A late-blooming star, Walter Matthau came to prominence in the latter half of the 1960s, specializing in comedy but equally adept in action and the occasional romantic role. With his beat-up-looking face and body, a shuffling gait, and a decidedly ethnic-sounding vocal quality, Walter Matthau hardly seemed a candidate for movie stardom, but thanks to an abundance of talent, the right roles, and a receptive audience, he became a top box-office attraction and an Oscar-winning performer.
Born Walter Matuschanskayasky to a former Catholic priest and his Russian Jewish wife, Walter Matthau grew up in poverty on New York City's Lower East Side. His job at the age of 11 of selling soda in a Yiddish theater during intermission led to his acting on stage in bit parts. After serving in the air force as a gunner, Walter Matthau studied acting on the G.I. Bill at the New School's Dramatic Workshop. With his peculiar mug, he seemed best suited for character parts, and he played them with ever-increasing success on stage until he made his film debut in The Kentuckian (1955). He played the villain - as he would in virtually all of his films during the next decade.
Walter Matthau worked constantly from 1955 to 1965, appearing on Broadway, starring in a short-lived TV series, Tallahassee 7000 in 1959, and playing bad guys in the movies, most memorably in A Face in the Crowd (1957), King Creole (1958), and Charade (1963). He even directed himself in a film, a lowbudget affair called Gangster Story (1958). A highly respected actor, Walter Matthau merely needed the right vehicle to show off his abilities. Director BILLY WILDER wisely cast Walter Matthau in his black comedy The Fortune Cookie (1966). Walter Matthau's brilliant performance as a sleazy ambulance- chasing lawyer brought him a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. He also came away with a lasting personal and professional relationship with his costar JACK LEMMON.
Playwright-screenwriter NEIL SIMON provided Walter Matthau with another important vehicle, penning the role of Oscar Madison in the play The Odd Couple expressly for him. The critical and public response to his performance as Madison made Walter Matthau an undisputed star, at least in New York, and when he later reprised the role in the film version of the play in 1968 (costarring with Lemmon), he solidified his standing as a major comic film talent. Simon has since provided a great many other excellent roles for Walter Matthau in such films as Plaza Suite (1971), The Sunshine Boys (1975), which garnered him one of his two Best Actor Oscar nominations, and California Suite (1978). Jack Lemmon directed him in Kotch (1971), for which Walter Matthau received his other Oscar nomination as Best Actor.
Walter Matthau's portrayal of a modern-day W. C. FIELDS playing cranky comic characters led to either critical or commercial success in such films as A New Leaf (1971), The Bad News Bears (1976), and Little Miss Marker (1979). Having proved himself in comedy, Walter Matthau also exhibited a wider range of acting talent. He first showed his dramatic potential in the seriocomic film Pete 'n' Tillie (1972). His next three films were pure action movies, all well reviewed, and all of them hits: Charley Varrick (1973), The Laughing Policeman (1973), and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974).
In yet another display of versatility, Walter Matthau, then in his late fifties, starred in House Calls (1978), a light romance with Glenda Jackson. The film was such a hit the pair was reunited in another romantic comedy, Hopscotch (1980). Due to ill health, Walter Matthau appeared with less frequency in the movies during the 1980s - and also with less commercial success than in the past. Despite generally good personal notices, films such as First Monday in October (1981), Buddy, Buddy (1981), The Survivors (1983), and The Couch Trip (1988) were not hits.
Aside from a television appearance in 1989 as a lawyer in The Incident (1989) and a bit part in OLIVER STONE's JFK (1991), Walter Matthau did not appear in a film between 1987 and 1993, when he and Jack Lemmon were reunited in Grumpy Old Men. The duo continued their bickering and sparring as they fought for Ann-Margret's affections; in 1995's sequel, they were Grumpier Old Men, this time with Sophia Loren as the love interest. In fact, the Matthau-Lemmon team would appear in more films (Out to Sea [1997] and Neil Simon's The Odd Couple [1998]), but the material became increasingly stale.
Walter Matthau seemed to be at his best playing a grump, and he was the inevitable choice to play Mr. Wilson in Dennis the Menace (1993). In I'm Not Rappaport (1996), Ossie Davis filled in for Lemmon in another geriatric donnybrook. In two supporting roles Walter Matthau was outstanding: He portrayed Albert Einstein in I.Q. (1994), a romantic comedy, and in Hanging Up (2000) he played an elderly show-business veteran, modeled after Henry Ephron.
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