His work in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly included, one of Clint Eastwood’s co-stars in the Dollars Trilogy has a legitimate claim to having a hand in three of the greatest Western movies ever made. Eli Wallach will always be best remembered for appearing alongside Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, with his dastardly performance as Tuco being a driving force of the movie’s popularity. An unfortunate consequence of his unforgettable presence in the 1966 Western is that it often leads to his contributions to the genre being overlooked.

Eli Wallach’s importance to the Western medium extends far beyond Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. The actor had a great deal of familiarity with Westerns years before his involvement with the film. As opposed to Clint Eastwood, who stepped into the Dollars Trilogy with experience only the TV side of the Western genre, Wallach had starred in several Westerns at this point. In fact, even if he had pᴀssed on The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, he’d still have roles in two all-time great Westerns to his name.

Before The Dollars Trilogy, Eli Wallach Appeared In The Magnificent Seven & How The West Was Won

Eli Wallach Played Villains In Both Classic Westerns

Eli Wallach landed his first Western role in 1960 when he played Mexican bandit Calvera in The Magnificent Seven. In the movie, Calvera is introduced as the leader of a group of cold-blooded outlaws who take over a town. Calvera’s actions are ultimately what bring the characters played by Yul Brynner, Horst Buchholz, Western favorite James Coburn, Robert Vaughn, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and Brad Dexter together for a team-up as the тιтular Magnificent Seven. As the leader, Calvera is in a sense the movie’s “final boss,” whom Yul Brynner’s Chris Adams has to fight in the film’s final minutes.

Two years after playing the main villain of The Magnificent Seven, Eli Wallach had yet another significant Western role on his hands in the form of How the West Was Won. An unusual movie, How the West Was Won was almost an anthology film, in that it comprised five different stories, with two having separate directors. Because it followed a specific family’s lives over a long period of time, it features an abundance of characters, with some being consistently important, and others disappearing from the story, akin to how real life works.

Eli Wallach’s character, Charlie Gant, appeared only in the fifth and final chapter, “The Outlaws.” Although Wallach is only around for the last segment, it still amounts to a significant role, considering that Gant is essentially the main villain of “The Outlaws,” and, in turn, the final obstacle for the main protagonist to overcome. In this sense, plus the fact that Gant is a gang leader, Wallach’s presence in How the West Was Won is certainly reminiscent of his Magnificent Seven character.

Eli Wallach’s Roles In The Three Movies Make Him A Western Legend

Eli Wallach Didn’t Make Many Westerns, Yet 3 Are Some Of The Genre’s Best

When looking at Eli Wallach’s overall body of work, there truthfully isn’t more than a handful of credits ᴀssociated with the Western genre. Yet, Wallach still stands out as a Western icon, thanks in large part to the gravity of the few roles he’s held. The Magnificent Seven, for its part, is a beloved Western, with an 89% score on Rotten Tomatoes that says a lot about its enduring popularity.

There’s also the matter of How the West Was Won which went down in cinematic history as one of the most influential Westerns ever made, not to mention its eight Academy Award nominations, three of which being wins. Finally, there’s the devious and conniving Tuco, who is arguably one of the most memorable Western movie characters of all time, with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as a whole being frequently cited as the quintessential Clint Eastwood Western.