An Actor's Actor: Eli Wallach

Talk about a guy who could disappear into a role, and you have to talk about Eli Wallach. Look at this guy's resume (it's as long as both your arms) and there's a good chance you'll recognize less than 10% of what's on it. But somewhere along the line, someone in Hollywood (er, "Italy?") got the idea to go look for Mexican banditos on Broadway.

That's how (in my understanding) Eli Wallach ended up as the heart of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. A far cry from pigeon-holed Western-genre actors, Wallach would breeze through a genre and define it, then move on to something completely different.

One thing that Wallach does well is allow you to stomach a third, long movie starring Clint Eastwood as "The Man with No Name... who Speaks Twice Per Hour." Eastwood is great in his own right at this character, and was one of the most significant bad-good-guys. But this much of him is like ... like ... Hmm. It's too much. The only analogies coming to me right now have to do with alcohol and pancakes, so we'll leave that thought for the time being.

Did you see Eastwood and Van Cleef playing off each other in For a Few Dollars More? That was rough. They're so alike it was like watching two Chewbacca's with no Han Solo's.

Let's not forget: We're not talking about the Governator playing a ripped barbarian or a robot here. We're talking about a guy creating a character far from his own place and time, making it instantly believable.

Wallach is the heart of G,B&U because he plays the parts of villain, jester, victim, and hero. Lee Van Cleef ('the Bad') observed that Wallach's Tuco is the only character the audience really gets to know in the whole movie: 'The Good' and 'The Bad' are such 'iconic' representations that they're almost statues in some ways. Wallach navigates this 3-hour monster with amazing ease, and he makes it bearable for the audience to play along. He does more a lot more positive things than make the movie livable, but I don't want to bury you in a play-by-play of the film.

Here's to Eli Wallach: Who played the only character in 8 hours of Leone that I was able to sympathize with, hate, and laugh at... and an actor with so much range, he defined a role and then vanished into a hundred (or three hundred) other roles.

An Actor's Actor! And a guy I would definitely drive or fly a long way to sit down with over a pint.