“They were going to do cops and robbers with ‘Quincy.’ I said, ‘You promised me I could do causes.’ They said, ‘Nobody wants to see that.’ I said, ‘Look at the success of “60 Minutes.” They want to see it if you present it as entertainment.'”įor his 1987 role as 81-year-old Nat in the Broadway production of “I’m Not Rappaport,” Klugman wore leg weights to learn to shuffle like an elderly man. I saw the opportunity to do what I’d gotten into the theater to do - give a message. He can tell the police commissioner to investigate a murder. He’s two heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.’ A coroner has power. “Everybody said, ‘Quincy’ll never be a hit.’ I said, ‘You guys are wrong. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero. “Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices. “We had some wonderful writers,” he said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. In “Quincy, M.E.,” which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.
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When Randall died in 2004 at age 84, Klugman told CNN: “A world without Tony Randall is a world that I cannot recognize.” They were battlers on screen, and the best of friends in real life. He would provoke me into reacting to what he did. “A script might say, ‘Oscar teaches Felix football.’ There would be four blank pages. “There’s nobody better to improvise with than Tony,” Klugman said.
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#Jack klugman series
Klugman had already had a taste of the show when he replaced Matthau on Broadway and he learned to roll with the quick-thinking Randall, with whom he had worked in 1955 on the CBS series “Appointment with Adventure.” The show teamed Klugman - the sloppy sports writer Oscar Madison - and Tony Randall - the fussy photographer Felix Unger - in the roles played by Walter Matthau and Art Carney on Broadway and Matthau and Jack Lemmon in the 1968 film. His was a city actor ideal for “The Odd Couple,” which ran from 1970 to 1975 and was based on Neil Simon’s play about mismatched roommates, divorced New Yorkers who end up living together. Never anyone’s idea of a matinee idol, Klugman remained a popular star for decades simply by playing the type of man you could imagine running into at a bar or riding on a subway with - gruff, but down to earth, his tie stained and a little loose, a racing form under his arm, a cigar in hand during the days when smoking was permitted.