Walter Matthau, actor, 79

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

Saturday July 1 11:06 AM ET

Actor Walter Matthau Dead at 79
By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Walter Matthau, whose hang-dog face and
perpetually grouchy, slouchy demeanor transformed him from playing bad guys
into one of America's best-loved comic actors, died on Saturday. He was 79.

A spokeswoman for St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., said
Matthau was brought into the hospital early Saturday morning in ``full
cardiac arrest'' and was pronounced dead at 4:42 a.m. EDT.

Matthau was best known for his role as perpetually unkempt sportswriter
Oscar Madison, a part he first played on Broadway in 1966, then reprised in
a 1968 film opposite his lifelong friend Jack Lemmon.

In the meantime, he won an Academy Award as best supporting actor in Billy
Wilder's 1966 film ``The Fortune Cookie,'' cementing his status as one of
Hollywood's top comedic stars. Matthau once said that with a face like his,
he was destined in Hollywood to be either a villain or a comic

``I don't look like an actor,'' he said in one interview. ''I could be
anyone from a toilet attendant to a business executive. Most people look at
me on the street and say, 'Who the hell is that guy? Was I in the Army with
him?'''

Matthau, who called himself ``the Ukrainian Cary Grant,'' was born Walter
Matuschanskavasky on Oct. 1, 1920 to poor Russian-Jewish parents.

He grew up in the Lower East Side of New York, where the performer recalled:
``You learn a lot about life, your facial muscles get workouts and never
forget, and that can serve you well as an actor.''

As a boy, he sold soft drinks in a Yiddish theater, eventually winning bit
parts. After high school and a World War II stint as a radioman-gunner on
Army bombers, he enrolled in acting classes.

Work in summer stock led to bit parts on Broadway and television shows. He
made his film debut in ``The Kentuckian,'' as a wily villain who tricks star
Burt Lancaster into a fight with whips.

Through the remainder of the 1950s he showed proficiency at playing bad guys
and drunks in a variety of modest movies, including the Elvis Presley film
``King Creole'' (1958) and an Audie Murphy Western, ``Ride a Crooked Trail''
(1958).

As Matthau's movies improved, so did the variety of his characters. He
played a ship's doctor in ``Ensign Pulver'' (1964), a professor in
``Failsafe'' (1964) and a private eye in ''Mirage'' (1965).

But it was his Broadway portrayal of the slob sportswriter Oscar Madison in
``The Odd Couple'' -- a part written for him by Neil Simon -- that
catapulted Matthau into stardom.

The story goes that Simon was at a cocktail party when walked over to
Matthau and said, ``You're gonna be in my next play.'' Replied Matthau:
``Who are you?''

Later, Simon had to convince Matthau to play Madison. Matthau wanted to play
the finicky Felix Unger because the Madison part was too close to his own
personality.

A year later, Matthau first teamed with the man who would become Unger in
the movie -- Jack Lemmon -- in ``The Fortune Cookie.'' Matthau played a
sleazy lawyer, Lemmon his wimpish brother-in-law.

It was comic teaming that would breed continued success in such films as
``The Odd Couple'' in 1968, ``The Front Page'' (1974) and ``Buddy, Buddy''
(1981). The pair also achieved success with ``Grumpy Old Men,'' (1993) in
which they teamed with Ann-Margret and ``Grumpier Old Men'' two years later
with Sophia Loren, as well as ``The Odd Couple II'' in 1998.

Matthau survived a 1965 heart attack, a 1975 quadruple coronary bypass
operation and a gambling habit that once cost him $183,000 in two weeks. He
spent two weeks in hospital with pneumonia in May 1999, but made a full
recovery.

Matthau, who lived in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, had two
children, Jennie and David, by his first wife, Grace Geraldine Johnson, and
a son, Charlie, by his second wife, former actress Carol Marcus, whom he wed
in 1959.

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