Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
Vitals
Lee Van Cleef as “Angel Eyes”, ruthless mercenary
New Mexico Territory, Spring 1862
Film: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
(Italian title: Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo)
Release Date: December 23, 1966
Director: Sergio Leone
Costume Designer: Carlo Simi
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Today would have been the 100th birthday of Lee Van Cleef, the actor whose Golden Boot Award-winning contributions to the Western genre began with his debut performance in the iconic High Noon (1952) but remains arguably best known for his back-to-back roles in the latter two films of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars trilogy” that established the spaghetti Western subgenre.
Born January 9, 1925 in New Jersey, Van Cleef served in the U.S. Navy aboard a minesweeper during World War II. Following his debut in High Noon, Van Cleef’s distinctive appearance and sinister mannerisms resulted in a string of supporting—and often villainous—roles in crime stories and Westerns until his breakout role as Colonel Douglas Mortimer in Leone’s For a Few Dollars More (1965), which resulted in his sole Golden Globe nomination.
Leone followed For a Few Dollars More with the Civil War-set The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—the final installment of his so-called “Dollars trilogy”—which also prominently co-starred Van Cleef opposite Clint Eastwood’s stoic “Man with No Name”. As opposed to the more heroic Colonel Mortimer whose violent quest was driven by a sense of justice, Van Cleef’s character in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly embodied the eponymous “Bad”—a sadistic assassin who kills for money… and occasionally pleasure.
“I said to myself that Van Cleef had first played a romantic character in For a Few Dollars More,” Leone later reflected of the casting choice. “The idea of getting him to play a character who was the opposite of that began to appeal to me.”
The original script named Van Cleef’s character as “Banjo”, which became “Sentenza” in the Italian version—translating to “sentence” in the context of punishment doled out in the name of justice. However, his canonical “Angel Eyes” nickname reportedly emerged on set by Eastwood, in reference to the character’s appearance and sharpshooting abilities. Angel Eyes’ relentless search for a cache of stolen Confederate gold sends him down a violent journey opposite Eastwood’s “Man with No Name” and a scrappy bandit named Tuco Ramirez (Eli Wallach).
What’d He Wear?
Angel Eyes appropriately wears the requisite black hat of a classic Western villain… though it’s nearly identical—and may, in fact, be the same hat that Van Cleef wore as the more heroic Colonel Mortimer the previous year in For a Few Dollars More.
Made from a water-repellant black 5X “Beaver Quality” felt, the hat’s low and round telescope-style crown qualifies it as the style alternately known as a gambler, gaucho, or bolero hat; Prop Store’s 2023 auction listing uses the latter terminology and describes the label from Eddy Bros., a Los Angeles-based hatmaker founded in 1929. It has a narrow black grosgrain band around the crown and a wide, flat, edge-curled brim.
Angel Eyes typically wears a thigh-length coat made from a drab brown wool with a soft, boiled texture. The coat has narrow shoulders, cran necker (or “Parisian”) lapels, and a narrow double-breasted 6×3-button front that he wears fully unbuttoned so he can quickly access the revolver holstered on his waist. The sleeves are left plain at the cuffs, and the back is ventless. The jacket has flapped set-in hip pockets (which disqualify it from classification as a frock coat) and a large patch-style breast pocket with mitred lower corners.
Through the first act of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Angel Eyes wears a cream-colored muslin kerchief hanging loosely from around his neck.
We see a likely costume-related continuity error when Angel Eyes is talking to the Confederate soldier known to varying degrees of insensitivity as “Shorty” or “Half Soldier” due to his missing legs; in reality, actor Alfonso Veady had lost his legs during the Spanish Civil War, and this was written into his performance.
During the conversation, Angel Eyes wears another long brown coat, though the cloth is a herringbone weave in a darker shade of brown. Furthermore, the jacket has a single-breasted three-button front and the sleeves are each finished with two-button cuffs.
Under his coat, Angel Eyes always wears a single-breasted waistcoat (vest) made from a dark brown-and-black herringbone wool—possibly part of a matching set with the continuity-error coat. This four-button waistcoat has a narrow shawl collar, four welted pockets, and a black-finished back lining with black laces that can be tied to adjust the tightness around the waist. He keeps his gold pocket watch in the waistcoat’s lower right pocket, with the gold chain strung “double Albert”-style across his waist—even when the waistcoat is unbuttoned, as it often is.
Despite the “villains wear black” stereotype, Angel Eyes’ only black piece of clothing—aside from his hat and boots—is his cotton shirt, styled with a neckband, button cuffs, and a button-up front placket flanked by narrow pleats like a formal evening shirt that would be worn with a tuxedo.
