was filming Texas, Adios at the time. Wallach and Eastwood flew to Madrid together, and between shooting scenes, Eastwood would relax and practice his golf swing. Wallach was almost poisoned during filming when he accidentally drank from a bottle of acid that a film technician had set next to his soda bottle. Wallach mentioned this in his autobiography and complained that while Leone was a brilliant director, he was very lax about ensuring the safety of his actors during dangerous scenes. For instance, in one scene, where he was to be hanged after a pistol was fired, the horse underneath him was supposed to bolt. While the rope around Wallach's neck was severed, the horse was frightened a little too well. It galloped for about a mile with Wallach still mounted and his hands bound behind his back. The third time Wallach's life was threatened was during the scene where Mario Brega and he—who are chained together—jump out of a moving train. The jumping part went as planned, but Wallach's life was endangered when his character attempts to sever the chain binding him to the (now dead) henchman. Tuco places the body on the railroad tracks, waiting for the train to roll over the chain and sever it. Wallach, and presumably the entire film crew, were not aware of the heavy iron steps that jutted one foot out of every box car. If Wallach had stood up from his prone position at the wrong time, one of the jutting steps could have decapitated him. The bridge in the film was constructed twice by sappers of the Spanish army and rigged for on-camera explosive demolition. On the first occasion, an Italian camera operator signaled that he was ready to shoot, which was misconstrued by an army captain as the similar-sounding Spanish word meaning "start". Nobody was injured in the resulting explosion. The army rebuilt the bridge while other shots were filmed. As the bridge was not a prop, but a rather heavy and sturdy functional structure, powerful explosives were required to destroy it. Leone said that this scene was, in part, inspired by Buster Keaton's silent film The General. As an international cast was employed, actors performed in their native languages. Eastwood, Van Cleef, and Wallach spoke English and were dubbed into Italian for their debut release in Rome. For the American version, the lead acting voices were used, but supporting