Celebrity Biographies
Eli Wallach
He has gone down in history as Tuco, the ugly one from Sergio Leone’s western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly . But Eli Wallach is a very versatile actor, forged on stage, capable of coming out on top of the most varied challenges. Throughout his half-century of career, he has accumulated great classics in a filmography that exceeds 150 titles. The actor has died at the age of 98, according to what his daughter told The New York Times.
New Yorker Eli Wallach was born on December 7, 1915, in the popular neighborhood of Brooklyn. Since childhood he already knew that he wanted to become an actor. He debuted in the theater as an amateur at the age of 15. It was after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, when he considered that he had to seriously pursue his vocation, and he ended up getting a scholarship to study drama at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Although when he finished his studies he was beginning to attract attention in the castings, and he did some theatrical work, World War II forced him to postpone his career.
At the end of the contest, he began to thrive on the stage, from the play “Skydrift”, which marked his Broadway debut in 1945. He worked on numerous titles, with which he obtained immense prestige. Critics acclaimed him as one of the greats of the New York theater in the early 1950s, especially after starring in the production of “The Rose Tattoo” by Tennessee Williams , a role that earned him a Tony in 1951. That same year He debuted on television, with small roles in forgotten series and hit shows of the time.
Although the cinema resisted him, he could not have had a more brilliant start. The first filmmaker to notice his talent was Elia Kazan , who gave him an important role in the extraordinary Baby Doll , from 1956, based on a script written by the aforementioned Williams. He played the cotton plantation manager, opposite Karl Malden ‘s character . Wallach stomped his feet and showed that he was a great actor in the seedy but complicated sequence in which he harasses Carroll Baker .
Since then he continued more focused on television until John Sturges hired him to play Calvera, the chief of the outlaws who terrorize a small town, in The Magnificent Seven . He returned to the genre with How the West was Won, although he shone most notably in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , where his role as the roguish Tuco dwarfed two greats: Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef .
He also made a memorable performance in John Huston ‘s legendary Wild Lives , where he was the inseparable friend of Clark Gable who played – like another illustrious co-star: Marilyn Monroe – his last film role. For the rest, Wallach was capable of doing everything from adventure films ( Lord Jim , Genghis Khan ), comedy ( How to steal a million and… , Two Much , by the Spanish Fernando Trueba ), romantic drama ( Permiso para amor until midnight ) western ( Mackenna’s Gold) and even played the villain Mr. Freeze in the television series Batman (1966) , and the mob boss in The Godfather III .
Wallach continued to be active even at an advanced age. He played a rabbi in More Than Friends , Edward Norton ‘s directorial debut , and a veteran screenwriter in The Holiday . He also commanded attention as a grumpy old man who hangs out with his wife in a segment on New York, I Love You . In 2005 he published his autobiography “The good, the bad and me”. He married Anne Jackson , also an actress, in 1948, with whom he had three children.
The actor’s last works were The Writer and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps , from 2010.