Movies - TV
Clint Eastwood Choked Down 'Vile' Cigars For The Sake Of A Fistful Of Dollars
By JEREMY SMITH
Few characters are as iconic as Clint Eastwood’s quick-shooting gunfighter, the Man with No Name, from Sergio Leone’s legendary Western series, the “Dollars Trilogy.” Although the TV star had yet to prove himself in the movies, Leone gave Eastwood free rein to assemble his character’s costume on “A Fistful of Dollars,” including the poncho and the leather-banded cowboy hat.
Eastwood hated one of the props he had chosen for his character, however: the skinny cheroot cigars often seen clenched in the hero’s teeth. The actor shared, “I went out and bought a bunch of cigars that I thought would look good in a Western. I had no idea they’d taste so vile! But I brought those along with me and I gave them to props and we cut them all up.”
He continued, “They were long cigars, called Virginia. I made a slew of them that I carried around in my pocket: different lengths to match up with different scenes.” While the Man with No Name often had one of these cigars in his mouth during the movies, Eastwood didn’t smoke them for long and abstained from smoking, outside of what was necessary for filming.