When A Fistful Of Dollars was set to air on ABC during the mid-’70s, his lack of morality was deemed an issue by network executives, who decided to film a prologue for the Western to frame the Man with No Name in a more heroic light. To that end, they hired Two-Lane Blacktop director Monte Hellman and actor Harry Dean Stanton to shoot the prologue.
ABC Fistful Of Dollars prologue reportedly only aired once and sees a body double standing in for Eastwood. The character is taken from a cell to the office of Stanton’s Warden, who offers him a period in exchange for going to San Miguel and clearing out the warring gangs.
The Man with No Name doesn’t speak, while ill-fitting close-ups of Eastwood’s eyes are used to make it seem like he’s actually there. It’s a cheap, badly executed scene, and in giving the character a justification – even a thin one – it misunderstands what Leone and Eastwood were trying to achieve; his lack of traditional morality is the point.
Why Eastwood Didn’t Appear In Fistful Of Dollars’ TV Intro
It’s obvious that neither Leone nor Eastwood was involved with ABC’s Fistful Of Dollars prologue scene. Even though the rest of the story plays out the same way, the new opening just serves to undermine Eastwood’s “Joe.”
By the time this version of A Fistful Of Dollars aired, Eastwood was already a major star thanks to the Dollars trilogy and the first two Dirty Harrys. It’s doubtful ABC even tried to approach the actor about the prologue, and if they had, Clint would have rejected both the intent of the sequence and Leone’s lack of involvement. Bad as the scene is, it’s an intriguing footnote in the film’s history.