A raucous storyteller, he would also recount his response to Francis Ford Coppola’s request that he appear as mobster Don Altobello, who suffers death by poisoned cannoli in “The Godfather Part III” (1990).
“Francis said, ‘I want you to play this old, old, old, old, marvelous old friend of the family,’“ Wallach told the Denver Post in 1991. “I said, ‘Listen, if I was such an old, old, old friend of the family, why wasn’t I in ‘Godfather I’ or ‘Godfather II’?”
Eli Wallach dies at 98; actor best known for two classic westerns – Los Angeles Times.