Thoughts About Peter Falk

In watching the entire run of Columbo in recent months, I was also thinking about Peter Falk. I knew the actor when I was young because he had a cameo in 1981’s The Great Muppet Caper, a cameo that in retrospect, is much funnier for adults and if you actually know Falk and his work and his persona than if you’re say, six, and that’s your only reference. Later I saw The Princess Bride, and for the longest time, that was Falk for me. Somewhat weird older guy. But of course he was much more than that.

Falk was born in 1927 and he didn’t start working as an actor until he was in his thirties. First in New York where he did Moliere and Shaw and O’Neil on stage. Working in film was difficult because Falk had a glass eye, which made a lot of people dismiss him. Falk didn’t seem to care much, maybe because he never let it slow him down in life. He has his eye removed at the age of three, was an athlete in school, and so when he encountered a situation where it would be an issue - his physical exam to join the military, for example - Falk found a way around it. In that case by trying to fool the person giving the eye exam. It didn’t work, but Falk joined the merchant marines, where he joked that no one cared if he was blind.

In 1961 and 1962, Falk was nominated for an Emmy and an Oscar two years running. He won one Emmy. And so while the studio chiefs rejected him, despite one scout calling him the next John Garfield, Falk made his way West and worked on a few films including Pocketful of Miracles, which is perhaps only notable for being the final film directed by Frank Capra. In fact Capra loathed the final film, but he talked Falk up to people around town, and praised Falk in his memoirs.

Falk became a great character actor with roles in It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and The Great Race, Luv and Robin and the 7 Hoods, Anzio and Too Many Thieves. (I do enjoy him in The Great Race). The next John Garfield might be a good description of Falk, a colorful actor with a physical presence. He was a great comic actor and had dramatic chops that are honestly stunning. To watch him in the Cassavetes films or Mickey and Nicky is to see a depth and talent that I honestly didn’t know Falk was capable of in a lot of his work.

He made it big and Falk always kept working. A lot. Maybe some of that is because he started out acting later than some people, because he knew he had to work a little harder because of his eye, because of his background, but he was going to do what he wanted.

Much has been written about how much of the character of Columbo was Falk. The raincoat, the shoes, the cigars, all Falk’s. Those great scenes in the early seasons – less so and fewer as time went on – where Columbo would be going through his pockets while questioning a suspect searching for a note and launching into a story about the grocery list and his wife, or asking for a pencil after checking every pocket. Those scenes were improvised as Falk kept the actors off guard just as the characters would be. And no doubt a few showed up not expecting that and so the annoyance was real. The character of Columbo was this ordinary man who was brilliant and curious and observant, but also a bit of an outsider and an oddball. Never quite fitting in, always a bit out of place.

In the 1970s, Falk worked nonstop. First, Columbo ran from 1971 to 1978. Falk won three Emmys for the role. (He had already won another Emmy earlier and picked up a fifth years later)

In 1971-1972, he also starred with Lee Grant on Broadway in The Prisoner of Second Avenue, a new play from Neil Simon that was directed by Mike Nichols. At a time when a new play written by Neil Simon and directed by Mike Nichols was a very big deal.

And in that decade Falk also starred in eleven movies.

Two of the films were written and directed by Falk’s friend John Cassavetes - Husbands (1970) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974) - the latter of which is arguably Cassavetes’ masterpiece. But both feature some of Falk’s finest moments as an actor. Two great films.

Falk and Cassavetes also starred in the movie Mickey and Nicky (1976) as the titular duo, which was written and directed by the legendary Elaine May. Sadly the movie didn’t do well, but there’s a film length drama around the making of it, unfortunately, but it is brilliant, with some of the best acting the two ever did.

There was a TV movie with Jill Clayburgh, Griffin and Phoenix (1976). There were two Neil Simon parodies, Murder by Death (1976) and The Cheap Detective (1978), neither of which is as funny as they think they are, really, but both were hits. And admittedly Falk does a good Bogart impression. To close out the decade after his show finished, Falk starred in The Brink’s Job (1978), which was a solid William Friedkin movie that just didn’t quite come together, and in 1979 there was the classic film, The In-Laws, where he starred with Alan Arkin. One of those strange movies that manages to endure and remains bizarre and hilarious today and it did back then.

So much of The Muppets were made for adults. I think only after watching The In-Laws does Falk’s cameo in The Great Muppet Caper really make sense.

He made a number of other films, but in 1987, three Peter Falk movies came out. One was The Princess Bride, which is a classic. And even having read the book, it’s hard not to think of the voice of the book, the voice of the narrator, as Falk. The movie needed someone like him to be the grandfather and be able to start the story off and then make it clear, this story is not going in the direction you thought.

One of the other movies is Happy New Year, which almost no one remembers but Falk starred as a thief who with Charles Durning tries to take down a jewelry store, and features of Falk’s best comedic performances. Sadly, it wasn’t in a better movie.

The third is another classic film, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. In which Falk played himself. To say more than that would spoil the movie, but it remains a truly original film and I think probably captures Falk and what made his so enduring and popular an actor better than I can describe.

Not long after that, Falk returned to Columbo in 1989, and he was good and the shows were good, but it was never great. Never hit those highs that it once had. And of course Falk was older by this time. He turned 60 in 1987, but in his sixties and seventies he still had some good roles, was in some good movies. There were plenty of cliched roles in which he turned in a performance that he could have done in his sleep, but then he also made a TV version of The Sunshine Boys or had small roles in a movie like Lakeboat, where he was a key figure in a great ensemble. There was In the Spirit and Roommates, A Storm in Summer and The Thing About My Folks. Faraway, So Close! and Three Days of Rain. He returned to the stage. He wrote a memoir. He was an artist and never stopped. Until, of course, he had to stop.

One of these days, I will go to Budapest. For many reasons. (I’ve never been) But while I’m there, I’ll stop at Falk Miksa Street, where there is a bronze statue of Falk as Columbo. With a statue of a basset hound nearby. I may have to buy a cigar and pose mid-thought next to him. Just because.

And maybe that’s one of the things about Peter Falk. There’s a statue of him in Budapest, which doesn’t make sense, but also, why not. There’s something familiar about him. But also, putting up a statue in another country doesn’t seem completely insane.