This Week In Cigar History: Dec 31–January 6

Admired as one of the few great Italian cigar connoisseurs, film director and Havanas lover, Sergio Leone was born in Rome on January 3, 1929.

Leone is mostly famous for his taut, operatic film techniques and innovative direction, immortalized in the gritty, realistic spaghetti westerns; A Fistful of Dollars ; For A Few Dollars More; The Good, The Bad And The Ugly ; and Once Upon A Time In The West.

In scrounging around for an affordable lead actor for what would be coined, The Man With No Name Trilogy, Leone took up the actor Richard Harrison’s recommendation to view an episode of CBS television’s Rawhide staring the clean cut, 34- year-old Clint Eastwood. Fortunately, the director liked what he saw, though he felt he had to harden Eastwood’s aura, and make him more of a tough guy (imagine!). This roughed up persona was partially achieved with—according to Leone —his own idea to place an always-present cigar in the serape-wearing protagonist’s mouth. According to Leone, Eastwood had never smoked in his life, did not know how to smoke, and did not particularly enjoy the experience. Luckily, dedication to craft overruled personal preferences and the Italian director and his laconic American anti-hero embarked on a cinematic collaboration that gave birth to a groundbreaking movie archetype.

Later films by Leone also featured cigar-chomping characters, notably Rod Steiger’s salt-of-the-earth bandito in Duck, You Suckers (A Fistful of Dynamite).

What would be Leone’s swansong, the masterpiece, Once Upon A Time In America, took years to come to fruition. As a result, the director opted to turn down an offer to helm the gangster epic, The Godfather, that was brilliantly directed by another cigar smoker, Francis Ford Coppola.

news@doubledownmedia.com

12/31/07

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