The author recounts his early years in Brooklyn, struggles to become an actor, work with such stars as Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, and role as one of the earliest members of the famed Actors Studio.

In the mid-1960s an unknown Italian film director named Sergio Leone was given $200,000 and some leftover film stock, and he went to make a Western. With an American TV actor named Clint Eastwood and a script based on a samurai epic, Leone wound up creating "A Fistful of Dollars", the first in a trilogy of films (with "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly") that was violent, cynical, and visually stunning. Along with his later masterpiece, "Once Upon a Time in the West", these films came to define the Spaghetti Western

"Once Upon a Time in the West was the movie that made me consider filmmaking."-Quentin Tarantino Sergio Leone's film Once Upon a Time in the Westset out to be the ultimate Western--a celebration of the power of classic Hollywood cinema, a meditation on the making of America and a lament for the decline of one of the most cherished film genres in the form of a "dance of death." With this film, Leone said a fond farewell to the noisy and flamboyant world of the Italian Western, which he had created with A Fistful of Dollars and sequels, and aimed for something much more ambitious--an exploration of the relationship between myth ("Once Upon a Time..."), history ("...in the West") and his own autobiography as an avid film-goer. This would be a horse opera in which the arias aren't sung, they are stared. Once Upon a Time has since inspired several generations of filmmakers worldwide. Its combination of "film about film" with an angry historical epic, told with great style, has resonated for half a century, and its reputation has steadily grown. This book, by the world-renowned authority on Sergio Leone, Christopher Frayling, includes revealing personal interviews with all the key players involved in the movie (in front of the camera and behind it) a wealth of never-before-published documents, designs and photographs, and the latest research into the making of a masterpiece, shot by shot. It is introduced with a foreword by Quentin Tarantino. This year is the 50th anniversary of Once Upon a Time in the West and this richly illustrated book is a suitably spectacular birthday tribute.

The landmark biography of one of the twentieth century's most recognizable directors--now back in print

"40 years ago as a graduate student I wrote a book about Spaghetti Westerns, called 10,000 Ways to Die. It’s an embarrassing tome when I look at it now: full of half-assed semiotics and other attenuated academic nonsense. In the intervening period I have had the interesting experience of being a film director. So now, when I watch these films, I’m looking at them from a different perspective. A professional perspective, maybe . . . I’m thinking about what the filmmakers intended, how they did that shot, how the director felt when his film was recut by the studio, and he was creatively and financially screwed. 10,000 Ways to Die is an entirely new book about an under-studied subject, the Spaghetti Western, from a director’s POV. Not only have these films stood the test of time; some of them are very high art." —Alex Cox

This is the definitive book on Leone's complete film work. In this first book-length analysis of Leone's work and vision, Cumbow discusses the director's unique contribution to the American western, the epic film tradition, and such masters as John Ford and Akira Kurosawa. Chapters are devoted to each of Leone's films as director. Includes a chronology of Leone's career, bibliography, and detailed filmography, including plot synopses.