Gabriele Ferzetti's lines were respectively looped by Bernard Grant and his wife Joyce Gordon. The couple had also recorded together on the Dollars trilogy. Jack Elam's dialogue was also dubbed by another actor as Elam wasn't available for post-production.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: Gabriele Ferzetti dubbed himself in the Italian version.
• Orphaned Reference: Harmonica has scars on his face at one point. This is from a deleted scene where he was beaten up by the sheriff.
• Playing Against Type: Henry Fonda plays the villain in this one, and a very vile one. Fonda had intended to radically change his usual appearance for the film, growing a mustache and beard and wearing brown contact lenses. Leone talked him out of it, as the shock of seeing good old Henry Fonda as a villain was exactly what he wanted. Ben Mankiewicz remarked on TCM that casting him as the villain hurt the box office, because viewers, especially Americans, thought he was too creepy.
  • Playing against type is what Leone used as the main argument to convince Fonda to play the role (which he had initially rejected). Leone's pitch to Fonda was as follows: "Picture this: the camera shows a gunman from the waist down pulling his gun and shooting a running child. The camera tilts up to the gunman's face and...it's Henry Fonda."
  • Roger Ebert also noted Charles Bronson and Jason Robards were wildly playing against type as well.
• Promoted Fanboy: Sergio Leone considered Henry Fonda his favorite actor since childhood, and had asked him to appear in all of his previous works (supposedly, Fonda's agent wouldn't even show him the scripts, thinking them beneath his client).
• Real-Life Relative: Timmy and Maureen McBain were played by actual siblings Enzo and Simonetta Santaniello.
• Recycled Script: Sergio Donati had written an unproduced screenplay years earlier where a Western bandit, having been fatally wounded by his partners, tracked them down while slowly dying of his injury. When Leone brought him in to work on the script, Donati rewrote this idea into Cheyenne's death.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The main reason why Leone abandoned United Artists in favor of Paramount is because UA indicated that they wanted him to cast actors of their choice - specifically, Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas (who did express interest in working with Leone) and Gregory Peck as the male leads.^note Leone ran into the problem on his next film, A Fistful of Dynamite, where MGM/UA insisted that Leone cast Rod Steiger in the lead, resulting in considerable tension on the set. Leone was not thrilled with the prospect, and decided to work with Paramount instead when studio head Charles Bluhdorn, a fan of Leone's earlier films, promised him control over casting choices.
  • Leone wanted Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach — aka The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — to play the three gunmen in the opening scene. Van Cleef and Wallach were agreeable, but Eastwood declined, so the idea was scrapped. Eastwood also turned down the role of Harmonica, as he was no longer interested in working with Leone.
  • James Coburn was offered the role of Harmonica, but wanted too much money. Warren Beatty, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Terence Stamp were also considered for the part.
  • Carlo Ponti wanted to produce the film with his wife Sophia Loren playing Jill.
  • Eli Wallach was meant to play Cheyenne, but Leone felt that he was too recognisable after The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Again, he would have been a Mexican bandit, but this was changed when Jason Robards was cast. That's why Cheyenne, despite his American accent, speaks like English isn't his first language. It ultimately didn't matter, because Wallach would go on to play two other Mexican bandits in two other Spaghetti Westerns.
  • Enrico Maria Salerno (appropriately, the actor who'd dubbed Clint Eastwood for the Dollars Trilogy) was Leone's first choice to play Morton.
  • Leone asked one his favourite actors, Robert Ryan, to play the Sheriff of Flagstone. Ryan declined, preferring to film The Wild Bunch instead, because the part was much bigger.

---