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The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage by Eli Wallach
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Eli Wallach Edition: Hardcover Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2005-05-09 ISBN: 0151011893 Number of pages: 320 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Book Reviews of The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My AnecdotageBook Review: Anecdotes of Eli Wallach permeated with his good-natured outlook on life. Summary: 5 Stars
Like many men his age, Eli Wallach has become anecdotal, as he freely acknowledges in his subtitle. This autobiography, therefore, isn't one of those arrogant books that bully you with pushy claims that "you can't put it down," books that demand grueling hours of sustained reading when you might prefer to take a break now and then to watch the news or have a sandwich.
The high anecdote content of Wallach's book means that you can clap it shut just about anytime you like, because anecdotes are meant to be followed by a pause of a few moments' duration, like a tacit bar in a musical score, allowing readers time to chuckle or reflect or take a sip of restorative. Under no circumstances would anyone want to interrupt the author in mid-anecdote. He's a richly gifted raconteur who could draw a crowd just by telling about the last time he had his teeth cleaned.
And of course, after an anecdote ends, it isn't long before another one begins. (Brilliant!) Was it Wallach who said, "I got a million of 'em!"?
Despite his long and successful career, Wallach is possessed of sufficient humility to accept the fact that in some of his stories he plays only a minor role. When he talks about working with Charles Laughton, for example, he recognizes that it's Wallach telling about working with Laughton, not the other way around. Likewise, some of the most entertaining bits are his recollections of Tennessee Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, Yul Brenner, Elia Kazan, and many others.
But he also knows when to focus on himself, as he does in a story about Eva Le Gallienne's Broadway production of Alice in Wonderland. She had chosen the young Wallach to play the role of a duck --- not a part that he had coveted, though he was following in the webbed-footsteps of Burgess Meredith. Nor was he reconciled on opening night as he watched fellow actors who were more comfortably costumed and had speaking parts, while he could only quack.
As often happens in such situations, things took a turn for the worse. The caterpillar around whose mushroom Alice would dance and sing in an upcoming scene had failed to report for duty, and Miss Le Gallienne elected to sacrifice the duck in the interest of a creature with lines. Though he was unhappy as a duck, Wallach balked at the change, so she ordered the stage manager to wrestle him out of the duck costume, stuff him into the caterpillar suit, and push him back onto the stage. From the wings she commanded: "Go out and play that caterpillar!" Wallach remarks a bit anticlimactically and perhaps unnecessarily that Miss Le Gallienne never thanked him for his "courageous" performance.
Arthur Miller called Wallach "the happiest good actor" he'd ever known. He was, after all, a kid from Brooklyn who wound up with the girl of his dreams, the actress Anne Jackson, and the only job he'd ever wanted. His book is so thoroughly permeated by his good-natured outlook on life that it might be a '30s musical.
--- Reviewed by H.V. Cordry
Summary of The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My AnecdotageThe 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.
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