Eli Wallach in conversation

As part of our season of Classic Westerns we were delighted to be able to welcome Eli Wallach to the NFT for and on-stage interview. Since his debut screen performance in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll in 1956 (for which he was awarded a BAFTA for most promising newcomer) he has become one of Hollywood's most recognisable and accomplished actors. Prior to this interview there was a screening in Sergio Leone's classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Il Brutto, il Buono, il Cattivo) which features one of Wallach's most memorable roles; the lying, two-faced Tucco.

Interview © BFI 2005

Niall Macpherson: So, welcome to the NFT.

Eli Wallach: I love the NFT.

NM: I'd like to start off by asking, I guess, quite an obvious question, which is what led you into acting in the first place? Would it be fair to say you had a passion for acting from a young age?

EW: Yes. From the age of four or five. I went to see a lot of Westerns then. But it was silent movies and I loved everything that happened then. I never dreamed I would do Westerns. I came from Brooklyn. But I went to the University of Texas in the 30s, and while there I learned to ride. Mostly polo ponies. It's very difficult riding horses, away from Hollywood. The Hollywood horses are all trained - they'll switch to the right and look to the left, but the horses we used abroad always looked at me and thought 'what the hell am I sitting on...' But that's a very exciting movie. I haven't seen it for a while. They put back about fifteen minutes. When it was originally sold in America, it was too long, and they... publishers, or whoever distributes them said 'no... they'll only be able to show the movie twice in a day' so they cut fifteen minutes, which Sergio refused... but it was cut. He died between times, but they decided to put back several of the scenes and it went back to... it's almost three hours. I kept thinking 'do you all have to go to the bathroom...?' [laughter]

It wasn't a big hit in New York... in America... when it came, but slowly it grew and it became a kind of classic... I enjoyed doing it. It was my second Western. The first one was called The Magnificent Seven [1960] [applause]. That was shot in Mexico. This was shot... all the Civil War stuff was shot in the north of Spain, near Burgos. And the dictator of Spain, Franco, was in power then and he loaned 1,000 soldiers. They each got a dollar a week, I think. And so they went. The bridge was built by a Spanish expert and an Italian helper designed how the bridge would blow. But I don't want to go into it - it's a hell of a long story. There's an old gag about... who's the man who looked up... Cecil B. DeMille... and he was looking up, and they said 'ready when you are.' And they made a mistake and they blew this whole thing up. That happened in this movie.

But Clint I love, because Clint was my mentor. I knew nothing about making an Italian movie. When I first heard that Leone wanted me to play it... the reason I picked to do it was the credit... when his name appeared on the screen, and it said 'directed by Sergio Leone' and a hand came out and shot his name off the screen. And I thought 'oh that's courageous. I'll do it.' And then they said 'but it's a spaghetti Western,' and I said 'that's like Hawaiian pizza... I didn't know what the hell...' [laughter] It was four months, six days a week - one day off on Sunday - and it was rough going.

NM: You mentioned your time at the University of Texas and you also did some acting at that point as well, didn't you?

EW: Oh no, I...

NM: Did you not do anything at all?

EW: We had what they called a curtain club. There wasn't a Drama Department. I spent four years there. One of my classmates was Walter Cronkite. He's an old man now... so am I! [laughter]

NM: I'd like to talk a little bit about the period in the late 40s. a very important period for American theatre, which you were very much a part of. Playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, the Actors' Studio, which you were one of the... could you tell us a bit about...

EW: I was an original member of the Actors' Studio. My wife is there. Where is she?

NM: Anne Jackson was there.

EW: She was an original member of the Actors' Studio. But I met Anne. I'd come out of the army after five years as a medic. I was a medical administrator and we ran hospitals, and I was a Captain in the army at the end, in 1945. I came out of the army and thought 'Broadway, here I come.' I met my wife and, for the next ten years, we did no films at all. She did the first movie and then I did several after. My first movie was written by Tennessee Williams and directed by Kazan and was called Baby Doll [1956], shot in Mississippi, a dangerous place to go then.

NM: It's a good opportunity to take a look at a scene from Baby Doll. The scene we're going to look at comes just at... yourself, your character, Silva, and Carroll Baker's character Baby Doll. She's somewhat overcome by your advances and accusations towards her husband. So if we could take a look at Baby Doll in a moment, that would be fantastic.

