Walter Matthau

Walter Matthau, born Walter John Matthow on October 1, 1920, in New York City's Lower East Side, was an American actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1948 to 1965. He died on July 1, 2000. The son of Rose, a Lithuanian immigrant who worked in a garment factory, and Milton Matuschanskayasky, a Ukrainian peddler and electrician from Kiev, Matthau grew up in a series of cold-water tenement apartments in the Ukrainian section of the Lower East Side. His father abandoned the family when Matthau was three years old, leaving his mother to raise him and his brothers. Matthau later described his impoverished childhood as a nightmare. He attended Seward Park High School and, as a boy, began performing in shows staged at Tranquillity Camp, a Jewish nonprofit sleepaway camp, as well as at Surprise Lake Camp.

Matthau's early exposure to performance came through the Yiddish theater world, where he worked as a concession stand cashier and later appeared in productions. He subsequently trained at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School under German director Erwin Piscator. During World War II, he served as a radioman-gunner in the U.S. Army Air Forces from 1942 to 1945, stationed in England, Germany, and France, before returning to the United States to pursue acting professionally.

His Broadway career produced a substantial body of work, including appearances in Guys and Dolls, Anne of the Thousand Days, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, My Mother, My Father and Me, and A Shot in the Dark, among other productions. For his performance in A Shot in the Dark, Matthau received the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1962. Three years later, Neil Simon cast him as slovenly sportswriter Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple, opposite Art Carney as Felix Ungar. The role earned Matthau the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in 1965, his second Tony overall.

Matthau made his film debut as a villain in The Kentuckian in 1955 opposite Burt Lancaster, and went on to appear in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd in 1957 and the Elvis Presley vehicle King Creole in 1958. He directed a low-budget film called The Gangster Story in 1960 and appeared in the Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn thriller Charade in 1963. His film career accelerated significantly when he reprised the role of Oscar Madison in the 1968 film adaptation of The Odd Couple, with Jack Lemmon playing Felix Unger. That pairing proved enormously productive; Matthau and Lemmon appeared together in ten films, a collaboration The New York Times described as one of Hollywood's most successful pairings. Their work together included Grumpy Old Men in 1993 and multiple collaborations with director Billy Wilder.

Matthau won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of shyster lawyer William H. Gingrich in Wilder's The Fortune Cookie in 1966, a role he completed despite suffering a serious heart attack during production that halted filming for five months. He received additional Academy Award nominations for Best Actor for Kotch in 1971, directed by Lemmon, and for The Sunshine Boys in 1975, a Neil Simon adaptation in which he co-starred with George Burns. For The Sunshine Boys, Matthau also won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, tying with Burns. Further notable film credits include Gene Kelly's Hello, Dolly! in 1969, Elaine May's A New Leaf in 1971, Plaza Suite in 1971, Charley Varrick in 1973, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three in 1974, The Bad News Bears in 1976, California Suite in 1978, Hopscotch in 1980, and Dennis the Menace in 1993. In 1982, Matthau received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His accolades across his career included an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, and two Tony Awards.