Eli Wallach - Early Life

Early Life

Wallach was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn at 166 Union St., the son of Polish Jewish immigrants Bertha (née Schorr) and Abraham Wallach. They were the only Jewish family in an otherwise predominantly Italian American neighborhood. His parents owned "Bertha's", a candy store. Wallach was graduated in 1936 from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in history and in 1938 received a masters degree in education from the City College of New York. He gained his first Method experience at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre in New York City. While attending the University of Texas, Wallach performed in a play with fellow students Ann Sheridan and Walter Cronkite.

Wallach served as a United States Army staff sergeant in a military hospital in Hawaii during World War II. He was soon sent to Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Abilene, Texas to train as a medical administrative officer. He graduated as a Second Lieutenant and was sent to Madison Barracks in upstate New York. He was promptly shipped to Casablanca and, later in the war, to France. It was there that a superior discovered his acting history and asked him to form a show for the patients. He and other members from his unit wrote a play called Is This the Army?, which was inspired by Irving Berlin's This is the Army. In the comedic play, Wallach and the other men clowned around as various dictators, with Wallach portraying Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany.