Actor Eli Wallach died at age 98 yesterday. He was born to Polish Jew immigrant parents who ran a candy store in the middle of an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. Wallach graduated from the University of Texas in 1936 with a degree in History and went on to get a Masters in Education at City College of NYC. While at UT he was in a stage play with classmates Ann Sheridan and Walter Cronkite. Wallach served in the Army medical corps during WW2, first in Hawaii, then in Africa and France. He and fellow soldiers wrote a comedy play called
Is This the Army? in which Wallach played Adolf Hitler. After the war he took acting classes with Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and his future wife Anne Jackson. He perhaps best known for his role as the bandit Tuco in the Spaghetti Western
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly with Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef.
