RIP Eli Wallach

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Eli Wallach
Respected and recognizable character actor, Eli Wallach (PeekYou profile here), whose list of onscreen credits is long and stretches back for decades, died on Tuesday at age 98.

Some of the more memorable of his great many parts include his turns in John Huston’s The Misfits, with Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, and Sergio Leone’s classic 1967 western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, with Clint Eastwood (PeekYou profile here)

Without doing his extraordinary life justice, we’re certain, here are some highlights:

Wallach was the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He attended New York’s (then prestigious) City College, from where he ultimately received a master’s in education. He started to, however, pursue acting at this time. He served a two-year stint in the U.S. Army during the Second World War. After leaving the service, he made his Broadway debut in 1945. In 1951 he won a Tony Award for his performance in Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo. Williams was also the screenwriter of Wallach’s feature film debut, Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll, which costarred Karl Malden.

Wallach frequently played outlaws in westerns, such as in the above-mentioned The Good, The Bad… and The Magnificent Seven, with Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner.

The New York Times provides a much more thorough obit here, and a visit to Wallach’s PeekYou profile will provide you with many virtual roads down which you can travel in learning more about this great actor.

Here, in its entirety, is the 1971, Wallach-starring spaghetti western, from director Duccio Tessari, Don’t Turn the Other Cheek (aka, Long Live Death, Preferably Yours):