Some of the coolest characters in cinema history have walked the dusty plains of the American western. From Jamie Foxx’s title character in the Quentin Tarantino revenge flick Django Unchained to Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday from the 1993 George P. Cosmatos classic, Tombstone. Yet, both these iconic characters take particular inspiration from the undisputed king of cool in the genre, Clint Eastwood’s ‘Man with No Name’.
Born from the seminal Sergio Leone Dollars trilogy released throughout the 1960s, which consisted of A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Eastwood’s protagonist was a consistent feature. Throughout each spaghetti western, donned due to the fact that each movie was filmed in Italy, he would wander the American frontier pursuing criminals and putting them to justice.
Yet, the mystery at the very heart of this beloved trilogy is, who exactly is Eastwood’s ‘Man with No Name’?
With Leone passing away in 1989 and Eastwood keeping tight-lipped regarding his time in the Dollars trilogy, this question is sadly one we may never discover get the answer to, yet there are clues scattered throughout each film that give us some insight into who the protagonist may be. With nicknames in each film, ‘Joe’ in A Fistful of Dollars, ‘Manco’ in For A Few Dollars More, and ‘Blondie’ in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, it is in the opening of the very first instalment that Leone let’s slip a clue.
Later cut in the final draft, the screenplay for A Fistful Of Dollars featured an opening scene that revealed Eastwood’s character to be a Confederate sergeant known as ‘Ray’, with this introduction also seeing him claim his iconic poncho. Despite the name being dropped in the final cut to add to the mystique of the character, it appears that ‘Ray’ may be the true identity behind the icon.
Indeed, with the first film being a direct adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 classic Yojimbo, which also features an unnamed protagonist, the ‘Man with No Name’ concept may just be yet another ‘stolen’ concept from the old monochrome flick. In addition to their lack of names, both characters also share mysterious, quiet personalities, with both also having a defiant sense of justice.
Decades later, Eastwood regards A Fistful of Dollars as the most important movie of his career, as he stated: “I figured if it flopped, no one was going to see it over here, and at least I’d get a paid trip to Italy and Spain. I remember seeing Kurosawa’s Yojimbo, [which it was based on], and I thought, ‘God, this thing would make a great Western if someone only had the nerve to do it”’.
Ultimately, even if the ‘Man with No Name’ is called Ray, or indeed any of his eccentric nicknames, the character is better left as a mystery, riding the lawless American West with mysterious morals and a patriotic approach to justice.