[clip]

NM: So that was your first film and... was it... a Bafta for Best Newcomer at that point, you got?

EW: Yes, I won the Bafta. I thought the British were very intelligent. [laughter] I never won an Academy Award.

NM: Oh well, next best thing, eh?

EW: I'm working on it. [laughter]

NM: What was the experience... obviously you'd worked with - in different capacities - with Tennessee Williams's work and with Kazan. How did the experience differ from your stage work to moving on to the big screen, as it were?

EW: Well in this film, Karl Malden played with me. It was my first film. And he said to me 'listen, be careful. Don't open your mouth too large, when you're saying something, because the camera zooms in and they can see your tonsils and your gold teeth and all that. So don't do that.' So the girl appears at the top of the flight of stairs and she says 'Hi-ho, Silva' and Kazan said 'Action' and I said [quietly] 'Hi-ho' [laughter]. And he said 'what happened?' I said 'nothing.' He said 'say it again.' she said 'Hi-ho, Silva' and I said [quietly] 'Hi-ho' [laughter]. And Kazan said 'I don't want the Japanese version...' [laughter] and he said 'oh Karl did it. Karl put you up to it.'

NM: As an actor, how did you find the experience of being on set as opposed to being on stage. Was there a level of freedom that wasn't there...

EW: My wife always says being on stage is like being on a tightrope with no net. Whereas in a film they can cut and shape it and move it. So there are a lot of places they moved in this one you just saw. I used to sneer about movie-making. I thought 'well, it's easy - if it doesn't work they cut back and they do it over.' But I found that movie acting is very difficult. Very. Working with Kazan was an experience because we said to him... we were all in the Actors' Studio, and we said to him 'please don't cut. Don't shoot two lines here and go here... and... two lines there.' I said 'there's a scene in a dining room...' so we played the whole scene, and that's the way... we trained the director not to cut us, and that's the way we enjoyed working.

NM: You've been to London on numerous occasions, but I don't think it was long after making that film that you came to the London stage for the first time.

EW: Yes, this film was made in... Baby Doll was made in '56. I was at Her Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket, playing an Okinawan in 1954...

NM: ...oh, before...

EW: ...and I remember the stage manager saying to me 'there's someone important out front.' I said 'please don't tell me that. Please.' And I came out and I introduced it. I was a little Okinawan and I bowed. And I went... and it was Winston Churchill. [laughter] And I stared at him and I thought 'oh my god...' and he had a hearing aid and he went tap-tap [laughter] and I didn't know if he turned it off or turned it on [laughter]. But for the rest of the play he never changed his expression. That was my... I spent a year there, at Her Majesty's Theatre. My wife and I have played in the West End, directed by Sir John Gielgud and we opened the Edinburgh Festival... so we put our roots down here, too, theatrically. It's a great experience being on the stage in London... also in Brighton. [laughter] And Guildford. [laughter]. And Cambridge.

NM: After your time in London and after making this film, you made numerous films in the States. And the next film I would like to talk to you a little bit about is The Misfits [1961], directed by John Huston. Before having a look at the film, there has been a lot written about the film, about tensions on-set between actors. Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller's relationship spilling onto the set. I'd be very interested to hear what it was like from your perspective.

EW: Marilyn came to New York as a result of a quarrel with a studio in California. I don't think she'd ever seen a play. So one of the producers in New York asked her to come and see Tea House, which was the play I'd done in London for a year, and I was doing it on Broadway. And she came back... they brought her backstage and she said 'how do you do a play for two hours?' I said 'I've been doing it for two years, nearly.' She said 'can I come and see it each night?' I said 'I don't think they'll allow you,' but she'd buy a ticket and come and watch each night. And then we became acquainted. She'd babysit for our children and she was charming. And she went to the studio as an observer. Then when the movie was about to come, I'm sure she was an influence on Miller to get me to play... what was my name... Guido . I always played Italians or Greeks... [laughter] I'm now playing old Jews. [laughter] As a matter of fact I've just finished a film with one of your great stars. All my scenes are with her. It'll come out in December. I was a Jewish old screenwriter, and all my scenes were with Kate Winslet, so we had a good time.

