Eli Wallach and Carroll Baker in Baby Doll.

Your first motion picture role was in director Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll (1956). What was Kazan like to work with? I understand that he had an interesting way of handling actors.

Yes. [It was written] by Tennessee Williams. Well, he [Kazan] was brilliant. He knows how to stimulate the actors, put them in situations, and . . . he’s able to capture behavior so well. He will pit one actor against another. He’ll say to you, "Go make friends," and he’ll tell the other actor, "Don’t have anything to do with him." He causes a conflict; he exploits conflict very cleverly. He’s just brilliant.

You know, he’d say, "Print that, [it’s] finished." I’d say, "Can I do one more?" He’d say, "Sure, film is cheap. Do one more." But he never printed when I asked. It was his way of saying, "Listen, I’m out there. I’m objective. You’re in the situation. You can’t edit it yourself. You can’t see what you’re doing. I’m seeing it."

Also, Karl Malden, who’s a friend of mine, said to me, "Eli, when you speak on the screen, your head is about 30 feet high, so don’t open your mouth too much." So, I went around with my lips kind of tight together, and I had one line where she [Carroll Baker] says, "Hi Yo Silver," and I gritted my teeth and said, "Hi Yo!," and Kazan said, "What? Why don’t you say it?" And I said, "Well, because I did say it," and he said, "No, no, open your mouth and say it. I don’t want the Japanese version." So, he said, "Oh, I get it. Karl told you that."

You subsequently worked for veteran action director Don Siegel, in The Lineup (1958). What was that experience like?

That was my second film. I’ll tell you what, I went into that film with a New York actor’s attitude of, you know, what are movies? And Don, who was a skillful moviemaker, understood it. He never liked my attitude, but he knew how to use it in the film. Did you see that? It’s a good movie. I said to them, "Wait, I kill 5 people in one day? My God." And [Siegel] said, "It’s a movie." (Laughs)

Didn’t you work on an early 1960s TV program called The Shirley Temple Storybook?

Yes, it was called The Emperor’s New Clothes. Yeah. And I did Batman, too. I did Mr. Freeze. I get more mail for him than anything I’ve ever done. I said, "My God, Schwarzenegger just did the same part and he got 20 million." So my wife said, "Well, why don’t you lift weights?"

In 1960, you played the bandit leader, Calvera, in the American Western version of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai -- The Magnificent Seven, directed by John Sturges. I think Sturges has often been underrated; he directed some very good films.

Oh, he did Bad Day At Black Rock.

A great movie.

Oh, yeah. We shot it [The Magnificent Seven] all in Mexico, and I said to him, "You know, you never see what the bandits do with the money. They hold up the train, they rob the banks." So I wanted to show what I did with the money. So I got red silk shirts, beautiful hats, wonderful saddles, a great horse, and two gold teeth. So that was the way I did it. Oh, yes. When I saw the movie, I said, "I wish I had heard the music. I would have ridden the horse differently."

You also worked with Steve McQueen on his last film, The Hunter (1980).

Twenty years later, yeah. He was a superb film actor. He knew the cameras. He could ride a horse beautifully. He was exciting on the screen. Most of the stuff he did with the stunts was done in Chicago. So I only worked with him in California.

It’s amazing that he did a lot of his own stunts on that film, considering that he was dying of cancer at the time.

Well, I knew nothing about that. It wasn’t until a month after the movie was finished, and a reporter called and said, "Did you know he was dying?" I said, "What are you talking about?" I had no idea.

He did a good job, though.