Home Entertainment Eli Wallach Died With One Regret Over 1960’s The Magnificent Seven

Eli Wallach Died With One Regret Over 1960’s The Magnificent Seven

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“If I had heard that score,” Wallach wrote in his autobiography, “I think I would have ridden my horse differently. In the days of silent movies, mood music was played on the set to enrich the actors’ feeling for a scene. That would have helped me.” 

You can see a version of what Wallach is referring to in the cacophonous filming scene that takes place early in Damien Chazelle’s underrated 2022 opus “Babylon.” And knowing Bernstein’s score, it’s easy to understand what he means when he says hearing it could have helped him. I mean, just listen to this sucker:

The upbeat theme somehow perfectly captures the ideal spirit of adventure that many of the best Westerns aim for — so much so that I’d argue the tune not only represents this movie but could even serve as the unofficial theme song for all of Hollywood’s Golden Age Westerns should such a thing ever need to come to a vote. Bernstein’s combination of chirping brass and soaring strings conjures such a specific vibe that you have to imagine anyone hearing it on horseback would perk up and hold their chin a little higher as soon as it hits their ears. To the characters in “The Magnificent Seven,” the act of riding a horse was commonplace, but with that score playing underneath, there’s a majesty and an importance to every step that simply isn’t there in real life.

Still, despite his qualms about his horse riding, Wallach must have done something right, because he was cast in five more Westerns throughout the 1960s alone, including Sergio Leone’s classic “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” Then again, that experience nearly killed him multiple times, so … mixed blessing?



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