Aldo Sanbrell photographed in 2007 by John Exshaw. (Photo copyright John Exshaw. All rights reserved.)
BY JOHN EXSHAW
With the death of Aldo Sanbrell, who passed
away in Alicante last Saturday (10 July), aged 79, another link to the great
days of Italian film-making – and the Italian Western, in particular – has been
lost. The only actor to appear in all of Sergio Leone’s Westerns, Aldo was the
most prominent and recognisable of all those mean-looking hombres who rode the badlands and bit the dust of AlmerÃa in those
far-off days when southern Spain was the Wild West – Italian style. Asked once
by a British director if he “knew how to die,†Aldo replied, “Oh yes, señor, I
have been killed in many film fights here in AlmerÃa. I have died for Clint
Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Charles Bronson, George Scott . . . I have made 185
films and I have been killed in all of them. Yes, I know how to die.â€
Aldo, photographed at home in Alicante, 2008 - and always ready for action. (Photo copyright John Exshaw. All rights reserved.)