Odd? Hardly. Jack Klugman was special
Gary Smith remembers the guy who said, ‘I don’t have the looks. I play guys who look lived-in’
Ask almost anyone who played “The Odd Couple” and they’ll tell you Jack Klugman and Tony Randall.
Yes, I know Art Carney and Walter Matthau originated the cantankerous Oscar and fussy Felix on Broadway. And a great many other actors toured North America as the mismatched mates in Neil Simon’s terrific play.
Everybody from comic Tim Conway, to dancer Dan Dailey, to game show host Hal March had a go at these characters. But it was Klugman and Randall who stuck.
They played Hamilton Place in the Neil Simon comedy in 1975, back when our downtown theatre played shows regularly.
This is a kind reminder of Jack Klugman, one half of “The Odd Couple” team.
I met him in 1965 at Barrymore’s, a favourite watering hole of Broadway stars. He was playing Oscar at The Plymouth Theatre then, opposite movie star Eddie Bracken. He hadn’t yet teamed up with Randall.
He settled down with a beer at a corner table.
“I’m not a leading man type,” he told me. “I don’t have the looks. I play guys who look lived-in. Does this rumpled face make you think matinee idol?” he shrugged. “Of course not. I’m the shmuck type, right? That’s why I’m playing Oscar.”
I didn’t tell Klugman I was interested in him because he once played
opposite two of my favourite stars, Judy Garland and Ethel Merman. Well, he didn’t need to know.
Years later, Klugman came back to Hamilton Place. In 2003, he starred in the comedy-drama “On Golden Pond.” He was terrific.
At 80, he didn’t need a 40-city tour of one-nighters in smallish North American cities. Or did he?
A week before the Hamilton engagement we talked on the telephone. I could hear the waters in Malibu lapping at the shore.
“It isn’t the money,” he said. “I’m not that bad off. It’s the work.”
In 1990, Klugman had cancer on one of his vocal chords. An operation saved his life. His husky voice was left raspy. People couldn’t understand what he said.
“When you have a life-threatening
illness, your perspective suddenly alters. Things that used not to matter come suddenly into focus. And things that used to bug the pants off you, suddenly don’t matter. But then, I’ve always been a survivor. I don’t waste a lot of time worrying about what might have been.”
Klugman thought he was through with acting. But he didn’t reckon on his old pal, Tony Randall.
Randall said he needed him for a big New York Gala to benefit his Broadway Actors’ Theatre Company. He insisted Klugman repeat “The Odd Couple” with him.
“I couldn’t turn him down,” Klugman said. “But I was pretty scared.” He needn’t have been. The audience cheered for 10 minutes at the curtain call.
“Theatre has always been my real love,” Klugman said. “|I have no respect for the sort of things they do on television now. Mostly it’s a lot of junk. With crime shows, the emphasis is on gory details. I did eight seasons of ‘Quincy’ (about a coroner) and five seasons of ‘The Odd Couple’ and I never said as much as ‘hell’ on the air. What they do now isn’t freedom. It’s obnoxious.”
One of Klugman’s real thrills was playing Herbie opposite Ethel Merman in the musical “Gypsy.”
“She was something else. She was a big Broadway star. And here I was playing opposite her. She had a tough reputation. Everyone said watch out. That broad is a barracuda,” he said.
“I played it cool, at least at the beginning. I never even said, ‘Good Morning’ to her unless she spoke to me first. After about two weeks we were standing in the wings. She looked at me with a cold, unnerving stare. ‘You’re a moody son of a bitch aren’t you,’ she spat out. ‘You don’t even say hello to me, unless I speak to you first. What’s the matter with you?’
“I blushed. My face turned a deep pink. You’re the star, Miss Merman, I muttered. ‘Oh, to hell with that,’ she said. From then on we were best buddies.
“You asked why I still act. Well, I guess I just want to see if I can still do it. You see I’m not so much looking inward these days. When I fall apart, I fall apart. It could happen any day now. But I prefer to be a moving target. I know time is running out—I’m not stupid. And I know the odds are against me When I fall down dead I just hope it’s on some stage somewhere, uttering some crucial line like, ‘And the murderer is ........ ’ ”
Klugman collapsed in a fit of laughter. “Laughter is the antidote to pain,” he said. “Know what I mean?”
Jack Klugman died of prostate cancer in 2013.