thu 28/03/2024

Just One More Thing: Peter Falk, 1927-2011 | reviews, news & interviews

Just One More Thing: Peter Falk, 1927-2011

Just One More Thing: Peter Falk, 1927-2011

Remembered: the actor who was indivisible from the role of Columbo

A few years ago I chanced upon something truly surreal. I was driving along a track in New Zealand. The way you do. There was a field on the left. In it there was a man sitting on a portable chair, a sketchpad in his lap, a pencil in his hand. Gathered in front of him, like a cluster of attentive disciples, was a tight semi-circle of cows. The man was wearing a black suit in a style popular at the end of the 19th century. The surreal bit is that, despite the grizzly beard, this was Columbo. None other than.

I looked over his shoulder at a very pretty picture, and tried to engage the artist in idle chat. Ever so politely, the artist invited me to sling my hook. I must have blown his cover, as a woman came out of the farmhouse and shooed the cows away. Presumably she’d never seen Columbo, otherwise she’d have recognised the ragged detective, even in his cunning disguise. She shooed him away too.

How did Peter Falk come to be at the remote north-western tip of South Island, drawing heifers in a period suit? It’s a long story. But the short answer is that he was in The Lost World, adapted by the BBC from Conan Doyle’s boys’ own caper. Falk played a priest who by fair means or foul sought to discourage a group of explorers from visiting a plateau where dinosaurs were rumoured to live. The version teemed with computer-animated monsters and hairy hominids played by circus performers. But Falk probably shaded it as the most truly exotic creature on the screen.

When not disturbing him with his cows, I sat in his caravan with Falk, who had travelled halfway round the world at the summons of Conan Doyle. “I’ve always said that Columbo was an ass-backwards Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “Holmes smoked the pipe. Columbo smokes cheap cigars, a dozen for three dollars. Holmes spoke the King’s English. Columbo is still working on his English. Holmes wore beautiful tweeds. Columbo looks like an unmade bed. Holmes had a long neck. And Columbo has no neck.”

sa_columbo_peter_falk_season_5_dvd_review_PDVD_020It’s true, I remember thinking. He doesn’t. He also has only one eye. Falk lost his right peeper at the age of three. When he became an actor, an agent told him he could forget about film and television work. “It never entered my mind to do either. In the middle Fifties in New York you only thought of the stage. Television was in its infancy. And the idea that I was ever going to be in Hollywood - I might as well be knighted by the Queen of England.”

He began playing Columbo in 1967 and, with one decade-long break, was still at it. Even in films like Wings of Desire and The Player, he basically played Columbo under a pseudonym. To all intents and purposes Falk and Columbo were the same person. The rumpled raincoat and the shoes were the actor’s own. The only difference is that Falk has quit smoking and the detective never managed. “I think I would probably be a better actor if I hadn’t spent so much time playing Columbo.”

It’s hard to imagine that 50 years back he was twice nominated for an Oscar. He showed up at the Academy Awards in his Volkswagen Beetle wearing a scruffy rented tux. “I remember saying to my wife, ‘Honey, what do you think my chances are?’ And she said, ‘You’ll be lucky if they don’t take back the nomination.’ When they said, ‘And the winner is Peter...’ I was out of my seat. And when they said, ‘Ustinov’, I’m going down in my seat.”

The role of Columbo almost went to Bing Crosby. “I know why he turned it down, and that’s one of the reasons that I love golf.” He played golf himself, and drew whenever he could, mostly women. “I draw them with their hair up, their hair down, with their clothes on and their clothes off. The female figure is a magnificent thing.” He had an eye for them. Just the one, obviously.

Towards the end of the conversation I asked Peter Falk if he ever thought of retiring Columbo. At that point they were both in their seventies. “I can’t kill him,” the actor said, shaking his head at the sacrilegious idea. The practical outcome of playing one character for so long is that he hadn’t had much experience of dying. Falk has a death scene in The Lost World, and one morning in a huge cave, I happened to be there as he launched himself into it with the gusto of someone who hadn’t faked his own death since 1960. That was in Murder Confidential, when his character was defenestrated. It was one of his Oscar nominations. Maybe he should have died more often.

"Just one more thing"

Share this article

Comments

nAH. nO wAY. He Aint Dead!!!!

83? That is a long time to live! None of your suspects / victims ever lived to that age! Not one. You will be sorely missed by me and others who felt the same way about investigating crimes [FBI Style]......... No Drama..

Add comment

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters