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A sad day when we lose another of the great ones
One of the most accomplished television, movie, and stage actors to ever create a pop-culture icon, Peter Falk was Columbo, and he was also a helluva a lot more than that, too. His work in movies such as The Princess Bride, Wings of Desire, and The In-Laws, and especially in the proto-indie films made by his pal John Cassavetes, such as Husbands (1970), was superb. His stage career included marvelous performances in plays ranging from Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh to Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue, for which he won a Tony.
But Falk, who died Thursday at age 83, will remain best known as Lt. Columbo, one of the greatest of all TV characters. With his rumpled trenchcoat and wet stub of a cigar, Falk entered a scene as though he was a bum who’d wandered onto the set. He played Columbo as a wily bumbler, the sort of guy who seemed not to be paying attention, only to spring a precise, devastating question on a suspect and solve a case with startling ease. The ritualistic just-one-more-thing pattern to Columbo’s interrogations became a pop-culture cliche itself (and the title for his 2006 memoir). But coming from Falk, the words were never clicheed: He delivered them every time as though they’d just occurred to the distracted police lieutenant.
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But Falk, who died Thursday at age 83, will remain best known as Lt. Columbo, one of the greatest of all TV characters. With his rumpled trenchcoat and wet stub of a cigar, Falk entered a scene as though he was a bum who’d wandered onto the set. He played Columbo as a wily bumbler, the sort of guy who seemed not to be paying attention, only to spring a precise, devastating question on a suspect and solve a case with startling ease. The ritualistic just-one-more-thing pattern to Columbo’s interrogations became a pop-culture cliche itself (and the title for his 2006 memoir). But coming from Falk, the words were never clicheed: He delivered them every time as though they’d just occurred to the distracted police lieutenant.
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