Walter Matthau

Intro

Walter Matthau made weariness, impatience and unruly self-confidence central to an unusually versatile screen presence. Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple became his most familiar character, but the same actor could play a calculating lawyer, a threatening stranger or a police officer negotiating under pressure. His loose posture and resonant voice gave those parts a recognizable personality without making their motives identical. The long screen partnership with Jack Lemmon grew out of that ability to be a disruptive presence opposite an actor whose characters often struggled to keep life in order.

Career snapshot

Born in New York City on October 1, 1920, Matthau encountered performance through the city's Yiddish theater world. After military service during the Second World War, he studied at Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop and built a career on the stage. The gallery's 1952 John Seymour Erwin portrait belongs to Fancy Meeting You Again, a Broadway comedy by George S. Kaufman and Leueen MacGrath. IBDB lists Matthau as Sinclair Heybore in the production at the Royale Theatre. Its eight-performance run was brief, but the photograph records a working stage actor years before his best-known film persona emerged.

The entry point

Neil Simon's The Odd Couple opened on Broadway in March 1965, directed by Mike Nichols. Matthau originated Oscar Madison, the untidy sportswriter whose apartment becomes home to the fastidious Felix Ungar, played by Art Carney. Their domestic incompatibility turns friendship into an increasingly difficult sharing of space, habits and expectations. Matthau won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for this performance. Henry Grossman's photograph in the gallery shows Matthau at left with Carney at right: it documents the stage partnership, not the later film pairing that many viewers associate first with these characters.

Screen identity and style

Before Oscar became a screen landmark, Matthau had demonstrated a more unsettling kind of authority in Stanley Donen's Charade. Released in 1963, the film places Audrey Hepburn's Reggie amid competing identities and claims surrounding her dead husband's money. Matthau appears as the supposed official Hamilton Bartholomew, whose identity is part of the mystery. His scene with Hepburn in the gallery belongs to that suspense comedy. The performance uses a reassuring manner that invites trust while the story asks viewers to doubt appearances, showing how effectively his familiar speaking voice could serve uncertainty rather than straightforward comic reassurance.

Collaborations and patterns

Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie, released in 1966, began Matthau's film partnership with Lemmon. Matthau plays Willie Gingrich, a lawyer pursuing an insurance claim after Lemmon's television cameraman is injured during a football game. Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond's screenplay gives the lawyer an appetite for manipulation that makes him both comic and morally troublesome. Matthau won the supporting-actor Oscar at the April 1967 ceremony. Gene Saks's 1968 film of The Odd Couple then reunited the actors, with Matthau returning as Oscar and Lemmon taking over Felix. The film preserves the conflict at the heart of Simon's play while establishing a different performing partnership from the Broadway original.

Era reflection

The gallery's 1969 Cactus Flower publicity photograph places Matthau among Goldie Hawn, Jack Weston and Ingrid Bergman, another reminder that his comedy depended on changing ensembles. His subsequent work extended well beyond romantic and domestic farce. In Joseph Sargent's 1974 The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, he plays Lieutenant Zachary Garber of the Transit Authority Police, negotiating with the leader of a subway hijacking. Garber's task involves deadlines, hostages and incomplete information. Matthau's practical, unglamorous bearing gives that thriller a very different use for the impatience and verbal precision that could produce laughter elsewhere.

Legacy and rediscovery

Later audiences encountered Matthau in The Bad News Bears, Dennis the Menace and the Grumpy Old Men films, while his work with Lemmon continued into The Odd Couple II. He also appeared in The Grass Harp, directed by his son Charles, and in Hanging Up near the end of his career. Matthau died on July 1, 2000, at 79. His legacy includes a celebrated comic partnership, but the range from Broadway's Oscar to Charade's deceptive official and Pelham's working policeman gives a fuller account of his craft: recognizably Matthau, yet responsive to very different stories.

Selected screen roles

• The Odd Couple: Oscar Madison — 1965 Broadway; 1968 film
• Charade: Hamilton Bartholomew / Carson Dyle — 1963
• The Fortune Cookie: Willie Gingrich — 1966
• The Taking of Pelham One Two Three: Lieutenant Zachary Garber — 1974

A career in pictures

Four distinct images connect early Broadway work, screen suspense, the original Odd Couple stage pairing and an ensemble film comedy.

Fancy Meeting You Again publicity portrait (1952)

Sinclair Heybore

John Seymour Erwin portrait associated with the Broadway play.

Charade with Audrey Hepburn (1963)

Hamilton Bartholomew / Carson Dyle

Matthau is at left and Audrey Hepburn at right in this film frame.

The Odd Couple on Broadway (1965)

Oscar Madison

Matthau is at left with Art Carney as Felix Ungar at right. Henry Grossman photograph dated February 17, 1965.

Cactus Flower ensemble (1969)

Walter Matthau with the cast

From left: Goldie Hawn, Walter Matthau, Jack Weston and Ingrid Bergman. Columbia-distributed publicity photograph.

Rewatch notes

• Art Carney played Felix opposite Matthau in the original Broadway Odd Couple; Jack Lemmon played Felix in the 1968 film.
• His supporting-actor Oscar for The Fortune Cookie was presented in 1967 for a 1966 release.