In Sergio Leone’s epic ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ (1968), Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale) arrives at Sweetwater Ranch after a long journey by train and horse-drawn carriage through the Western landscape (including some shots of Monument Valley). She plans to join her new husband and his children, but instead finds them all murdered by a gang of outlaws.
The log home at the center of the ranch still stands in the desert of Tabernas, in southern Spain, where the film was made. Today it operates as the Western Leone theme park.
Cardinale appeared in several films made in Spain over the years, including Samuel Bronston’s Circus World (1964), alongside John Wayne and Rita Hayworth, and Lost Command (1966), a combat film set during the Algerian War, also shot in Almería. She co-starred with Brigitte Bardot as they played two outlaw sisters in The Legend of Frenchie King (1971). And she returned to Spain years later for Fernando Trueba’s The Artist and the Model (2012).
But Cardinale is likely most remembered for her role of Jill McBain, a former prostitute who stands up to her husband’s killers and, by the end of the film, commits herself to carry on his dream of building a new railroad town.
