When I was a kid in the '70s, I loved Fridays. Yes, because it meant no school for two days, and because it meant that it was "Dallas" night. But mostly because it was the day that the TV Guide arrived in the mail.
Remember TV Guide? It was that little book that listed everything that was on TV for the week, with episode descriptions and the channels indicated by little black boxes with numbers in them.
That was back when there were maybe 13 channels max that you could pull in using rabbit ears, at least two of which were in Spanish. If you were lucky to have cable, you might get another 20 more. But there were only three major networks and they set the tone for the culture and how TV was made. 1970s TV was dominated by laugh tracks and theme songs and Gary Marshall. I know cuz I watched a lot of it.
In fact, I watched so much TV, the weekly TV Guide was largely unnecessary. I knew the schedule of my family's favorite shows. This was before Betamax/VHS/DVR, so all TV was appointment TV. You showed up when it was on; otherwise you had to wait until the summer for reruns to maybe catch the show the second time around.
Nevertheless, I LOVED when the TV Guide arrived each Friday. I would flip through the articles, and see if there were any special episodes I needed to make note of (for instance, the "Love Boat" episode with both Kristy McNichol and Scott Baio...OMG!). But the first order of the day when I snagged the TV Guide out of the mailbox was to flip to the back and attack the crossword puzzle. In pen.
Because the crossword puzzle relied heavily on TV-themed clues, I was pretty good at it. I knew all the current show and actor names, and watched enough vintage TV on Channels 26, 40, and 44 that I even knew about old timey TV like "The Flying Nun" and "Our Miss Brooks" and "The Donna Reed Show" and "Topper."
I would fly through that puzzle in a matter of minutes, often completing it but occasionally leaving just a couple of clues for my dad to fill in. Although Dad didn't have much choice since I got home from school before he got home from work, I now understand what a sacrificial gift of gracious parenting it was that Dad only jokingly showed exasperation that the puzzle was always largely done by the time he first saw it.
So where does Eli Wallach fit into all this?
Well, Eli was a clue that showed up often in my crossword puzzles. Along with Elia Kazan, I didn't know who these guys were other than an actor (Eli) and a director (Elia). But with 3 or 4 letters each -- at least half of which were vowels -- I could count on one of them showing up each week. I had no idea who these men were (in all honesty, I long thought Elia was a girl), but they were still very familiar to me.
And so now, nearly four decades later, with TV Guide's little book having been replaced by the "Guide" button on my remote control, I finally know who Eli is. Thanks to an online news story in the LA Times that I found on Google News, and then further reading on Wikipedia which has made Encyclopedia Britannica all but obsolete, I now know that Mr. Wallach was a method actor who mostly played bad guys. He was in a lot of Tennessee Williams stage plays and then went on to films that my parents never would have let me see. For instance, he was the "ugly" in the Clint Eastwood movie "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."
And...Eli won "Most Promising Newcomer" for his role in his film debut. He played a vengeful cotton gin owner in a controversial movie called "Baby Doll" (never heard of it), directed by...Elia Kazan.
Thanks for the memories, Mr. Wallach. Rest in peace.
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| Eli Wallach ~ 1915-2014 |
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| Elia Kazan ~ 1909-2003 |
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