NM: Let's have a quick look at a scene from The Misfits.

EW: The Misfits . Shot in Reno, Nevada, and the last week we shot in MGM in California, and it was the last ten days of Gable's life.

[clip]

EW: That last line shakes me every time she says it.

NM: One of the things about your background as an actor, I wanted to ask about, is how did the way you prepare for a role... did that ever come into conflict with somebody such as Gable who has obviously come from a completely different acting background? How did you two work together?

EW: The first day Clark Gable and I worked together, I was sitting in my truck, and he leaned on the glass on the window, just across from it, and John Huston said 'Action.' And I looked at Gable and I kept thinking 'this man is the king of the movies. I wonder if he knows I never saw Gone with the Wind [1939].' [laughter] And Gable looked and thought 'who the hell is this guy from New York with his mysterious Method?' And we just stared at each other and Huston said 'I said Action. Do something!' and 'what's wrong?' and I said 'well I...' and Gable said 'oh, er...' [laughter] and he brought out a glass of Jack Daniel's for each of us and we had it and we bonded right there. From then on it was great fun.

NM: I guess it was around the same time as The Misfits that you made your first Western.

EW: My first Western was called The Magnificent Seven and I said to the director 'it's based on Seven Samurai [1954], the Japanese film...' and I said 'I want to play the crazy samurai...' and he said 'no, that's the love interest...' [laughter] I said 'who do you want me to play?' and he said 'the head bandit.' [laughter] And I said 'I saw the Japanese version, and in the movie, all you saw were the horses' hooves and a rider with a patch over his eye.' He said 'no, no, I want you to be the head bandit.' I said 'all right.' In all the movies - Westerns - I ever saw, you never saw what the bandits did with the money. So I said 'listen, can I try something?' He said 'sure. What?' I said 'I want to have red silk shirts. I want to have a gorgeous horse. I want a great saddle and I'm going to put two gold caps in here, so when I smile the screen lights up.' He said 'all right. Let's do that.

The first day I appeared with tights... chaps... tied tight, I had to get on the horse. I lifted my leg and I couldn't get it in the stirrup. [laughter] I said 'what am I going to do?' and John Sturges, the director, said 'we've worked it out. Here's what you do: raise your leg and put it toward the stirrup. I cut to a man who's standing next to you, then cut back to you... and there you are! You're on your horse! [applause] I got 35 bandits, 35 Mexican people, men, who rode with me. We'd get there in the morning, no make-up, nothing, just with our clothes, and we'd ride for an hour and then come back, perspired and everything and then we'd start shooting. But they were wonderful, wonderful horsemen, who guided me along. Anyway, you want to show that?

NM: Shall we show a bit from that? The Magnificent Seven.

[clip]

EW: Six of the seven are gone...

NM: I always thought the role of Calvera... maybe it's just me, but I always found something quite endearing about him. He certainly wasn't a caricature of evil. He was a... there was something endearing about his... almost fatherly about his posse.

EW: I've always thought... I was in The Godfather Part III [1990], in the Mafia, and they had a rule of thumb. They said 'what we'll do is we'll take over, we'll merge, we'll black out, we'll wipe out.' It all sounded like big business to me. So why don't I do it, this big business in that... and this is what this bandit does. He's got a responsibility, he's got to take care of his men and he does, until the end. Yul Brynner shoots me, I'm lying there like this... and the director said 'Eli, I want the light to go out of your eyes when you die...' I kept thinking 'a lot of actors die and it takes a long time to go, a lot of them, they... you know... so I decided I'll do it like I crossed myself in this movie and just... Leone said to me 'you have to cross yourself,' and I grew up with Italians, so I went to weddings and funerals and this is the way Italians use the shorthand... and I did that all through the movie... [laughter] Where was I? [laughter]

NM: There's been a lot written and talked about, between the seven, particularly between Brynner and McQueen, about the one-upmanship on the set. Did you ever experience any of that yourself?

EW: Any of the competition?

NM: The competition, exactly.

EW: With me and the other actors?

NM: Well, yes.

