Episode Details

Sergio Leone had never been to America when he reinvented the Western. He cast a television actor named Clint Eastwood, shot in the Spanish desert, scored the films with Ennio Morricone's operatic music, and created a vision of the American frontier that was more mythic and more violent than anything Hollywood had produced.

This episode traces Leone from his childhood in Rome through the Dollars Trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West, and Once Upon a Time in America, the epic gangster film that studios butchered and critics later recognized as his masterpiece.

• He had never visited America when he directed A Fistful of Dollars, which launched the Spaghetti Western genre
• His partnership with composer Ennio Morricone produced some of the most iconic film scores ever recorded
• Once Upon a Time in America was cut from nearly four hours to two by its American distributor
• He died of a heart attack in 1989 while preparing to direct a film about the Siege of Leningrad