Angel Eyes tucks the shirt into his brown flat-front trousers, which are a slightly warmer shade of brown than his coat. He keeps the bottoms tucked into his boots, so we see little of these trousers aside from the fact that they have belt loops around the waistband.
This could be argued as an anachronism as belt loops would not be standardized on men’s trousers for more than a half-century; not even Levi’s jeans had belt loops until 1922! However, some military uniform trousers were styled with belt loops by the mid-19th century, so it could also be argued that Angel Eyes’ proximity to soldiers resulted in his adopting belt loops on his trousers before most other civilians across the country.
Through the belt loops in question, Angel Eyes wears a worn-in black leather belt that closes through a D-shaped single-prong buckle in a silver-toned metal that has been dulled to a gunmetal finish. On the other side of the self-keeper from the buckle, the belt is reinforced with a dulled metal rivet at the top and bottom.
More significantly for his deadly profession, Angel Eyes wears a gun belt made of black leather with white edge-stitching. Although his Remington revolver is too old to fire cartridges (which also wouldn’t be prominent for nearly a decade), he keeps most of the belt’s 24 cartridge loops loaded with rounds. Presumably designed to be worn for a strong-side draw, Angel Eyes shifts the rig so that the buckle is toward the back of the left side of his waist, placing the holstered Remington around the 11 o’clock position for a right-handed cross-draw. The holster itself has a retention strap around the center that closes through a silver-toned single-prong buckle.
In addition to the belt and gun belt, note the low-contrast herringbone weave of Angel Eyes’ waistcoat.
Angel Eyes’ well-traveled boots are black leather cowboy boots with decorative tonal stitching up the shafts, straight cut across the top and rigged with pull tabs on each side. Often worn with spurs when riding, Angel Eyes’ boots have wide, roper-style heels.
Angel Eyes continues wearing his same boots even when in the uniform of a Union Army sergeant.
“Sergeant Angel Eyes!” Tuco laughs upon their reunion, seeing Angel Eyes now dressed in the blue cavalry uniform of a non-commissioned officer.
From my admittedly limited knowledge of Civil War-era uniforms, Angel Eyes’ clothing actually appears to be dated from later in the 19th century, including a slouch hat with yellow cavalry cords, his layered cape, brass-buttoned waistcoat, and a button-up shirt tucked into trousers with yellow side galon. The three wide downward-pointing yellow-embroidered chevrons on each sleeve indicate his rank as sergeant; it wasn’t until 1902 that the Army instituted the current direction of NCOs wearing chevrons pointing upward.
What to Imbibe
When “Sergeant Angel Eyes” entertains Tuco at the Union Army prison camp, he pulls out his bottle of Burdons Dry Gin. Despite its English-sounding name, Burdons was actually a Spanish brand, formed in 1821 in El Puerto de Santa María by English sherry merchant John William Burdon. The company became renowned for its sherry to the extent that King Alonso XIII awarded Burdons the title of Supplier to the Royal Household in 1912.
Several decades after ownership transferred to Bodegas Caballero in 1932, Burdons introduced a dry gin that became very popular in Spain through the 1960s and ’70s.
It’s extremely anachronistic that a rogue mercenary posing as a sergeant during the American Civil War would have had his hands on a Spanish gin that wouldn’t be invented for another century, but why question art?
Though it was defunct for several decades, the Burdons brand was revived in 2019 with a relaunch of its famous gin as well as two additional flavored gins: cherry and spearmint.
The Guns
Remington Model 1858 New Army
Angel Eyes carries a Remington Model 1858 New Army percussion revolver, which is generally accurate for the Civil War setting. Predating cartridge-fired revolvers, percussion revolvers are also known as “cap-and-ball” revolvers as each chamber needed to be manually loaded black powder and a lead ball bullet, followed by a percussion cap on the rear of the chamber that ignites when the hammer strikes it.
The Remington Model 1858 series gained a positive reputation for its reliability and sturdiness due to its top-strap design, as opposed to contemporary open-top percussion revolvers like Colt’s Model 1848 Army Dragoon and Model 1851 Navy revolvers. Like most revolvers of the period, it operated with a single-action trigger that required the hammer to be cocked before the trigger could be pulled.
Remignton’s Model 1858 and later Model 1875 revolvers can be visually distinguished by the webbed triangular “bottom blade” under the barrel. This served a functional purpose for the Model 1858 as an extension on the ramrod lever that would pack the bullet and powder into the cylinder; as the Model 1875 was a cartridge-loaded revolver, the blade was likely retained to maintain continuity with the well-regarded Model 1858 and distinguish it from competition like the Colt Single Action Army.