EW: No, my job was to kill them. [laughter] No, actually I would watch, very carefully. There was a scene I stood alongside the director. And the seven of them came riding across the river. It amazed me - each one found a little bit of business, so that you'd focus your eye on them. And McQueen always... he'd reach down with his hat and scoop up a little water. When they're on their way to a cemetery and McQueen would go... with the bullets, he'd go... and Yul would look at him as though 'why are you doing that in the middle of my scene?' Life goes on...

NM: You had thought initially that the role you played here led to your role in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly [1966], I believe.

EW: No, it didn't.

NM: But it didn't. Yes.

EW: I asked... I couldn't figure out how I was cast in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I met Leone in California. I was introduced to him, and he said 'I just want you to see the credits.' And I saw that thing and I said 'I'll do the movie, what kind is it?' He said 'it's a spaghetti Western.' I said 'that sounds like Hawaiian pizza, what the hell...' but he said 'I want you to do it.' But I never figured out why he cast me. I thought it was from The Magnificent Seven. No, I made a film called How the West Was Won [1963], which was a classic movie, huge cast: Spencer Tracy, John Wayne, Henry Fonda... all of them, and the cast was all set. And at one point... I was always a bandit again... I saw George Peppard and I threatened him and he had two little boys standing next to him and as I left I went to them 'qu-whew, qu-whew.' Leone said 'I want that man to do the movie, because of what he did.' [laughter]

NM: So you did do The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and obviously, in terms of the production, it was an entirely different environment than what you were used to. How different was it?

EW: Clint, who was my mentor, as I said, said to me 'don't show off, don't do any stunts, don't be too clever, because they don't expend a lot of money on stunts, on stunt people. They'll use you...' [laughter] So there's a scene where I'm trying to break the... what do you call it, the... handcuffs. I killed that man, lay in between the tracks... and the train is coming. Leone said to me 'I want you, when the train is coming, to turn your head this way, so the camera is there and they'll see it's not an extra, and it's not a stand-in, and it's not a stuntman, it's you.' So I turned this way and the train went by. As it went by the last step on the train was sticking out this way, and if I had raised my head I'd have been decapitated.

Leone came over to me with a cameraman and said 'Eli, we have to do it again... little thing with a...' I said 'not with me, you're not going to do it with me.' [laughter] He said 'yeah, yeah, I'll tell you what we'll do, we dig the hole a little deeper, okay?' 'All right.' The train comes, very slowly, and I turn this way and I'm way down. When the scene is over, the cameraman comes running up to Leone and says 'I couldn't see him, he was down in the hole, I didn't see him.' [laughter] But they never changed it. I never did it over again. I had to do a lot of things like falling off that train, pulling him off that train...

NM: There was more than a couple of moments during the shooting of the film where you were put in treacherous positions...

EW: The one with the train...

NM: Also, the scene with the horse... the hanging scene when the horse takes off with you on the...

EW: I said to Leone 'Clint is going to be up there and he's going to shoot.' I had the rope around my neck, like this, and I put in a little extra touch. A lot of English people settled in Almeria, Spain. It was inexpensive to live, the weather, you never had the rain you've been having, and it was very pleasant. And she's... this lady and her face is all red, and the sheriff is saying '...and Tuco Ramirez will be hanged by the neck for this crime and that crime and seduction and rape and murd...' and when he came to 'rape' I looked at this poor lady whose head was all... and I went 'grrr...' [laughter] and Leone had a fit, he said 'keep it in, keep it in.' So you never know, when you dream up a moment like that...

NM: I'd now like to open it out to the audience, and we do have roving mics coming around, so if you make sure that you have a mic in your hand before you ask the question. I will take a question from this gentleman at the front first, and there's a microphone on its way, and then the second question I will take is the gentleman towards the front on this side.

Audience: Hi. Just a question about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. At what point did you realise that it was going to be something special? Was it reading the script or when you were shooting it, and were there any doubts when you were doing it that it might not become what you expected it to become? And one more question: when did you realise - if you ever did - that you were stealing the show, that your performance was so good that... [applause]

EW: never thought I was stealing it. Truly never thought I was stealing the show. You spoke the language you spoke. There's a scene with my brother, who's a priest - remember that scene? He'd look at me with wide eyes because he didn't know what the hell I was saying! But I understood a little Italian, so you don't take advantage of the other actors. It doesn't work. It truly doesn't. About... what was the other question?

Audience: When did you realise that it was going to be a really special movie?

