Matthau ─ A Life

For most people, he was best known as Oscar Madison, the unkempt, curmudgeonly yin to the yang of his prim and proper housemate, Felix Unger. But that role was just one of many sterling performances from the always outspoken Walter Matthau (1920-2000), a great comic actor and on-screen grouch extraordinaire.
Born Walter Matthow in the Jewish tenements of New York's Lower East Side, he was a child actor in New York's Yiddish theater, and later a World War II link-trainer instructor. For ten years he paid his dues on Broadway, in summer stock, and on television before landing his film debut in The Kentuckian in 1955. By the time of his 1968 casting as cantankerous but lovable slob Oscar Madison in the film version of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, Matthau had won major Hollywood stardom.
Matthau also offers unflinching examination of the legend's impoverished but culturally rich upbringing; his gambling addiction (that he once estimated had cost him $5 million); his repeated health scares (including a tumor, coronary bypass surgery, and a prolonged bout with double pneumonia); and his personal and professional partnersip with fellow talent Jack Lemmon. Matthau offers a definitive portrait of the man whose mischievous eyes, loose gait, and droll way with a deadpan line delighted audiences for over fifty years.

Audrey Kupferberg is a lecturer in film history at the University at Albany-State University of New York.