Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson and Tennessee Williams at the opening of a revival of Camino Real on Broadway, 1970
Eli Wallach: A Personal Remembrance
Eli Wallach died eight years ago today. His name, for me, inspires wonderful memories.
When I lived in Los Angeles in the 1980s, I took an “Acting for Directors” class from Judy Weston in Santa Monica. I was a terrible actor, but the fun we had in those classes I will remember for a lifetime. One of the toughest roles Judy ever assigned me was to play Kilroy, in Tennessee Williams’ 1953 play, Camino Real.
Taking place in the main plaza of a dead-end Spanish-speaking town, the play goes through a series of confusing and almost logic-defying events, including the revival of the Gypsy's daughter's virginity and then the loss of it again. A main theme that the play deals with is coming to terms with the thought of growing older and possibly becoming irrelevant. Though I wrestled with the material endlessly, I never really got it.
Though I loved Tennessee Williams’ material on the deep South and had known him and drank with him in my 20s in Key West, Camino Real was totally over my head.
After I moved to New York City, I was walking down West 71st Street on a Sunday in the spring of 1999 and I saw a sign outside the ArcLight Theatre. It was for a short running tribute to Williams by two actors who really knew him well, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson. The show was to open that afternoon and I bought a front row ticket on the spot at the box office.
Called ''Tennessee Williams Remembered,'' the show was built around the two actors relationships with the playwright. It was directed by Gene Saks. The play was scheduled to run only 35 performances over five weeks.
I had known Eli Wallach’s performances from his classic films, like The Magnificent Seven and The Misfits, but what I didn’t know of was he and his wife’s long collaboration with Tennessee Williams. The couple’s association with Williams dated to a 1946 production of ''This Property Is Condemned.'' They were married two years later.
Wallach later won a Tony Award when he appeared in the 1951 production of ''The Rose Tattoo,'' playing Alvaro Mangiacavallo, a truck driver who woos and wins Serafina Delle Rose, a Sicilian widow living on the Gulf Coast. Both Wallach and Stapleton won Tony Awards for their work in the play.
Next, Wallach played Kilroy in ''Camino Real'' in 1953, and the 1956 William’s film, ''Baby Doll.'' Jackson received a Tony nomination in ''Summer and Smoke'' in 1948.
That afternoon, watching Wallach perform the same scene I had so destroyed in Judy Weston’s class was a revelation. Wallach unlocked the mystery for me and it was a joy to watch a master perform William’s work.
Camino Real, I learned, had begun as a workshop by Elia Kazan at the Actor’s Studio and had gone on to Broadway. The only consolation from that day was that even Elia Kazan admitted he had misinterpreted the play at first by infusing it with excessive naturalism.
Wallach and Jackson went through their Williams plays in excerpts and then reminisced about working with the great playwright. The show was a brilliant eye-opener for me and a wonderful and loving tribute.
Later, I met Wallach several more times and always engaged him in conversations about working with Williams, my favorite writer about issues in the South. It was a subject Wallach always warmed up to and clearly a period in his life that he loved to remember.