When Henry Fonda made Once Upon a Time in the West Peter Fonda was doing Roger Corman schlock and TV episodes. Easy Rider was still a year away.
I can picture him walking back into the store with a loaded .44 magnum… 
Or an axe.
I’m no good at telling stories, so here’s a link: Historical Meet-Ups - Ingmar Bergman Death-obsessed Swedish filmmaker ...
Well, I learned a new word there!
I would argue that he had more range than most would give him credit for, but little opportunity to display it. A case in point is From Noon Till Three (1976) with almost no (for a Bronson picture) action scenes.
Bronson was a lot like John Wayne in his acting persona. He could only really portray “Charles Bronson”, but given the chance, “Charles Bronson” had some depth.
But Jill Ireland- now those were some shallow waters.
Watch him in Breakout. It’s not a great movie; a generic action thriller. But Bronson shows he can play a comedic action star as well as a badass one.
To perpetuate the digression, Danny the Tunnel King in The Great Escape was close to the edge of Bronson’s range. But, if you criticize him for only playing within a narrow range, you have to concede that Henry Fonda rarely strayed far from Henryfondaesque characters either.
It’s true that Bronson could be funny, though his screen opportunities to show it were few. His looks were such that he was never going to be cast too much outside of tough guy roles. I wish he had done more sci-fi. Other than a supporting role in “Master of the World” and co-starring with Elizabeth Montgomery in a Twilight Zone episode, I can’t think of any other sci-fi roles he played. In a perfect world, “The Stars My Destination” would have been brought to the big screen in the early to mid-1970s and Charles Bronson would have played Gully Foyle.
“Vorga, I kill you filthy!”
If you ever get a chance, watch “Rider on the Rain.” Bronson, though kind-of-sort-of a good guy, isn’t particularly nice as Dobbs. This, along with some of the other over seas films he did during the period, is why I think he would have made such a great Gully Foyle.
I saw “Rider on the Rain”!!
In the best of all venues for a Bronson flick, a $1.00 theater on Market Street, so it must have been a year or two after its original release. I think I saw it 2 or 3 times (for the younger set, there was a time before streaming, before DVDs, before VCRs, when if you liked a movie, you went and saw it several times. It was likely your only chance.)
There was a Western with Jimmy Stewart that was somewhat comic. I believe *The Grapes of Wrath *was his best, though I have not seen Twelve Angry Men.
Jimmy Stewart?
Mr. Roberts is a masterpiece also. I think we missed the range he could have had if he wasn’t so typecast.
Umm… The Lady Eve anyone?
When Preston Sturges directs you, you’ve got automatic comedy cred.
Which reminds me- Charles Bronson showed some of his comedy skills in a great action picture- Red Sun. I can’t recommend this film highly enough if you are fan of samurai spaghetti westerns. 
Henry Fonda made a Western with Jimmy Stewart where Fonda was out of character. One of then had inherited a house of ill repute, The Cheyenne Social Club.
Sometimes a Great Notion ?