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Friday, June 24, 2011

RIP Peter Falk:(1927-2011)

I know he has been ill for quite some time and is not suffering any longer but this news still gives me pause thanks to childhood memories watching Mr Falk work with my late Mom--who introduced me to the man playing the rumpled detective


Peter Falk, the Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning actor best known for his portrayal of the raincoat-wearing, cigar smoking TV detective Columbo, died Thursday evening at his home in Beverly Hills, CA; he was 83. Though an exact cause of death was not released by his family, it had been known that Falk was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Falk received two Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor in 1960 and 1961 for Murder, Inc. and Pocketful of Miracles, and was an acclaimed stage actor, winning a Tony Award for 1972's The Prisoner of Second Avenue-but best known as the irascible Lieutenant Columbo, whose apparent absent-mindedness belied his cunning deductive skills and ease at outwitting even the most clever and devious of criminals. In all, he received four Emmy Awards and 10 nominations for the role, which he played from 1968 to a special 2003 episode of the series.

Born in New York City in 1927, Falk underwent surgery at only the age of three to have his right eye removed because of a malignant tumor; for the rest of his life he would wear a glass eye, which became one of his most famous traits.

Falk began his acting career in the 50's, studying with the acclaimed actress and teacher Eva Le Gallienne. After moving to New York to pursue acting full time, he co-starred in the 1956 revival of The Iceman Cometh  opposite Jason Robards, and was on Broadway within the same year, and started appearing on television as well. In the late '50s he took a number of small film roles, and was hailed by critics for his turn as a murderer in the 1960 gangster film Murder Inc., which proved to be his breakthrough role. An Oscar nomination followed, as did a role in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles the next year, which was the acclaimed director's last film and for which Falk received a second Oscar nod.

With back-to-back Academy Award nominations and his first Emmy Award (for a 1961 episode of The Dick Powell Theater), Falk worked steadily throughout the 1960s in both television and film, with small roles in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Robin and the 7 Hoods, and a starring role in the short-lived legal TV series The Trials of O'Brien.

He first played the role of Lieutenant Columbo in the 1968 TV movie Prescription: Murder, which was originally written as a Broadway play and then reworked for television. The film set up a number of tropes for the upcoming TV series: the seeming ineptitude of detective Columbo and the intricate cat-and-mouse mysteries in which the killer, known to viewers, seemed to dance around the detective's bumbling investigation The premise  became a TV series in 1971, with a young 25-year-old Steven Spielberg directing the very first episode. The series was a hit, and ran through 1977 in 90 or 120 minute movie-length segments that appeared every third week, with a wide variety of acclaimed guest stars and spun off the short-lived Mrs. Columbo (based on the detective's unseen wife), starring a young Kate Mulgrew.

Falk also appeared on the big screen in two of close friend John Cassavetes' films, Husbands and the Oscar-nominated A Woman Under the Influence

Falk also played a Sam Spade-style detective in the comedy Murder By Death, and also starred in The Brink's Job , The Cheap Detective and The In-Laws

Falk continued acting in film, appearing in two highly notable roles in 1987: as the storybook-reading Grandfather in Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride, and an acclaimed turn as a slightly modified version of himself as a man who converses with angels in Wings of Desire.

He returned to the role of Columbo in 1989 in TV films twice a year. After his turn in 2003, Falk appeared sporadically in film and TV, his last role in the 2009 indie comedy American Cowslip.

Just one more thing... Thank you sir for a wonderful career and memories best shared,

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