Good, The Bad, And Me

by Wallach, Eli

• ISBN13: 9780156031691
• ISBN10: 0156031698
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-08
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

The sparkling memoir of a movie icon's life in the footlights and on camera, The Good, the Bad, and Me tells the extraordinary story of Eli Wallach's many years dedicated to his craft. Beginning with his early days in Brooklyn and his college years in Texas, where he dreamed of becoming an actor, this book follows his career as one of the earliest members of the famed Actors Studio and as a Tony Award winner for his work on Broadway. Wallach has worked with such stars as Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, and Henry Fonda, and his many movies include The Magnificent Seven, How the West Was Won, the iconic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and, most recently, Mystic River. For more than fifty years Eli Wallach has held a special place in film and theater, and in a tale rich with anecdotes, wit, and remarkable insight he recounts his magical life in a world unlike any other.

Author Biography

Born in Brooklyn in 1915, ELI WALLACH remains active in film and is still married to his wife of fifty-six years, Anne Jackson. He lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Writing is just like his acting: pure, deceptively simple, and honest

He has a sharp eye and tells some wickedly funny and touching stories

In an age where every Tom, Dick, and Harry are writing memoirs of half lived lives, here is one of our great elder statesman of acting sharing his wealth of stories of a rich life

Always there is the artist's all-observing eye and all-embracing heart

A great read!"" is the happiest good actor I've ever known

He really enj

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

An Actor Grows in BrooklynUNION STREET was a wide main artery running from Prospect Park past Park Slope down to the docks of the East River. Number 166 housed Bertha's, a small toy, candy, and stationery store named for my mother. A long glass counter ran the length of the store. There was an icebox for soda pop and a pay telephone. On the back wall of the store were shelves, which held toys, big jars of Indian nuts, and cigarettes. The store was always busy in the late afternoons, when longshoremen would drop in after a day of unloading ships' cargo. Over their shoulders, many of them would carry big crooked iron hooks, which seemed to be part of their uniform. They'd drink sodas, make phone calls, buy cigarettes, eat the tiny Indian nuts, then spit the shells all over the floor. I lived in the rear of the store with my parents, Abe and Bertha, my older brother and sister, Sam and Sylvia, and my younger sister, Shirley. Mom and Pop had a bedroom with a big window that looked out onto the alley. Sam had his own bed, and there was a cot for me next to it. Sylvia and Shirley shared the last bedroom. There was one toilet for the six of us. Sam called it the throne room. We all soon learned how to take care of our needs there-no reading, no wasting time, just do your duty, flush, and get out. My baby sister, Shirley, and I used to argue a lot. Sometimes I'd steal her milk bottle. And at dinner we would fight over the wishbone. We'd each hold one end and pull it apart, and the winner would get to make a wish. Even in my earliest memories, my wish was always the same: I wanted to be an actor.JJJI was born in Brooklyn on December 7, 1915, back when the streets were still lit by gas lamps. As soon as it began to get dark, the lamplighter would appear. A little man with a thick black mustache, he carried a long stick with a flint on the end of it. He'd push the stick into an opening of a glass bowl at the top of a lamppost, and a blue-green flame would light up the gas and throw big circles of light down on the street. Right in front of our store, a streetcar ran down the center of Union Street powered by an electric wire overhead.My father, Abe, had been a tailor in southeast Poland and had met my mother, Bertha, in their small town of Przemysl. He had come to America in 1909 and opened the store with the financial backing of his brother Michael, a wealthy furrier who lived in Bensonhurst. Then Abe sent for my mother and my brother Sam. Sometimes Abe would tell us stories about growing up in Poland-Cossacks riding into his village, robbing stores, and killing Jews. He was a wonderful storyteller, but he also had a volatile temper and suffered from severe headaches. Often I remember him holding a hot glass of tea next to his throbbing temple. One night Sam and Sylvia were arguing as I lay between them on the sofa bed. "Quiet," Pop yelled. "Quiet or I'll throw the glass!" That yell from my pop just seemed to add fuel to their arguments. They a

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Excerpted from The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage by Eli Wallach
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