Peter Falk ("Columbo", "The Princess Bride") Has Died

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/24/137398923/peter-falk-tvs-legendary-columbo-dies-at...

All Things Considered piece is worth a listen. I know every Columbo episode by heart. Sherlock Holmes and Columbo taught me how to reason and utilize logic before I was even ten years old. Rest in peace, Mr. Falk.

http://newyork.ibtimes.com/articles/169410/20110624/peter-falk-death-actor-photo... this is a picture of him and his wife, she is wearing an ANTI FUR badge.... I read that he had fur coats banned from his show, this was the 70s or 80s when there was a lot of fur

I watched a random episode of Columbo a few years ago, and he had this huge bag of apples, and everywhere he went, the crimes scenes, whereever, he offered people an apple

Does anyone know if he was vegetarian?

he was a good guy

In Memoriam: Peter Falk

It’s surprising to learn, from reading biographical sketches of Peter Falk on the occasion of his death, at the age of eighty-three, that he got a master’s degree in public administration and was working in Connecticut as an efficiency expert when, in his mid-twenties, he decided to take a chance on an acting career. It’s equally odd to note that he had two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor in consecutive years—1960 and 1961—for his roles in “Murder, Inc.” and “A Pocketful of Miracles.” They hardly helped. He was working mainly on television, doing some movies but not getting plum roles, when, in 1967, he met John Cassavetes at a Lakers game and then had lunch with him at the Paramount commissary. As Marshall Fine writes in his biography of Cassavetes, “Accidental Genius,” “Falk had a script by Elaine May, ‘Mikey and Nicky,’ that he thought Cassavetes would be perfect for.” At the same time, Cassavetes pitched “Husbands” to Falk. Each actor thought the other had agreed to the projects, and each had misunderstood.

Well, both got made—“Husbands” was shot in 1969; “Mikey and Nicky,” in 1973—and Falk’s artistic immortality is assured by his work with Cassavetes. “Husbands” is one of the great outpourings of pent-up emotion in cinematic history; it’s a men’s-liberation movement unto itself, complete with all the self-indulgence, self-punishment, and cruelty that spews forth from the puncturing of the male ego. In the trio of husbands (which includes Ben Gazzara), Falk plays something of the superego—a dentist, proud, touchy, and tremulous, who has the hardest time pulling away from his settled life and who, when calling himself to reason and responsibility, does it with a wrenching, viperish violence.

It’s similar to the role he plays in May’s “Mikey and Nicky,” a story of small-time gangland, in which Nicky (Cassavetes) is being hunted by an incensed crime boss and calls on his best friend, Mikey (Falk), a member of the same gang, to help him get away. Where Nicky is a free-and-easy ladies’ man, Mikey is a responsible family man—a role that, as in “Husbands,” comes with bitter implications (albeit radically different ones than emerge in Cassavetes’s film).

In between came Cassavetes’s “A Woman Under the Influence,” in which Falk played a road-crew laborer whose wife (played by Cassavetes’s wife, Gena Rowlands) is free-spirited and eccentric to the point of being considered mad. It’s a demanding and conflict-riven role, with its blend of tenderness and anger, compassion and frustration, bewilderment and assertiveness—and, as in “Husbands” and “Mikey and Nicky,” it’s the role of the straight man who copes with a more antic and less self-conscious partner.

It’s the work of a rationalist torn with passion. The dryly caustic humor he brings to his roles—even to his role as Columbo—is that of a quietly calculating intelligence that keeps that passion under pressure, and it’s the genius of Cassavetes to recognize, to reveal, and to deploy the tension and the heat that Falk—the actor and the man—gives off. As Falk said about working on “Husbands,” “There was no character. There was me.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/06/in-memoriam-peter-falk.html...

Peter Falk accepts his Emmy Award for best actor in a drama for his role in the Columbo series on Sept. 16, 1990.

I was just watching Columbo late last night on Netflix, Columbo the first to introduced Forensics. I like Peter Falk he will be deeply missed. My most heartfelt sympathies to his family. God Bless!

He was a great actor He will be missed R.I.P. Mr Falk

Very sad, 70's hollywood and their connection to the Golden Age are slowly fading away. If there is something to learn from Falk and the Princes Bride, it is that history is better when told from a grandparent than read from a book. Don't let it fade away.

RIP Peter Falk.
short npr interview of Falk
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4167389

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118039074?refCatId=14

Variety...

Posted: Fri., Jun. 24, 2011, 10:31am PT
'Columbo' star Peter Falk dies at 83
Veteran actor own five Emmys, four for popular detective role
By Richard Natale

Peter Falk, the Emmy- and Tony-winning stage, screen and TV actor, best known to world audiences as the always-underestimated police detective in the long-running telepic series "Columbo," died Thursday at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 83.

It was announced that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease in December 2007.

Falk won five Emmys, four for portraying Columbo, and was twice Oscar nommed for supporting roles.

Actor-director John Cassavetes referred to him as the man "everybody falls in love with." Falk had several starring roles in films directed by Cassavetes, found success onstage, even winning a Tony in the early '70s for Neil Simon's "The Prisoner of Second Avenue," and drew two Oscar nominations early in his career. But television proved to be the medium that most effectively brought across his compact, rumpled, impish quality.

