They made their names with A Fistful of Dollars, the first in a series of spaghetti westerns that became classics of 20th-century cinema. But the Italian director Sergio Leone had such a poor grasp of English that, between takes, he would repeatedly rely on the words “watch me” before miming whatever he wanted from his leading man, Clint Eastwood, and his other actors. Now previously unpublished photographs show him doing just that, acting out particular scenes. 

Sir Christopher Frayling, a leading cultural historian, has been given access to hundreds of images in archives that had belonged to Leone and his set photographer Angelo Novi. Frayling said that when A Fistful of Dollars was made in 1964, the words “watch me” were “the extent of Leone’s English”, adding: “He’d mime what he wanted and then start filming.”