EW: I never thought it was going to be special. And when it first played in America it wasn't special. American actors in American films have to belong to the union... get what they call a residual, a little piece of the... if the film is a hit in America you get a little piece each month, but whenever it comes out. So when... The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is shown in New York and then all over America, maybe twice a month. I would be a millionaire now, but it was an Italian film and I didn't see a nickel! [laughter] But it became a classic film in the sense that people were mesmerised by the cleverness of the director.

What he did was take - and study - the Civil War in detail. So that when that train pulls in and there's a man on it with his arms spread, saying 'traitor' and if you remember a little later on, they open a coffin and they shoot that traitor. So Leone did all that study. Also he economised. There's a General coming with his soldiers on their horses and they ride right past this way, and they kept going around the block and coming back... [laughter] so you thought 'what a huge army!' [laughter] Except that Generalissimo Franco loaned the troops and when they go on that bridge, there are 1,000 soldiers... on the bridge.

NM: There's a question over here.

Audience: Thank you. I just wanted to ask Mr Wallach... I got, like a lot of people, a nice surprise when I watched Clint Eastwood's Mystic River [2003], to see him pop up in that, and I just wondered if he could tell us why he decided to do that, and why he did it uncredited.

EW: Clint Eastwood called and said 'I'm doing a film in Boston. It's called Mystic River. And I'd like you to come and work with me. That it was years and years later, and I said 'how many weeks?' That's the first question the actor asks. He said 'one day.' [laughter] I said 'I don't know.' He said 'listen, it'll be a reunion.' So I went, the one day. I went to Boston and my agent cleverly said 'tell him you don't want any listing in the credits and when any advertising, you don't want to be listed at all.' I thought 'that'll be interesting, because I appear on the screen and nobody knows I'm in the movie.' It was one shot, and this is the way Clint works, I love him. The crew that works with him adore him. He does very clever preparation, and there's no temper, no breaking up, no stealing, nothing on the set except the joy of making a good movie.

So there I was, on the set, as this owner of liquor store, and Clint says to me, this is his direction: 'any time you're ready, Eli.' [laughter] I thought 'I come up to Boston, I'm not getting any credits, at least give me a direction!' [laughter] But he did it, and the two actors with me were Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne, two wonderful actors, and they leaned over and said to me 'Eli, they're not going to cut this scene out of the movie.' I had no idea what the rest of the movie was about, just the liquor store. He said 'you're giving away a lot of the plot.' So that changed my attitude right away. [laughter] And I did it. It took two hours or so, and it was finished and Clint said 'thank you.' We hugged and I went back. A year later I'm sitting in a theatre - the movie was a huge hit - I'm sitting in the theatre next to a little lady next to me, and I'm watching, and I'm watching, and an hour and twenty minutes go by and I had not appeared yet. [laughter] And I thought 'oh, they did it, they really put it over on me, they're not going to show the goddamned scene...' Just then I come on the screen, and the woman goes like this... 'Is that you?!' [laughter] That's the way I did the scene...

NM: I've got a question down in the front here. And then right at the back for the one after that.

Audience: Hello. I just wanted to ask you: the script for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is very funny, very witty, very pithy, and I wondered how much was in the script and how much you improvised or had the opportunity to improvise.

EW: Leone... the crossing was one instance. The business of the man in the gun shop. I adored him because every time I... I knew nothing about guns. I didn't know how to... Leone said 'just take the gun apart...' and he kept the camera rolling on me putting that gun... I had no idea. I hate guns... So this poor man who spoke no English at all, every time I'd do something with one of his guns, he go 'huh... oh...' [laughter] I was so thrilled with him helping me. The one look after I shoot the Indian cut-outs, and one doesn't go down, and the little man goes 'err... err...' [laughter] and then I jump like this... and then the look on his face is... marvellous. In one scene in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone said to one of the actors... who was not an actor... he used a lot of people... especially with one foot off, or fingers gone... he said to the little man who was not an actor 'I want you to count from one to ten. Fast.' So the man's angry, so the man said 'uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove e dieci.' When I saw the movie, his scene was brilliant. Brilliant. He was an angry man... they'd dubbed in everything else... [laughter] and I thought 'here I am, been acting 40 years, and this man is counting!' [laughter and applause]

NM: There's a question at the back, yes.

Audience: Hello. I would just like to know... if you see a movie, especially like this, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, it has a lot of the beautiful shots and great music. How is that on the set? Do you have an idea, while you're making the movie, how it will look, especially since it might not have music...

EW: In The Magnificent Seven, the music was written by Elmer Bernstein and I said to him... I appear at the beginning of that movie on horseback, riding across, to his music, which became the Marlboro song. So I'm riding across, and I said to Elmer 'if only I'd heard that music when I first appeared on the screen - I would have ridden the horse differently.' And the only time I heard music in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was when I was being tortured and that band was playing. Other than that I never heard any music. You don't hear it till later.

NM: There's a gentleman over here towards the back and then afterwards there's a gentleman in the centre...

Audience: Good afternoon, Eli.

EW: Where are you?

Audience: I'm up here... this way.

EW: Oh there!

Audience: I just wanted to ask you about your experience working with Steve McQueen again, on his last film, The Hunter [1980], and what were your reflections, compared to working with him on The Magnificent Seven.

EW: McQueen rode horses brilliantly, he was a wonderful horseman and a very skilful screen actor. When we were shooting The Magnificent Seven and he said to the director 'don't give me too much dialogue. I don't want to say too many lines'... reaction on a screen, listening on a screen is very strong and very valuable, so that's what they did with him. Then, 20 years later, I'm doing a movie with him in California and he was fine, we got along very well. At one point he looked out the window and he said 'you know what I'm going to do when I finish this movie? There's that young man, walking toward a truck, and he's going to get on the truck and ride away. And I'm going to, after this movie, I'm going to get on the truck and I'm going to ride away. I'm going to marry some little girl in a small town somewhere and I'll be happy... happy ever after.'

I said 'well that's a hard decision to make, just to walk away.' Someone called me from England, months later, and said 'did you know that Mr McQueen was dying?' And I said 'what do you mean? He was in great shape while we shot...' but he evidently did a lot of motorcycle riding, a lot of stuff in China, where they were doing that movie and there was a lot of... what do you call it... where you inhale a lot of the... asbestos. He had asbestiosis and he went to Mexico to where we'd made The Magnificent Seven, to try to find some quacks down there who could help him, and they gave him coffee enemas and stuff. And none of it worked and he left. So that was my experience with him.

NM: Gentleman in the middle, down here.

EW: Him, with the eyeglasses.

NM: You can shout if you wish, yes.

Audience: I was going to ask about Baby Doll which, I remember as a schoolboy, had considerable publicity and I think my local bishop called it depraved. [laughter]

EW: That's a great way to start movies. [laughter]

Audience: I was going to add I think he said we shouldn't see it. My parents immediately went to see it.

EW: It was condemned by the Catholic Church. Cardinal Spellman said any priest or any Catholic seeing it is in danger of being excommunicated. And I thought 'I thought it was a real love story.' I didn't know what the hell he was talking about.

Audience: Did you feel at the time this was going to...

EW: Before it was even shot, they went over it carefully. Said 'take this out, take that out...' It's... a simple story. Tennessee wove together two short one-acters. One was called 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and the other was called The Unsatisfactory Supper. And he welded them together. But I had no idea that it was that salacious or that dirty. Time magazine said 'this is probably the most pornographic movie ever made. It's full of...' one kind of... word... I forget the word. It's based on a Greek god... a Roman god, and it said 'it's so bad that it would cause you to lose your faith in anything.' And I thought 'I haven't lost my faith at all. I just made the movie. My intent all through the movie... I was working for a cotton gin and one man couldn't stand the competition and burned down my cotton gin.

I love what Kazan as a director did. He said... you know, in the movies it takes an hour and a half to light it. It takes time for the sound people to get all set. When it's all ready they say to the director 'we're ready' and usually the director says 'action.' And Kazan said 'no, no, no. I want to turn it around a little bit. You're going to look into your cotton gin which is burned down, and when you're ready - your back is to the camera - when you're ready, signal me with your hand that you're ready. And I'll say [quietly] “action”, like that.' And I did it. I kept looking off there and thinking... and no, but it's not in the movie... but I'm thinking 'what if I came home and my home was burning and my children and my wife were in that fire?' Then I could turn around and look into the camera and you would only think they burned down my cotton gin, but there's a thing in acting called 'it's as if'... it's as if.

My wife and I did a thing in China and... we went for a month all over China. And at one point we do a scene from Romeo and Juliet and we have a big fight in it, a big argument. The Chinese were astounded. They thought we were really fighting. Because in the middle of Romeo and Juliet I say to her... I say to myself... she says 'Romeo, Romeo...' I say 'shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this,' and I do a little jump, and my wife said 'oh Romeo... are you going to do that?' I said 'what?' She said 'the little jump.' I said 'yes. Does it bother you?' She said 'no, as long as I know. Where's the stage manager? He's going to do a little jump. Now you never did a little jump before.' 'I know he's never put it in before, but he's doing...' I said 'I'm not going to do the little jump...' and she said 'no, no, keep doing it...' Anyway the Chinese thought we were fighting, they were horrified. Horrified. I said 'every time I have a creative moment, you kill it.' [laughter]

NM: I'm going to take a question... there's a lady there with her hand up... and then next, the gentleman with the blue shirt on...

Audience: Good afternoon, Mr Wallach.

EW: Good afternoon.

Audience: A basic question, really. Out of all the parts you've done, stage, movie, TV, which part has given you the greatest satisfaction, and why?

EW: You know, we have three children, that's like saying 'which one do you really like the best?' [laughter] I don't know. I've done... my wife and I did plays. We did a play called Rhinoceros. It was not a success here, it was quite a success in America. But we've done plays that given us great joy, great pleasure to do, and we opened the Edinburgh festival, in a play called Twice around the Park, about an old couple who are doing exercise and there's a voice saying 'now the wife will halt, the wife will now get the towels and dry the husband's head and say “thou art that half of my being which maketh me complete”.' And she did it. Then they said 'the husband will take the other towel and wipe... and say “thou art the...”' and I said 'thou art...' and my wife whispered 'that half...' I said 'that half...' [laughter] '...of my being which...' She said '...which maketh me...' I said 'shut up, goddammit...' [laughter] The next day the reviews were wonderful. The next day the theatre was jammed... jammed with women. [laughter] No men showed up, and it was great, because they were thrilled the way this little lady fought back in the play.

NM: Something you mentioned in your biography, which is fantastic and I recommend anybody... I don't think you can get it in bookshops here. You can certainly get it on Amazon, so go online after this. But one of the things you say, which is kind of part of that, is that one of the reasons, you think, behind your... such a successful marriage, is that you have the ability to have arguments on stage and get some of the emotion out...

EW: We save on psychiatrists and analysts... [laughter] No, Anne has this pat answer. They say 'well, how do you make a marriage work?' We were doing an interview, and Anne is an imp, she said 'we have a terrible announcement to make...' and that made everybody... but Anne's answer is flat, she says 'it's because I'm a saint.' [laughter and applause] Oh, I'll tell one more story. She gets angry when... the most mail I get for anything I've ever done, movies, television, radio, anything, is one episode of Batman. [laughter] I played Mr Freeze in Batman [1966]. I did it with a German accent 'I'm going to freeze ze whole world...' [laughter] That's the most mail I get for anything I ever did. I got $350 for one episode.

Three years ago Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr Freeze and got $20 million. [laughter] And I said to my wife '...I can't understand it... the man can hardly speak English and he...' [laughter] and my wife said 'lift weights.' [laughter] Several months ago we were in Washington, at a summer fair and the lady said 'there'll be a package for you when you get home.' And I got home. Evidently she had spread this story about - the money and all. I get home and there's a black box, and it says 'From the Office of the Governor of California.' And I open it and there are two weights, each about 4oz. [laughter] And I recently saw him in California and I said 'you know, I got $350, you got 20 million...' He said '22 million.' [laughter]

NM: Yes, question here, thank you.

Audience: Eli, hello. First of all, thanks for coming here this afternoon. I'm really enjoying your visit and your chat with us. The question I was going to ask was actually asked just before, so the only thing I can think to ask you is... clearly you've got a good sense of humour, a very strong sense of fun, which comes through in the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. A very demanding role, physically demanding role. Were you allowed to have a holiday afterwards?