Note the distinctive “blade” or “sail” extension along the ramrod under the Remington’s octagonal barrel.
Though patented in September 1858 (hence its nomenclature), Remington’s “Model 1858” revolvers actually entered production in 1861 with the .44-caliber Remington-Beals Army Model and the .36-caliber Remington-Beals Navy Model. After a brief redesign in 1862 that produced between six to seven thousand of each Army and Navy variety, Remington rolled out the new and improved “New Model” Army and Navy revolvers in 1863.
As with its predecessors, the .44-caliber New Model Army had an eight-inch octagonal barrel while the .36-caliber New Model Navy had a slightly shorter barrel just over seven inches long. Approximately 132,000 New Model Army and 28,000 New Model Navy revolvers would be produced from 1863 to 1875. This iteration introduced the innovative “safety slots” that allowed the hammer to rest between chambers, so that the firing pin would not be precariously positioned over a loaded percussion cap.
Angel Eyes keeps his Remington drawn during The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly‘s famous Mexican standoff in the cemetery.
In 1868, Remington began offering versions of the New Model Army converted to fire .46-caliber rimfire cartridges. This reduced the cylinder from six to five rounds, but it took advantage of this newer and more convenient firing system—obtained after paying a royalty fee to Smith & Wesson, who had owned the patent on revolver cylinders for metallic cartridge use since 1855. Because of this, Remington actually beat Smith & Wesson to the market for large-caliber cartridge revolvers by two years.
However, this was still at least six years after the setting of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, so the metallic cartridges in Angel Eyes’ belt wouldn’t fit in his percussion Model 1858 revolver.
Colt Model 1851 Navy
While posing as a sergeant serving with the Union Army, Angel Eyes carries a seemingly Union-issued Colt Model 1851 Navy revolver, differentiated from the Remington by its open-top frame and simplified lever under the barrel. This .36-caliber percussion revolver was designed in 1850 by Samuel Colt and became one of the most widely known and carried revolvers of the old west, prior to Colt’s introduction of the .45-caliber Single Action Army “Peacemaker” that superseded it in 1873.
However, his Army “service” isn’t Angel Eyes’ only experience with the revolver, as he earlier uses one to kill Baker (Livio Lorenzon), the man who hired him to track down the gold. It’s presumed that this is meant to be Angel Eyes’ personal weapon, as he holsters it in the same rig that would typically carry his Remington instead.
After following his job through, Angel Eyes holsters his Colt Model 1851 Navy revolver in the same gun belt he typically uses for his Remington.
The experts at IMFDB observed that Angel Eyes’ Model 1851 Navy is actually a “non-historical” replica designed to fire metallic cartridges—rather than one of the Richards or Richards-Mason conversion revolvers, which have filler rings and shrouded extractor rods below the right side of the barrel. Instead, this is a Uberti-built replica that was factory engineered with a loading gate to load .38-caliber metallic cartridges.
Note the open-top design and plain under-barrel rod that differentiates the Colt from the Remington.
How to Get the Look
Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
Though he lacks his new nemesis’ iconic poncho and shot-up hat, Lee Van Cleef’s deadly “Angel Eyes” wears shades of brown tailoring that compliment his black bolero hat, cowboy boots, and shirt—practical layers with a rakish touch vis-à-vis his shirt’s formal pleated front and the gold pocket watch strung across his unbuttoned waistcoat.
- Black cotton shirt with neckband, narrow-pleated front with button-up placket, and button cuffs
- Brown boiled wool thigh-length coat with cran necker lapels, double-breasted 6×3-button front, patch breast pocket, flapped set-in hip pockets, plain cuffs, and ventless back
- Dark brown-and-black herringbone wool single-breasted four-button waistcoat with shawl collar, four welted pockets, and black-finished back
- Brown flat-front trousers with belt loops
- Black leather belt with gunmetal-toned D-shaped single-prong buckle and self-keeper
- Black edge-stitched leather gun belt with 24 cartridge loops and holster (with belted strap), worn at 11 o’clock for a right-handed cross-draw
- Black leather cowboy boots with stitched shafts and roper-style heels
- Black 5X beaver felt wide-brimmed bolero hat with low telescope-style crown and black grosgrain band
- Cream muslin neckerchief
- Gold pocket watch on gold “double Albert”-style chain with gold fob
Hellhound Leather Co. offers a recreation of Angel Eyes’ leather gun rig.
Do Yourself a Favor and…
Check out the movie, and the whole “Dollars trilogy”.
The Quote
He gave me a thousand. I think his idea was that I kill you… but, you know, the pity is—when I’m paid—I always follow my job through.
The post Lee Van Cleef as “Angel Eyes” in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly appeared first on BAMF Style.