By the mid-1970s, when "Columbo" was at its height, Falk was earning $500,000 for each of the two-hour telepics. Ironically, he fought for years with Universal Television to let him out of his "Columbo" contract, only to return time and again to the character.

"Columbo" was a worldwide television phenomenon, and it brought him to the attention of Wim Wenders, who starred Falk in what was probably the best film of his later career, "Wings of Desire" (he also appeared in the sequel, "Faraway, So Close").

Falk did not decide on an acting career until he was almost 30. Born in Manhattan, he was rasied in Ossining, N.Y. After serving in the merchant marine for 18 months as a cook in the days following WWII, he studied at Hamilton College, finished his B.A. in political science at the New School for Social Research in 1951 and his M.A. in public administration at Syracuse U.

After being rejected by the CIA, he worked for the state of Connecticut and began acting in community theater. Encouraged by his acting teacher, he quit his job and moved to New York to study under Jack Landau and Sanford Meisner, making his Off Broadway debut in 1956 in Moliere's "Don Juan" and hitting Broadway in "St. Joan" when it transferred from Off Broadway in 1957.

Next came the role of the bartender in the hit revival of Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh" and roles in "Diary of a Scoundrel," "The Lady's Not for Burning," "Purple Dust," "Bonds of Interest" and "Comic Strip."

He was discouraged from seeking employment in the movies due to his glass eye, the result of the removal of his real eye at the age of 3 due to a malignant tumor. Columbia's Harry Cohn, after expressing interest in the young actor, turned him away when he heard of the artificial eye, which caused Falk to squint somewhat - a disadvantage that was to become an envied acting trademark.

Nonetheless, he did land work in some vehicles as 1958's "Wind Across the Everglades," "The Bloody Brood," "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "Secret of the Purple Reef." Though the film "Murder, Inc." was not particularly well received in 1960, Falk's vicious gangster portrayal earned him kudos and his first Oscar nomination. The following year he upstaged the likes of Bette Davis in Frank Capra's "Pocketful of Miracles," showing a flair for comedy that brought a second Oscar nomination.

While he worked steadily in movies over the next decade ("Pressure Point," "The Balcony," "It's a Mad, Mad World," "Robin and the Seven Hoods," "The Great Race"), he was usually better than the vehicle.

Where he shone brightest was on dramatic television - such programs as "Studio One," "Robert Montgomery Presents" and "Omnibus" as well as "The Untouchables," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Twilight Zone" and "Naked City."

Emmy noms came his way for "Cold Turkey" episode of "The Law and Mr. Jones," and he copped the award for "The Dick Powell Theatre" presentation "The Price of Tomatoes" in 1962. He also appeared in special presentations such as "Brigadoon" (1966) and "A Hatful of Rain" (1971).

Falk returned to Broadway as Stalin in Paddy Chayefsky's ill-fated "The Passion of Josef D." And then he agreed to star in his first TV series, the well-reviewed but short-lived "The Trials of O'Brien" during the 1965-66 season.

He first took on the role of the rumpled, raincoat-wearing Lt. Columbo in 1967 in the TV movie "Prescription Murder." By the early '70s, "Columbo" was part of NBC's Mystery Movie rotation of 90-minute crime programs, and Falk eventually took on directing some of the segs. He recruited friends like Cassavetes and Ben Gazzara for "Columbo" segs, which were a key training ground for up-and-coming writers and directors on the Universal lot, including Steven Spielberg, Stephen J. Cannell, Steven Bochco and David Chase.

In 1972 he copped a Tony for Neil Simon's "The Prisoner of Second Avenue," though he largely avoided the stage thereafter.

Falk's relationship with Cassavetes began when he co-starred with the noted independent actor-director in a routine gangster film, "Machine Gun McCain." He joined Cassavetes and Gazzara in the landmark "Husbands" in 1970 and pulled down better reviews than either of his co-stars. He would later star in for Cassavetes (and partially financed) "A Woman Under the Influence," co-starring Gena Rowlands. He then had a cameo in "Opening Night" and appeared in Cassavetes last film "Big Trouble" in 1986. The two also co-starred in Elaine May's "Mickey and Nicky."

After bickering with Universal over the constraints of "Columbo," he abandoned the series in 1978 and moved back to movies. There were Simon crime comedies like "Murder by Death" and "The Cheap Detective," comedy "The In-Laws" in 1979 with Alan Arkin and, later, Rob Reiner's "The Princess Bride" (1987).

Other, less notable screen credits included "The Brink's Job," "All the Marbles," "Vibes," "Happy New Year," "Tune in Tomorrow," "Cookie," "In the Spirit" and 1995's "Roommates."

He returned to "Columbo" in 1989 and donned the brown raincoat several more times, the last in 2003 in "Columbo: Columbo Likes the Night Life."

Falk continued to take on small roles, most recently co-starring with Nicolas Cage in the thriller "Next."

He is survived by his wife of 34 years, actress Shera Falk, and two daughters from a previous marriage.

Cynthia Littleton contributed to this report.