James Coburn, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Steve Reeves, and Eric Fleming (Eastwood?s costar on Rawhide) were among the actors who were offered the part ? but passed because of Leone?s lowball salary offer of $15,000.
Biographer Marc Eliot credits Claudia Sartori, a Rome-based agent with the William Morris Agency, with suggesting Eastwood to Leone and his producers. To make her case, she showed them ?Incident of the Black Sheep,? a 1961 episode of Rawhide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF15lJFsd58&list=PLwUOPoE7wpXxIqQWqzixn4mg9Emr7DhiC&index=90