Outlaws, robbers, and a hostile border made the Wild West a perilous place. Filming westerns, on the other hand, may be just as risky.

Take, for example, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” Eli Wallach, who portrayed Tuco, was not having a good time. During the film’s production, he came close to dying several times on set.

In his 2005 book “The Good, The Bad, and Me” Wallach, who portrayed the eponymous “Ugly” character Tuco Ramirez, recalled some of the most dramatic events from the filming.

Sergio Leone wanted Italian actor Gian Maria Volonte to play Tuco at first, but he wasn’t happy with Volonte’s comedic delivery. Wallach’s natural, humorous performance in the film How the West Was Won intrigued him. He phoned Wallach and offered him the part, telling him that he wanted him to use the same nasty and gritty humor that made his performance in How the West Was Won effective.

Publicity photo of Eli Wallach for the film “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966).

According to Vintage News, Wallach expressed his dissatisfaction with the dangerous conditions on the western.

His character frequently found himself in awkward and uncomfortable situations, as Wallach was at the mercy of his character’s follies and nearly perished three times during the production.

During a critical sequence in the film, Wallach came dangerously close to hanging himself. With a rope over his neck, he was filming on horseback. The noose snapped when a fake pistol shot was fired, but the horse was terrified. The horse then galloped away at full speed. The rope, thankfully, snapped as anticipated by production. Wallach, on the other hand, became a victim of an out-of-control beast.

With his wrists bound behind his back, the actor clung to his knees for dear life. Before wranglers calmed the horse, it led Wallach approximately a mile away from the set.

Wallach describes how trying to manage his horse while chained and tethered was difficult in his autobiography:

“…the horse took off like a bat out of a hell while my hands were tied behind me. I kept yelling at the horse to stop, using my knees to try to control him, but it was no use. It took about a mile before the horse stopped.”

Another time, he drank acid from a bottle put near his prop bottle filled with soda by a careless set worker, and he had to be sent to the hospital. Fortunately, his stomach contents were quickly emptied out, and he was allowed to return to the set.

Finally, during a train scenario, Wallach came dangerously close to decapitating himself. Tuco, his character, attempted to free himself from a chain that bound him to a dead man. Wallach had to position himself near the train rails in order to pull off this scene. The train, however, had a number of steps jutting from it, which production was unaware of. The steps would have taken Wallach’s head off if he had moved a few of inches higher.

Co-star Clint Eastwood saved Wallach from an explosion in another scene and came dangerously close to meeting the Grim Reaper himself. Fortunately, all of the performers survived to see the finished film. And the western turned out to be one of Wallach’s best-known portrayals. The actor lived until he was 98 years old, when he died of natural causes.

After a long and illustrious acting career, Eli Wallach died in 2014.