In Memoriam: Tony Randall
Emmy winner Tony Randall, the actor best known for playing Felix Unger on The Odd Couple, has died of pneumonia. He was 84.
Randall won the Emmy for portraying Unger on the sitcom based on Neil Simon's play and movie. The show centered on Randall's nearly irreconcilable differences with Jack Klugman, with whom he shared an apartment.
Randall was also a frequent guest on David Letterman's late night talk shows, and also appeared in several movies, including Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back.
He was artistic director of the nonprofit National Actors Theatre, which he founded in order to bring classic theater back to the Broadway scene. The company's first production was Arthur Miller's "The Crucible," which had not been performed on Broadway in 40 years.
Born in Tulsa, the teenage Randall liked to frequent roadshows that came through his hometown. He attended Northwestern University before setting off to New York, where he made his stage debut in 1941 in The Circle of Chalk. He served in the Army during World War II, and then returned to New York, where he began his career in radio and television.
After Army service during World War II from 1942-46, he returned to New York, where he began his career in radio and early television.
Tony Randall was interviewed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation’s Archive of American Television on April 30, 1998. The entire two-hour interview can be viewed at the Archive’s offices in North Hollywood. For more information call 818-509-2260.
On live television:
You were in an enormous studio and the sets were arranged around the studio. And as you finished one set you would have to run to the other set. And during the scene a stage manager would creep in beneath camera level and tap you on the ankle to tell you to run to the next set so they could begin the next scene, so it would seem contiguous. And they would come to a close-up on a person you were talking to who didn't have to leave the set and he would continue talking to nobody while you were running to the other set. And it was madness.
On working with producer Fred Coe:
Fred Coe, I've never met his equal. He would have four or five shows on the air, all live, every week. And he would go from rehearsal to rehearsal, and just watch a rehearsal and in a few minutes spot everything that was wrong and fix it. It was all in his head.
On being cast in Mr. Peepers:
At that time I was just as interested in my career as a director as I was in acting, and I was directing an off Broadway show and they asked me to do Mr. Peepers, just a one shot. And I accepted. And then I realized that I would be running myself ragged with the rehearsals for my show, and I asked to get out of it, and they wouldn't let me out. So I had to do both. And that was the luckiest break of my life. Because they liked me and they wrote the part in permanently then and that was the making of me.
On casting "Oscar" on The Odd Couple:
We didn't have an Oscar. We were ready to shoot. We'd offered it to Jack [Klugman]. He didn't want it. We'd offered it to almost every actor you could think of who would be right for it and no one wanted to do it. And we were sitting in the office of an agent named Milton Goldman and we were racking our brains of who in the world could do it. We didn't have anyone and we were due to shoot. And he said, I've got it. Shelly Winters. (laugh) That's what you go into show business for. The laughs. No other business. Finally, they convinced Jack to do it.
On The Odd Couple:
The first script we were given was very, very good, indeed. But it wasn't the first one we shot. When we came to work to shoot the first script, I was appalled, it was so terrible and I nearly walked out, but I didn't like many of them that first year. I didn't think they were funny and I didn't think we were funny. I didn't think we were real or true, except for three or four exceptions. We shot twenty-four shows that first year. The second year we went on to three-camera and then we got good. For the simple reason is that instead of coming to work at a shooting, we came to work and rehearsed. And we rehearsed all day long and at night, the writers would come in and we'd do a run through for them. They'd sit up all night rewriting. And by the end of the week, we had a good script.
On television:
When television is live, it's television. When you're watching a football game, that's television. When it's on film, it's just movies. Television was at it's best when it was Television.