It's ironic that Eli
Wallach's most obvious legacy is his role as Tuco, the Ugly part of
Sergio Leone's
The Good The Bad and The Ugly. But it's a legacy he
embraced, playing with the title in his autobiography, and it also
makes sense because Wallach, who thought of himself as a stage actor
keeping busy and making money in movies, became the kind of character
actor who can carry a film.
You can see the better
part of his movie career reflected from his first two films,
Baby
Doll (1956) and
The Lineup (1958).
Baby Doll was adapted from a
Tennessee Williams one-act play (Elia Kazan claimed he, not Williams,
wrote most of the screenplay, but then, he would). Wallach was a
favourite actor of Williams'; he'd madehis name on Broadway in
The
Rose Tattoo, did
This Property Is Condemned with his wife Anne
Jackson (they had one of the great marriages of American theatre) and Camino Real.
The way the story goes, in 1953 Wallach
nailed the screen test for the role of Maggio in
From Here To
Eternity, but passed on the film to do
Camino Real on stage.
Of course the way
the other story goes is that someone made someone an offer they
couldn't refuse to cast Frank. He and Jackson also played, with Zero
Mostel, in the 1961 Broadway production of
Rhinocerus; he'd
already done Ionesco's
The Chairs and
The Lesson in 1958. I think
he's perfect for Theatre of the Absurd. He, Jackson, and Alan Arkin
were in Mike Nichol's production of Murray Schisgal's
Luv, and around the time he did
Rhinoceros Wallach and Mostel appeared off-Broadway in a version of
Ulysses directed by Burgess Meredith. It's a same he never appeared
in any of the American Film Theatre productions; it would be
wonderful to have a record of some of his theatre at his very peak.
In
Baby Doll, Wallach
plays Silva Vaccaro, who owns a cotton gin which his rival Karl
Malden burns down, and he retaliates by seducing Malden's wife,
Carroll Baker, who's still a virgin due to a promise Malden made her
father, and who parades infantilized self around in what we now call
baby doll nighties. This is Tennessee Williams at his best. It was
the first of his great sleazy ethnic roles; he's rut
hless, he's
charming, and, as when he played Tuco, he can physically express
something rat like in Vaccaro's character. In contrast, for Don
Siegel's
The Lineup, based on a popular TV show, he's Dancer, a
psychopathic but stylish professional killer, rounding up heroin
stashed in tourists' souvenirs. It's a slick procedural which Siegel turns thrilling as Wallach is eventually cornered.
These characteristics
of charm, violence, ethnic grease and style came together in Calvera,
the leader of the bandits who comes face to face with
The Magnificent
Seven defending a poor Mexican village. Of course Wallach was coming
off playing a cowboy role in
The Misfits. There's little doubt Leone
had Calvera in mind when he cast Wallach as Tuco, though Leone
himself always said it was Wallach's playing a bandit in
How The West
Was Won that convinced him. Leone liked to cast method (or
method-style) actors against 'natural' actors to great effect:
Volonte/Van Cleef/Wallach against Eastwood; Jason Robards opposite
Charles Bronson; Rod Steiger and James Coburn. In Wallach, he
certainly got more than he bargained for. Compare Wallach's Tuco with
Gian Maria
Volonte's Indio from
For A Few Dollars More; Volonte is
all inward chaos and explosive violence; Tuco is all outward chaos
hiding almost as explosive, if slightly less sociopathic, violence.
Wallach made three
other spaghetti westerns, the best of which is probably Ducio
Tessari's Don't Turn The Other Cheek, set against a Mexican
Reviolution, in which he plays alongside Franco Nero and Lynn
Redgrave (!). The others are Corbucci's late (1975) 'comedy' The
White, The Yellow And The Black and Ace High (1968) with Terrence
Hill (playing a character called Cat Stevens!) and Bud Spenser. Leone
wanted to reunite Wallach, Clint Eastwood, and Lee Van Cleef; they
were going to be killed off at the start of Once Upon A Time In The
West. Wallach and Van Cleef had agreed, but by then Clint was feuding
with Leone over both creative and financial issues, and it didn't
happen. Luckily, the two reconciled, leading to Clint's touching
dedication of The Unforgiven 'to Sergio and Don (Siegel)', both
directors who got the best out of Eli Wallach.
Eastwood would bring
him back in one of his best later roles; he absolutely kills the part
of a liquor store owner telling the cops about an old robbery; Larry
Fishburne and Kevin Bacon just stand there and admire him.
I
'd like to mention a
few other hidden gems from Wallach's career: everyone mentions his
role in
Godfather III, but he also played Don Vittorio in the
much-neglected
Crazy Joe, one of the best of the spaghetti crime films
. He played ABC television's corporate boss
Leonard Goldenson, the capo di tutto capi when I worked there, in the
TV movie
Monday Night Mayhem, about the creation of Monday Night
Football. There's a 1992 episode of
Law & Order,
Working Stiff,
in which he's hugely touching as a bitter old union man. He had a
nice cameo in
The Ghost, as a conspiracy-believing recluse on Martha's
Vineyard. Ewan MacGregor can only look on in awe.
There's an interesting
little bit of trivia I came across when I thought I might write
Wallach's obit: his daughter Roberta played opposite Paul Newman's
daughter Nell Potts (and Joanne Woodward) in the film Newman directed
of Paul Zindel's The Effects Of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon
Marigolds. It was sort of a like one of those neighbourhood projects,
but I remember seeing it when it was released, and liked it then, and
wonder if the kids' performances would hold up now. Nell Potts now
runs 'Newman's Own'.
As I said, I was hoping
to write Eli Wallach's obit for one of the papers. But when you're
that talented and you reach 98 years old, your obituary had better be
ready to print. As it happened, I couldn't resist writing my
appreciation anyway. What I admire most about him is the way
he always seems to be enjoying what he is doing; like many of the
greatest actors, he doesn't seem to be taking it seriously, even
though he is.
My obituary of the great Italian director Francesco Rosi, appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 30 January. Because of the pressures of moving house, I missed it that day, but it is available online, and you can link to it here.
After Hands Over The City, Rosi had made three features in seven years. None achieved wider wider success, though having just in 2018 finally watched the third of those, Many Wars Ago, he certainly deserved it. After that excellent World war I drama, which was seen as somewhat derivative of Paths Of Glory, Rosi returned to his metier, corruption, conspiracy, and greed, and his next three films, Mattei, Lucky Luciano, and Illustrious Corpses, may be his gritty best. I loved the contrast of Lino Ventura in Illustrious Corpses with Gian Maria Volonte, and Volonte would later draw on the sense of exhuastion and frustration Ventura projected. The film was based on the novel Equal Danger, by 
Adapting Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been problematic for directors, but Chronicle Of A Death Foretold may be the best, even if I'm not as convinced by Rupert Everett as the Telegraph was. In The Palermo Affair, whose script was part written by Gore Vidal but is not very tight, the acting can't carry the film. But The Truce is a loving adaptation of Primo Levi, with John Turturro bringing, oddly enough, a little Rod Steiger to the role.
