Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

Eli Wallach’s 10 Greatest Roles (A Completely Biased List)

Eli Wallach, who died yesterday at 98, once joked that he had played hundreds of roles onstage and in movies, but was perhaps most remembered for playing the role of the villain Mr. Freeze on the old “Batman” TV series. Although Wallach’s “Batman” turn was a memorable one, we’ve cho]sen to look back at some of the other more memorable moments of the Tony and Academy Award-winning actor’s career:

10) The Lineup: 1958

Kind and approachable in real life, Wallach could be a terrific onscreen villain, as was the case in the Don Siegel film in which he played the terrifying killer with the improbable name of Dancer.

9) Mystic River: 2003

Wallach’s most demanding role? Hardly. But, when I saw the Clint Eastwod flick, the moment he appeared onscreen playing a liquor store owner, the audience burst into applause. Which seems reason enough to include it here.

8) The Holiday: 2006

This thoroughly enjoyable bit of date movie fluff features a delightful performance by Wallach as the former Hollywood scriptwriter Arthur Abbott. The chemistry between Wallach and Kate Winslet is far more convincing than that between any of the other characters.

7) Winter Kills: 1979

Arguably the last hurrah in the genre of 1970s conspiracy thrillers, this star-studded film, featuring an oddball crew including Jeff Bridges, Sterling Hayden and John Huston, also features a memorable turn by Wallach as a sleazy nightclub owner.

6) How To Steal a Million: 1966

Wallach was not know for light comedy, but in this frothy tale of romance and jewel thievery, he proved he could more than keep pace with co-stars Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole.

5) The Tiger Makes Out: 1967

Eli Wallach and his wife Anne Jackson enjoyed many fruitful collaborations with the playwright Murray Schisgal. The sexual politics of the film are more than a little dated, and it’s hard to get a copy of the movie, but this represents one of the few opportunities to see Wallach and Jackson together onscreen.

4) The Magnificent Seven: 1960

Bandit roles suited Wallach, perhaps most notably Calvera in John Sturges’s American re-working of Akira Kurosawa’s “The Seven Samurai.”

3) The Misfits: 1961

The last film for Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift, this storied feature that would become the subject of Arthur Miller’s last play “Finishing The Picture,” featured a breakout role for Wallach playing Guido, one of the movie’s lost cowboys.

2) Baby Doll: 1956

Directed by Elia Kazan and written by Tennessee Williams, this was of the most aggressively perverse and controversial movies to come out of 1950’s Hollywood. Wallach played Silva Vaccaro, the conniving owner of a cotton gin.

1) The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: 1968

Wallach starred as the third titular character in Sergio Leone’s archetypal spaghetti western featuring the greatest graveyard scene in movie history, scored by Ennio Morricone.

Adam Langer is the Forward’s arts and culture editor.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.