Clint Eastwood, the actor and director, gravitates toward playing the hero for a reason: he is a hero in real life. Production on The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, generally regarded the quintessential example of a spaghetti Western film, began in 1966. Eastwood played Blondie, or “The Good,” with Lee Van Cleef playing Angel Eyes, or “The Bad,” and Eli Wallach playing Tuco Benedicto Pacfico Juan Mara Ramrez, or “The Ugly” (per Mental Floss).

While on set, Clint Eastwood saved Eli Wallach’s life during a dangerous stunt. Fortunately for Wallach, Eastwood was aware of their director’s reputation for ignoring safety precautions on set, and he promptly took command of the situation.

The characters had decided to blow up a bridge to split the Union and Confederate troops. The two were looking for buried treasure in a cemetery near the battlefield. But the act might have landed them both in the graveyard in real life.

Sergio Leone, the film’s director, was supposed to tell the pyrotechnics team to blow up the bridge at some point during that sequence. However, due to a misunderstanding, the pyrotechnics team prematurely blew up the bridge — within close range of where Eastwood and Wallach had been standing only seconds before the scene began.

Eastwood had advised his co-star to run and follow him to the safety of a neighboring hilltop beforehand.

Eastwood’s health might have been jeopardized by the incident. The actual bridge was not a Hollywood set piece. Production constructed an actual bridge out of wood and building materials. Following the initial premature explosion, the director moved on to film other sequences, while production had to rebuild the bridge from the ground up.