Klugman takes lastbow
Best known for the characters he played in two television series, The Odd Couple and Quincy, M.E., Jack Klugman always preferred the intimacy of theatre or live television to a film set, on which one might never meet some of the other cast members.
Apart from his wives and two sons, the central relationship in Klugman’s life was with his fellow actor Tony Randall, his co-star in the 1970s TV sitcom The Odd Couple, whom he credited with transforming his private character as well as being a sensitive actor and steadfast work colleague, companion and friend. In 2004 Klugman delivered the eulogy at Randall’s memorial service and in 2005 he published a memoir, Tony and Me: A Story of Friendship, in which he celebrated his profound love and respect for Randall.
Born in Philadelphia, Jacob Joachim Klugman was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants.
During World War II, he served in the US Army. After returning home he applied for acting school at Carnegie Tech, which accepted him because the war had led to a shortage of male actors. After two years of study, Klugman moved to New York city, where he shared a room with another budding actor, Charles Bronson.
He made his Broadway debut in Golden Boy in 1952, the same year that he had his first film role, in a low-budget western. But it was in the early days of live television that he made his mark. ‘‘There was nothing in the world like the early days of television,’’ he once reflected. ‘‘It combined everything I love about the theatre with the potential to reach millions of people . . . It was the most exciting time in my life.’’
In 1955 he first played alongside Tony Randall in an episode of CBS’s Appointment with Adventure.
In 1957 he performed the only film role he would always cherish, as one of the jurors in Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men. While he always regarded film as a less stimulating and satisfying medium than theatre and television, in 12 Angry Men he got to act alongside ‘‘11 of the finest actors that I have ever worked with’’, including Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, and Martin Balsam. They rehearsed for two weeks as if it were a play and ‘‘everybody was there every minute of every day . . . It was a wonderful experience and the only good experience I ever had in film’’.
It was in 1965 on Broadway that Klugman first played what turned out to be his greatest role, that of the slobbish sports writer Oscar Madison, who is forced to share an apartment with the anallyretentive fellow-divorce Felix Unger in Neil Simon’s comedy play The Odd Couple.
In 1970 he was chosen to reprise the role in the pilot for a TV series based on the play, and this time Felix Unger, the other half of the odd couple, was played by Tony Randall, who had done it in summer stock.
Klugman often explained the irony that his and Randall’s on screen personae were the opposite of their characters in real life. He was a loner who never felt comfortable in his own skin, whereas Randall was socially confident and easy-going. Klugman believed Randall taught him how to unbutton himself emotionally and expose his vulnerability.
Except for the first couple of days on The Odd Couple, when Randall objected to sharing a limousine with Klugman because he smoked heavily, he said ‘‘we never had an argument in 50 years’’.
In 1973 they even recorded an offbeat album with the London Festival Orchestra and Chorus called The Odd Couple Sings. The next year Klugman began treatment for throat cancer.
Klugman played Dr R. Quincy, M.E., in 148 episodes of Quincy, M.E. from 1976 to 1983.
A doughty, assertive Los Angeles County medical examiner with keen moral principles, Quincy would seek to prove in each episode a death seemingly attributable to natural causes was in fact the result of foul play, acting more as a detective than a medical examiner.
When Klugman’s throat cancer returned with a vengeance in 1989, requiring the excision of a vocal cord, it was Randall who coaxed him back onto the stage in 1991 with a one-off benefit performance of The Odd Couple, which raised $1.2 million for Randall’s Broadway repertory company, the National Actors Theatre.
In the early 1950s Klugman had met a Canadian-American actress called Brett Somers, trained at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio, who was playing in some of the same television shows as he was.
They married in 1953, had two sons and performed together in four stage plays.
Although she and Klugman separated in 1974, they never divorced.
He lived with Peggy Crosby, the ex-wife of one of Bing Crosby’s sons, from 1988 until his death, but he did not marry her until 2008, after Somers’s death.
Besides acting, Klugman had a passion for the racetrack and was the owner of a racehorse, Jaklin Klugman, which finished third in the 1980 Kentucky Derby.
‘‘He made $480,000,’’ Klugman once said. ‘‘And he only cost me $4 million.’’
He is survived by his wife Peggy and by two sons from his previous marriage.
Jack Klugman, actor, was born on April 27, 1922. He died on December 24, 2012, aged 90