Saying Goodbye to Eli the Great

Legendary Eli Wallach passed away yesterday, at the age of 98 (via The NY Times):

More often than not, his film roles required him to play mustachioed characters who were lawless, evil or just plain nasty, which puzzled and challenged him. “Actually I lead a dual life,” he once said. “In the theater, I’m the little man, or the irritated man, the misunderstood man,” whereas in films “I do seem to keep getting cast as the bad guys.” His villain roles, he said, tended to be “more complex” than some of his stage roles.

Even so, the theater remained his home base, and he said that he could never imagine leaving it. “What else am I going to do?” he asked in an interview with The Times in 1997. “I love to act.

“I love to act,” he says. And it showed. From the scenery-spewing Calvera in The Magnificent Seven to the batty Tuco in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly to the twitchy, obsessive American tycoon Davis Leland in How to Steal a Million — my favorite, delicious slice of Wallach insanity, personally — there was a palpable vibrancy and energy to the man that was rarely matched. And certainly never surpassed. When he appeared on screen, it (and everyone  sharing the screen with him) just lit up.

The final duel from TGTBaTU features particularly great stuff from Monsieur Wallach, and I plan an “In Memoriam” viewing (or three) over the next few days. But there is nothing that captures his “curiously lovable combination of slyness and bluster” better than this clip (SPOILERS and shootings and death):

Attribution(s): “Eli Wallach Publicity Still” from Hollywood Memorabilia.com; licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.