Eli Herschel Wallach ( ; December 7, 1915 – June 24, 2014) was an American film, television, and stage actor from New York City. Known for his character actor roles, his entertainment career spanned over six decades. He received a BAFTA Award, a Tony Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. He was also inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1988 and received the Academy Honorary Award in 2010.
Originally trained in stage acting, he garnered over 90 film credits. He and his wife Anne Jackson often appeared together on stage, eventually becoming a notable acting couple in American theater. Wallach initially studied method acting under Sanford Meisner and later became a founding member of the Actors Studio, where he studied under Lee Strasberg. He played a wide variety of roles throughout his career, primarily as a supporting actor. He won the Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actor in a Play for The Rose Tattoo (1951).
For his debut screen performance in Baby Doll (1956), he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe Award nomination. Among his other most famous roles are Calvera in The Magnificent Seven (1960), Guido in The Misfits (1961), Tuco ("The Ugly") in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Don Altobello in The Godfather Part III (1990). Other notable films include How the West Was Won (1962), Tough Guys (1986), The Two Jakes (1990), The Associate (1996), The Holiday (2006), Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and The Ghost Writer (both 2010). He received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2007) and Nurse Jackie (2011).
Early life and education Eli Herschel Wallach was born on December 7, 1915, at 156 Union Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a son of Polish Jewish immigrants Abraham and Bertha Wallach (née Schorr) from Przemyśl. He had a brother and two sisters. He and his family were among only a few Jews in an otherwise Italian-American neighborhood. His parents owned Bertha's Candy Store. Wallach graduated in 1936 from the University of Texas with a degree in history. In a later interview, Wallach said that he learned to ride horses while in Texas, explaining that he liked Texas because "It opened my eyes to the word friendship... You could rely on people. If they gave you their word, that was it... It was an education."
Two years later he earned a master of arts degree in education from the City College of New York. He gained his first method acting experience at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, where he studied under Sanford Meisner. There, according to Wallach, actors were forced to "unlearn" all their physical and vocal mannerisms, while traditional stage etiquette and "singsong" deliveries were "utterly excised" from his classroom.
Military service Wallach's education was cut short when he was draftedFrom Tennessee Williams to Sergio Leone: Actor Eli Wallach at 95. The Guardian via Internet Archive. Retrieved May 14, 2021. into the United States Army in 1940.CPT Eli Herschel Wallach - Military Timeline army.togetherweserved.com. Retrieved September 6, 2021.Famous Veterans: These Celebrities Served in the United States Armed Forces veteranownedbusiness.com. Retrieved September 6, 2021. He served as a staff sergeant and medicTexas History Minute: Eli Wallach's time in Texas helped shape him The Herald Democrat. Retrieved September 6, 2021. in a military hospital in Hawaii and later was sent to Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Abilene, Texas, to train as a medical administrative officer.Eli Wallach - American actor Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved September 6, 2021.Eli Wallach, Multifaceted Actor on Stage and Screen, Dies at 98 The New York Times via Internet Archive. Retrieved September 6, 2021. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was ordered to Casablanca. Later, when he was serving in France, a senior officer noticed his acting career and asked him to create a show for the patients. He and his unit wrote a play called Is This the Army?, which was inspired by Irving Berlin's This Is the Army. In the comedy, Wallach and the other actors mocked Axis dictators, with Wallach portraying Adolf Hitler. Wallach was discharged as a captain following the war's end in 1945. He was awarded the Army Good Conduct Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic–Pacific Campaign Medal, the European–African–Middle Eastern Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.
Career
Stage actor Wallach took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School in New York City with the influential German director Erwin Piscator. He later became a founding member of the Actors Studio, taught by Lee Strasberg. There, he studied more method acting technique with founding member Robert Lewis, and with other students including Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Herbert Berghof, Sidney Lumet, and his soon-to-be wife, Anne Jackson. Wallach became Marilyn Monroe's first new friend when she became a student at the Actors Studio, once insisting on watching him perform in The Teahouse of the August Moon from the backstage wings, simply to see up close how experienced actors perform a two-hour play.Gottfried, Martin. Arthur Miller: His Life and Work, Da Capo Press (2003), p. 245. She also became friends with his wife, Anne Jackson, also studying at the Studio, and would visit the couple at their home and sometimes babysit their new child.
