ELI WALLACH

Eli Wallach was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1915. He became a Broadway actor after World War II and won a Tony Award in 1951 in Tennessee Williams play "The Rose Tattoo". But Broadway didn't quite know what to do with this fine actor, and he made many TV appearances until he got his big break in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll in 1956. He followed this up two years later with the starring role in Don Siegel's ultra-gritty film noir The Lineup (one of the last of this genre and an excellent movie), but Hollywood too did not know what to do with him, and he did mostly TV in the 1950s. In 1960 he had perhaps his most memorable role, as Calvera in The Magnificent Seven. It seemed this fine Jewish actor had finally found his niche, playing a Mexican bandit leader! He continued with movies, and in 1966 he starred opposite Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in Sergio Leone's classic Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly). The following year he played Mr. Freeze on the Batman TV show, and he settled in as one of the premier character actors, making some 120 appearances since that time. He passed away in 2014 at the age of 98. One of his best films was in Barry Primus' underrated Mistress, from 1992, with Robert Wuhl, Robert De Niro, Danny Aiello, Martin Landau, and many other fine actors and actresses, and I highly recommend it.