Lee Van Cleef

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Lee Van Cleef (right)

Lee Van Cleef (born January 9, 1925 in Somerville , New Jersey , † December 16, 1989 in Oxnard , California ) was an American film and television actor . Van Cleef was used as a supporting actor in Hollywood for years before establishing himself as one of the leading stars of the Spaghetti Western in the second half of the 1960s .

Life

Van Cleef did his military service in the US Navy during World War II on a minesweeper . After the war he first worked as an office worker until he got a job with a touring theater. At one of these performances he was discovered by Stanley Kramer , who hired him for the supporting role of Jack Colby at twelve noon .

Although it was not a speaking role, his unmistakable physiognomy with the sharp features and the aquiline nose made him well known. Van Cleef, after being very effective in this role at twelve noon , played the unshaven, devious accomplice of the main villain in several western classics (for example in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ) . He took on numerous roles in crime films and television series such as Bonanza , At the foot of the blue mountains , Maverick or A Thousand Miles of Dust , without achieving stardom.

Van Cleef was working almost entirely for television in the mid-1960s when Sergio Leone hired him to star Colonel Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More , the second part of the trilogy with Clint Eastwood . Here he became acquainted with Klaus Kinski , who was never able to make friends with Van Cleef because of a matchstick scene that was humiliating for him in the film. In Two Glorious Scoundrels , the final part of the trilogy, Van Cleef played the role of the villain Sentenza. Both films are now considered spaghetti western classics. This gave his career momentum again, he established himself as one of the most popular stars of the Spaghetti Western and mostly played hardened, superior bounty hunters or disaffected gunslingers - often in an unwanted role as a father substitute for young cowboys on the fringes of society ( Death rode Tuesday , Die Bill is paid with lead , The Haunted of the Sierra Madre , Three Our Fathers for four Scoundrels ) . The character of Sabata , which he interpreted in two films, was also a great success . His portrayal was so stylish that he was modeled on the character of the bounty hunter in the Lucky Luke comic of the same name and the character of Cad Bane in the series Star Wars: The Clone Wars .

When the popularity of the Spaghetti Westerns waned, Van Cleef returned to the USA in the early 1970s, but, unlike Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood, could no longer build on earlier successes. Almost all of the films he made from the 1970s onwards were low-cost, second-rate productions.

He played his last important film role in 1981 in the dystopian science fiction film The Rattlesnake by John Carpenter , in which he was seen as the head of prison island New York. This was followed by two action films, Secret Code: Wild Geese and The Commander with Lewis Collins and Manfred Lehmann, as well as the less successful television series The Ninja Master .

Van Cleef was married three times. From 1943 with Patsy Ruth, in 1960 they divorced. In the same year he married Joan Drane, in 1974 the divorce followed. In 1976 he married Barbara Havelone, the marriage lasted until his death in 1989. Van Cleef had four children.

He died of complications from a heart attack on December 16, 1989 at the age of 64 and was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

  • Golden Boot Award 1983

literature

  • Mona Mahmoud, Reinhard Weber: Lee van Cleef: A bio and filmography . Reinhard Weber Fachverlag 2009, ISBN 978-3-980939-06-5 .
  • Gregor Hauser, Peter L. Stadlbaur: Prairie bandits: The gripping world of B-Westerns . Verlag Reinhard Marheinecke 2018, ISBN 978-3-932053-98-6 . P. 218f.

Web links

Commons : Lee Van Cleef  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Lee van Cleef
personal data
SURNAME Van Cleef, Lee
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH January 9, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Somerville , New Jersey , United States
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1989
Place of death Oxnard , California , United States