July 19th, 2014 – Book: ‘The Good, the Bad and Me’ by Eli Wallach.
by Rob Smith, Jr. on Jul.19, 2014, under Books
The Good, the Bad, and Me by Eli Wallach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Of the recent run of legendary celebrity biographies I’ve read, this is one of the more thorough and better written. The first half of Wallach’s life, is well covered, with lot’s of very good stories and insights. Wallach dispels some popular notions involving Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe.
It’s the rest of Wallach’s life that gets truncated to a short 30 odd pages, or the last 6th of the book. Seems maybe Wallach had written up to around his 50th year and editors said,”Hey! Keep this at less than 300 pages!”. So, Wallach did. I can see Wallach doing that.
Something else you can see while reading this book is Wallach narrating the book. The writing is very much in Wallach’s voice and seems to be nearly a transcript of an oral history at times.
I meant to read this book while Wallach was still alive. I realize I’d like to read some of my favorite actor’s stories before they die. I thought I would next go to a couple Doris Day books. Now James Garner has died and I’m going to ‘The Garner Files’ next.
Though, i wish there was much more recorded of Wallach’s life after the mid-60s, what is in the book as a whole is a delightful story of an accomplished actor’s life.
Bottom line: I recommend the book.
Leave a Reply
Linked In
Networked Blogs
Web Stat
