On what would have been his 96th birthday, I want to take a moment and thank the great director Sergio Leone for sticking with my movie hero Charles Bronson throughout the 60’s. Leone had wanted to work with Bronson on FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE, and THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY. Each time, Bronson turned him down for one reason or another. Finally, Bronson took him up on his offer to be one of the stars of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, a cast that included Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, and Jason Robards. Sergio Leone proceeded to make one of the great westerns and turn Charles Bronson into an international superstar. Reportedly, the director would go on to say after filming the movie that Bronson was the “greatest actor I ever worked with.” That’s indeed very high praise from a master filmmaker, and a testament to Charles Bronson’s talent.
And it’s even cooler that Sergio Leone and my son share the same birthday. I was today years old when I realized that awesome piece of information!
Through the Shattered Lens 
Love hearing this…”Once Upon A Time” certainly is one of the great movies…he was a visionary – and Bronson was a star’s star to be sure!
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I like hearing this as well because so many critics have blown him off over the years. This is high praise!
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Many Happy Returns to ‘Big Stick’!:-) That is nice to learn about Sergio Leone’s generous assessment of Charles Bronson’s acting skill repertoire. Bronson was 47 years old when this movie was release, a mature man with a lifetime of experience in coal mines, two Purple Hearts as a airplane gunner in the Air Force, and the most dangerous of all his occupations…show business! My wife describes Bronson’s bearing as “competent confidence” and “unconventionally handsome”. One thought I try to keep in mind when I happen upon a critic who is more interested in being funny or serving some agenda, is that Directors and their hires are the ones who decide who is good or gets more work. Not the critics. I had read Leone had originally wanted Bronson for FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964) but had to settle for Clint Eastwood. Mike Malloy’s excellent biography, LEE VAN CLEEF also notes that he pursued Van Cleef for the “The Bad” in that trilogy, and said “Lee Van Cleef is the most singularly attractive man I have ever seen in my life!” Be that as it may, Leone did know how to give compliments!
Also, I noticed that another subject of your writing, Brad, was also involved in the script for ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, Dario Argento. You have an eye for talent, and so does Sergio Leone!
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We talked about that generous Leone praise on our “Mount Deathmore” episode of the This Week in Charles Bronson podcast. A director of that stature talking so highly of Bronson means a lot to me. The writers of Once Upon a Time in the West were a fascinating lot when you also throw Bernardo Bertolucci in there as well!
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It always saddened me after I read that Bronson had turned down A Fistful Of Dollars, only to see Clint Eastwood snap it up and basically become an overnight sensation in the European cinemas and hailed as ‘the new Gary Cooper’. For me, it was always a case of “What If”
In later years Charlie was heavily criticized for not taking on the role, but at the time Sergio Leone was a relatively unknown Italian director and nobody knew about the phenomena that the ‘spaghetti western’ was to became. After knocking back the first two parts in the trilogy, Bronson was actually interested in the third, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly when approached by Leone, but his contract with Robert Aldrich for the Dirty Dozen had just been signed….. What if ??
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