The Not-Yet-Dead Set, featuring Eli Wallach

"To be or not to be"? asks Hamlet, somewhere in the 35th hour of the play that bears his name. "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of David of 'David and Goliath' fame and apparently some Comanches, or to nuke those motherfuckers and just be done with it?..." 

Note: my memory might be faulty on that last part. 

Anyhow, every year thousands of children are forced to read that speech, and some, like me (thanks, Mrs. Rafter!) are forced to (sort of) memorize it. 

Read at the above speed, Hamlet still takes seven or eight hours to complete. 

I mention this speech here at the top because it's probably the most famous "should I continue living or not?" speech in literature, and because that seems like a clean setup to talking about people who can be said, by now, to have decided pretty squarely on that question, given that they're older than what geologists like to call "dirt". 

Today's not-dead person? 

-Eli Wallach- 

Wallach is one of the great character actors in cinema history. Born in 1917 in Brooklyn to Jewish parents, Wallach became involved with acting at a young age, training at the legendary Neighborhood Playhouse under Sanford Meisner, whose alumni include such prestigious actors as Robert Duvall and such, you know, unprestigious actors as Amanda Bearse. 

Wallach later transferred to the University of Texas, where he acted in student plays with his eventual wife, Anne Sheridan (to whom he's been married since 1948), and his eventual not-wife, Walter Cronkite (yeah, that one). 

After being discharged from WWII (where he served heroically as a staff sergeant in a military hospital), Wallach moved back to New York, where he began taking classes at the New School. He also began acting on Broadway, winning a Tony Award in 1951.  

This eventually led to roles in films, though usually as some sort of ugly and underhanded person. Wallach's first major film, to give you an example, features him trying to extract "erotic vengance" on the wife of a man he thinks has burned down his cotton gin. 

No seriously, they made a movie about that. 

Wallach eventually landed in roles in more, you know, plausible films, including The Misfits, Lord Jim and The Magnificent Seven (cast not against type as a Mexican bandit who menaces a town for money even a random person walking down it's main street should be able to guess it doesn't have). 

All of this, however, led to his role in one of the greatest films ever made, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Portraying another Mexican bandit, Tuco (the Ugly), Wallach transformed the tough, street-wise Tuco into the most vulnerable and human character in the movie. 

Sadly, Wallach's career has never reached the heights his talent probably deserved. He's acted extensively on Broadway and is well respected, but after turning down the role in From Here to Eternity that won Frank Sinatra an Oscar and having a falling out with Sergio Leone, he pretty much faded from view. 

But that's okay. These days Wallach still acts, albeit only sporadically. He nearly saved the mediocre third Godfather movie with a sensational performance as a rival mob boss and earned an Emmy nomination for a role on one of the few good episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. He also proved hilarious as a foul-mouthed liquor store owner in Mystic River (directed by Clint Eastwood). 

Oh, well. Wallach is by all accounts a very nice guy and ranks near the top on a list of Hollywood people I'd most like to meet (the subject of a future post, no doubt). So keep on living, Eli. Some of us out here still love you.