A FISTFUL OF LASAGNA

A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964)
dir: Sergio Leone

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965)
dir: Sergio Leone

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (1966)
dir: Sergio Leone


A FISTFUL OF LASAGNA
MAD Special #4, Fall 1971
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Jack Davis

Not a parody of any one Western in particular, but the spaghetti western genre as a whole. As the Western movie was dying off in the sixties and seventies, more were funded by and shot in Italy, thus the name. Above are trailers for the three most famous, re-released in the United States a few years later and which remain classics to this day.

Clint Eastwood appeared in many of these as "The Man With No Name". Nino Benevenuti was an Italian boxer who transitioned into acting. Joe Namath was also was an athlete-turned-actor, though he was not in a spaghetti western. Jon Voight was neither an athlete nor spaghetti western actor, but he played the persona of a cowboy in Midnight Cowboy. His character was gay but they would never get away with a joke like that now.

Lee Van Cleef also starred in some of these films.

Spiro Agnew famously said "If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all."

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE GARLIC
Playboy, January 1970
w: Sol Weinstein, Dick Mathews
a: (breakdowns) Harvey Kurtzman

Today, you'd never have such elaborate sets and staging for a piece in Playboy. Not that this had a particularly big budget, especially relative to a movie, but more grandiose than anything they'd have now.

Much emphasis was on the fact that these Westerns were made in Italy, reminding you in case you forgot. Surely somebody paid the offices a visit.

Back when newspapers all had Sunday magazines comparable to any newsstand magazine, Jack Davis did this for the Los Angeles Times supplement.