EW: Only Sunday. We worked every day except Sunday. There were no hotels there. We're leaving here, and we're flying to Barcelona on Monday, and then we get off that plane and get on another plane and go to a little town where most of the film was shot - except for the Civil War - was shot in Almeria, Spain, where they made Lawrence of Arabia [1962]. So we're going to get there, they're closing the town and they're honouring me for this movie. They've become rich because of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And they're going to take me out to the original little village at the beginning of the movie where... I jumped out of that window three times... [laughter]

NM: We've got time for a couple more questions, and there's a gentleman down in the front here, and there's very animated waving going on at the back and we'll go for that one as well.

Audience: Mr Wallach, you hear stories about Gable and Monroe, McQueen etc. on the sets, but I certainly never heard anything about Lee Van Cleef, you just see him on the screen and you don't see him when you walk out. What was it like working with him? Would you say he was an underrated actor?

EW: Well he'd made a lot of films in California before he made this Western, but he'd just bought a brand new Mercedes and he was so proud he took me for rides on it, and he was a very sweet man. You notice in the scene where we're in the cemetery, one of his fingers is cut off. That's Leone's touch... use all those touches. But he was a very gentle, sweet man and I enjoyed acting with him. I hated it when they shot him. [laughter] Oh, I know what... about shooting. Did I tell it? My son said to me 'why did you let Yul Brynner shoot you like that, Dad?' I said 'Peter...' He said 'couldn't you outdraw Yul Brynner?' [laughter] I said 'Peter, if it says I get shot, I get shot.' He never accepted that. [laughter]

NM: Yes, and there's a question at the very back...

Audience: I have a very awkward question to ask you, and I'd really like to you confirm or deny... because it seems to me that you are, in this particular instance, the horse's mouth. Now we've seen your debut in Baby Doll but I understand that your debut was to be in the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity [1953] that eventually got Frank Sinatra his Academy Award, and I wonder if the reason why you didn't play the part was because the producer, Harry Cohn found a horse's head in his bed... [laughter]

EW: No, I tell you, I'd been on the road for a year and a half, and in New York, in a play called The Rose Tattoo, by Tennessee Williams, and he a preparing the second play, to be called Camino Real. I think it was done here sometime later. But I fell in love with it. It was a fantasy, a great play and I wanted very much to play it. So... they couldn't raise the money, because it was a strange play, and my agent took me to see Harry Cohn, and he said to me - he's on the phone - and he said to me '...one picture a year, seven years.' I said 'no, no. one picture. If you like it, I might do another one, if I like it...' 'Oh,' he says, 'all right. You'll have to test with the director, for a film.' I said 'okay.' I did the test for... what's his name... Fred Zinnemann, a wonderful director, and I got the part. I got the part and I'm all excited, my first film... and the money for the play came in, Camino Real, to be directed by Elia Kazan, and written by Tennessee Williams, and shaped a lot for my character. So I thought 'there's a lot of celluloid there, I'll choose to do the play.'

The play was not a success, it was not, but a beautiful play. One of the greatest theatrical experiences I ever had. And you read all these stories about Ava Gardner going and saying she'll go to bed with anybody if Frank can get the part or whatever, and putting the horse's head... all of that is nonsense. It was turned down and Frank finally got the part. And every time he'd see me after that he'd say 'helloooo, you crazy actor.' [laughter] We became very good friends. As a matter of fact my wife made a Western, with Frank Sinatra, called Dirty Dingus Magee [1970] and she said to the director 'I've seen Eli in all these... I don't like horses and I don't like guns.' He said 'that's the whole picture...' [laughter] And she did the movie, she played the madam of a whorehouse, and she was charming. [laughter]

NM: You mentioned earlier on that you've got... you've just finished a film with Kate Winslet and others, which is out later in the year, and I believe you've just finished another one where you played Noah Dietrich, which is probably out sometime next year.

EW: But they don't know who Noah Dietrich is. Noah Dietrich was the right-hand man of Howard Hughes, and it's an interesting... and it's with Richard Gere . It's an interesting movie.

NM: Have you ever had any desire at all to put your feet up, take a break from acting?

EW: When they bury me. [laughter]

NM: I think that's something we can all be very grateful for. Ladies and gentlemen, Eli Wallach. [applause]