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| FILE - In this June 15, 2008 file photo, Jack Klugman speaks at the 62nd Annual Tony Awards in New York. Klugman, who made an art of gruffness in TV's "The Odd Couple" and "Quincy, M.E.," has died at the age of 90. |
LOS ANGELES
(AP) -- Jack Klugman, the prolific, craggy-faced character actor and
regular guy who was loved by millions as the messy one in TV's "The Odd
Couple" and the crime-fighting coroner in "Quincy, M.E.," died Monday, a
son said. He was 90.
Klugman, who lost his voice to throat cancer in the 1980s and trained himself to speak again, died with his wife at his side.
"He had a great life and he enjoyed every moment of it and he would encourage others to do the same," son Adam Klugman said.
Adam
Klugman said he was spending Christmas with his brother, David, and
their families. Their father had been convalescing for some time but had
apparently died suddenly and they were not sure of the exact cause.
"His sons loved him very much," David Klugman said. "We'll carry on in his spirit."
Never
anyone's idea of a matinee idol, Klugman remained a popular star for
decades simply by playing the type of man you could imagine running into
at a bar or riding on a subway with - gruff, but down to earth, his tie
stained and a little loose, a racing form under his arm, a cigar in
hand during the days when smoking was permitted.
He
brought a city actor ideal for "The Odd Couple," which ran from 1970 to
1975 and was based on Neil Simon's play about mismatched roommates,
divorced New Yorkers who end up living together. The show teamed Klugman
- the sloppy sports writer Oscar Madison - and Tony Randall - the fussy
photographer Felix Unger - in the roles played by Walter Matthau and
Art Carney on Broadway and Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1968 film.
Klugman had already had a taste of the show when he replaced Matthau on
Broadway and he learned to roll with the quick-thinking Randall, with
whom he had worked in 1955 on the CBS series "Appointment with
Adventure."
"There's nobody better to
improvise with than Tony," Klugman said. "A script might say, `Oscar
teaches Felix football.' There would be four blank pages. He would
provoke me into reacting to what he did. Mine was the easy part."
They
were battlers on screen, and the best of friends in real life. When
Randall died in 2004 at age 84, Klugman told CNN: "A world without Tony
Randall is a world that I cannot recognize."
In
"Quincy, M.E.," which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an
idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by
uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.
"We
had some wonderful writers," he said in a 1987 Associated Press
interview. "Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about
injustices. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero.
"Everybody
said, `Quincy'll never be a hit.' I said, `You guys are wrong. He's two
heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.' A coroner has power. He can tell
the police commissioner to investigate a murder. I saw the opportunity
to do what I'd gotten into the theater to do - give a message.
"They
were going to do cops and robbers with `Quincy.' I said, `You promised
me I could do causes.' They said, `Nobody wants to see that.' I said,
`Look at the success of "60 Minutes." They want to see it if you present
it as entertainment.'"
For his 1987 role as
81-year-old Nat in the Broadway production of "I'm Not Rappaport,"
Klugman wore leg weights to learn to shuffle like an elderly man. He
said he would wear them for an hour before each performance, "to
remember to keep that shuffle."
"The guy is so vital emotionally, but physically he can't be," Klugman said.
"We treat old people so badly. There is nothing easy about 80."
The
son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he was born in Philadelphia and began
his acting career in college drama (Carnegie Institute of Technology).
After serving in the Army during World War II, he went on to summer
stock and off-Broadway, rooming with fellow actor Charles Bronson as
both looked for paying jobs.
He made his
Broadway debut in 1952 in a revival of "Golden Boy." His film credits
included Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men" and Blake Edwards' "Days of Wine
and Roses" and an early television highlight was appearing with Humphrey
Bogart and Henry Fonda in a production of "The Petrified Forest."
His
performance in the classic 1959 musical "Gypsy" brought him a Tony
nomination for best featured (supporting) actor in a musical.
He
also appeared in several episodes of "The Twilight Zone," including a
memorable 1963 one in which he played a negligent father whose son is
seriously wounded in Vietnam. His other TV shows included "The
Defenders" and the soap opera "The Greatest Gift."
In
a 1987 interview in the New York Daily News, he said, "once I did three
hourlong shows in 2 1/2 weeks. Think we'd do that now? Huh! But then it
was great. I did summer stock, played the classics. Me!"
Throat
cancer took away his raspy voice for several years in the 1980s. When
he was back on the stage for a 1993 revival of "Three Men on a Horse,"
The Associated Press review said, "His voice may be a little scratchy
but his timing is as impeccable as ever."
"The
only really stupid thing I ever did in my life was to start smoking,"
he said in 1996. Seeing people smoking in television and films, he
added, "disgusts me, it makes me so angry - kids are watching."
In
his later years, he guest-starred on TV series including "Third Watch"
and "Crossing Jordan" and appeared in a 2010 theatrical film, "Camera
Obscura."
Klugman's hobby was horse racing and he eventually took up raising them, too.
A horse Klugman co-owned, Jacklin Klugman, finished third in 1980's Kentucy Derby and fourth in that year's Preakness Stakes.
"I
always loved to gamble," he said. "I never got close to a horse. Fate
dealt me a terrible blow when it gave me a good horse the first time
out. I thought how easy this is.
"Now I love being around them."
Klugman's
wife, actress-comedian Brett Somers, played his ex-wife, Blanche, in
the "Odd Couple" series.
The couple, who married in 1953 and had two
sons, Adam and David, had been estranged for years at the time of her
death in 2007.
In February 2008, at age 85,
Klugman married longtime girlfriend Peggy Crosby. His attorney Larry
Larson wrote in an email that Klugman is also survived by two
grandchildren and that memorial services have not been set.
In
1997, Klugman was sued by an ex-girlfriend, Barbara Neugass, who
claimed he had promised to support her for the rest of her life. But a
jury rejected her claim.
