Eli Herschel Wallach was born on December 7, 1915, at 156 Union Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a son of Jewish immigrants Abraham and Bertha (Schorr) Wallach from PrzemyÅl (Poland). He had a brother and two sisters. He and his family were the only Jews in an otherwise Italian American neighborhood.
Wallach’s education was cut short when he was drafted into the United States Army in 1940. He served as a staff sergeant and medic in a military hospital in Hawaii and later was sent to Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Abilene, Texas, to train as a medical administrative officer. Commissioned as a second lieutenant, he was ordered to Casablanca. Later, when he was serving in France, a senior officer noticed his acting career and asked him to create a show for the patients. He and his unit wrote a play called Is This the Army?, which was inspired by Irving Berlin’s This Is the Army. In the comedy, Wallach and the other actors mocked Axis dictators, with Wallach portraying Adolf Hitler. Wallach was discharged as a captain following the war’s end in 1945. He was awarded the Army Good Conduct Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the AsiaticâPacific Campaign Medal, the EuropeanâAfricanâMiddle Eastern Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.
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