Lee Van Cleef Overview:

Character actor, Lee Van Cleef, was born Clarence Leroy Van Cleef Jr. on Jan 9, 1925 in Somerville, NJ. Van Cleef died at the age of 64 on Dec 16, 1989 in Oxnard, CA and was laid to rest in Forest Lawn (Hollywood Hills) Cemetery in Los Angeles, CA.

MINI BIO:

Lean, dark-haired, narrow-eyed American actor, almost entirely confined to westerns. After he switched to acting instead of taking over his father's accountancy business, he spent more than a decade in films as ugly villains (with the occasional American Indian thrown in) with itchy trigger fingers. Then he lost his hair, grew a mustache and, recovered from a severe car crash in 1959, pleasantly surprised his fans by becoming a star of spaghetti westerns in the wake of Clint Eastwood. Died from a heart attack.

(Source: available at Amazon Quinlan's Film Character Actors: an Illustrated Directory).

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Lee Van Cleef Quotes:

Train Conductor: Hey, Mister, you just can't pull the emergency cord and jump off! Tell me, why did you stop that train? If you wanna get off, you're...
[looks at Mortimer's gun]
Train Conductor: Well, the railroad company would might be pleased to make any arrangements for any passenger, if you wanna get off, Dear Sir.
Col. Douglas Mortimer: I did get off. Thanks.


Jack Voyle: I'll take care of Haney - for nothin'!
Frank Emmett: That's why you ain't a success. You work too cheap.


Frank Talby: Third lesson: never get between a gun and its target.


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Lee Van Cleef Facts
He had three children from his first marriage: Deborah, Alan and David.

During one summer in the early 1950s he was a camp counselor in NYC for Marc Furstenberg.

He was missing the last joint of his middle finger, a disfigurement prominently featured in the climactic gunfight of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). He actually lost it while building a playhouse for his daughter, although there were rumors that it happened in a road accident or a bar fight.

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