1. -  Al Mulock, C'era una volta il West,   (US: Once  Upon  A Time in the  West), 1968. Van Cleef and Eli Wallach followed Clint Eastwood's lead in refusing  director Sergio Leone's gimmick of reuniting The Good, The  Bad and The Ugly in the opening sequence.  Mulock  committed suicide by jumping from his hotel window in full costume after a day's shooting. Production manager Claudio Mancini   and screenwriter Mickey Knox  saw Mulock's body pass by their hotel window. As Mancini put Mulock in his car for the hospital, director Sergio Leone was heard yelling: "Get the costume! We need the costume!"

2. -  Yul Brynner, Adios,  Sabata, Italy,  1971. Van Cleef, reborn under  spagheti Western  king Sergio  Leone, got his revenge  for losing the second of three  Sabata  Westerns  by  taking  over Brynner's  lead  in  The Magnificent Seven Ride, 1972.

3. - Paul Newman, The Sting, 1973. The producers said Henry Gondorff was written as a fat slob. No way, said scenarist David S Ward. “I’d actually imagined Lee Van Cleef, a steely, hard-nosed type, but not a fat guy. When Newman decided to do it, I was more than happy. I knew Newman would just do his thing - and that was better than anything I could come up with. This did change the dynamic, though, because the Johnny Hooker character was initially meant to be about 19, which would have made for more of a father-son relationshi. With Redford on board, we had to make Hooker older, but I think there remains something adolescent about him: he grows up over the course of the movie.”