In 1945 Wallach made his Broadway debut and he won a Tony Award in 1951 for his performance alongside Maureen Stapleton in the Tennessee Williams play The Rose Tattoo. His other theater credits include Mister Roberts, The Teahouse of the August Moon, Camino Real, Major Barbara (in which director Charles Laughton discouraged Wallach's established method acting style), Luv, and Staircase, co-starring Milo O'Shea, which was a serious depiction of an aging homosexual couple. He also played a role in a tour of Antony and Cleopatra, produced by the actress Katharine Cornell in 1946.Mosel, "Leading Lady: The World and Theatre of Katharine Cornell. He exposed Americans to the work of playwright Eugène Ionesco in plays including The Chairs and The Lesson in 1958, and in 1961 Rhinoceros opposite Zero Mostel. He last starred on stage as the title character in Visiting Mr. Green.
The stage was where Wallach focused his early career. From 1945 to 1950 he and his wife, Anne Jackson, worked together acting in various plays by Tennessee Williams. The five years following, he continued only working on stage, not becoming involved in film work until 1956. During those years, however, they were generally having a hard time making ends meet. He recalls they were getting along on unemployment insurance and living in a one-room, $35 a month apartment on lower Fifth Avenue in the Village. When he did get offered early movie parts, he turned them down with no regrets, and very early in his career he explained his reasoning:
He said that the stage was what attracted him most and what he "needed" to do. "Acting is the most alive thing I can do, and the most joyous", he stated.
Wallach and Jackson became one of the best-known acting couples in the American theater, as iconic as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, and they looked for opportunities to work together. During an interview, he said of Jackson, "I have tremendous respect and admiration for her as an actress . . . we have a terrific working compatibility when we're in the same play, especially when the play means something important to us." When he did gravitate toward accepting parts in films, he did so to "help pay the bills", he said, adding, "for actors, movies are a means to an end."
Despite the fact that he eventually acted in over 90 films and almost as many television dramas, he continued to accept stage parts throughout his career, often with Jackson. They played in comedies like The Typists and The Tiger in 1963, and acted together in Waltz of the Toreadors in 1973. In 1978 they played in a revival of The Diary of Anne Frank, along with their daughters, and in 1984 they acted in Nest of the Wood Grouse, directed by Joseph Papp. Four years later, in 1988, they acted in a revival of Cafe Crown, a portrait of the Yiddish theater scene during its prime. They continued acting together as late as 2000, while he also took on roles alone throughout all those years.
Film and television roles
Wallach's film debut was in Elia Kazan's controversial 1956 Baby Doll, for which he won the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) as "Most Promising Newcomer." Baby Doll was controversial because of its underlying sexual theme. Director Elia Kazan however, set explicit limits on Wallach's scenes, telling him not to actually seduce Carroll Baker, but instead to create an unfulfilled erotic tension. Kazan later explained his reasoning:
Wallach went on to a prolific career as "one of the greatest 'character actors' ever to appear on stage and screen", notes Turner Classic Movies, acting in over 90 films. Having grown up on the "mean streets" of an Italian American neighborhood, and his versatility as a method actor, Wallach developed the ability to play a wide variety of different roles, although he tried not to get pinned down to any single type of character. "Right now I'm playing an old man", he said at age 84. But "I've been through all the ethnic groups, from Mexican bandits to Italian Mafia heads to Okinawans to half-breeds, and now I'm playing old Jews. Who knows?"
Noting this versatility as a character actor, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences called him "the quintessential chameleon", with the ability to play different characters "effortlessly", and L.A. Times theater critic Charles McNulty saw Wallach's "power to illuminate" his various screen or stage personas as being "radioactive." The Guardian has written that "Wallach was made for character acting", and includes movie clips from some of his most memorable roles in a tribute to him.
In 1961, Wallach co-starred with Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Clark Gable in The Misfits, Monroe's and Gable's last film before their deaths. Wallach never learned why he was cast in the film, although he suspected that Monroe had something to do with it. Its screenwriter, Arthur Miller, who was married to Monroe at the time, said that "Eli Wallach is the happiest good actor I've ever known. He really enjoys the work."
Some of his other films included The Lineup (1958); Lord Jim (1965) with Peter O'Toole; a comic role in How to Steal a Million (1966), again with O'Toole, and Audrey Hepburn; and as Tuco ("the Ugly") in Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) with Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, followed by other Spaghetti Westerns, such as Ace High. At one point, Henry Fonda had asked Wallach whether he himself should accept a part offered to him to act in a similar Western, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), which would also be directed by Leone. Wallach said "Yes, you'll enjoy the challenge", and Fonda later thanked Wallach for that advice.
Wallach and Eastwood became friends during the filming of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and he recalled their off-work time together: "Clint was the tall, silent type. He's the kind where you open up and do all the talking. He smiles and nods and stores it all away in that wonderful calculator of a brain." In 2003 Wallach acted in Mystic River, produced and directed by Eastwood, who once said "working with Eli Wallach has been one of the great pleasures of my life.", video, 4 min.