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Walter John Matthau (; ; Matthau, Walter - Oxford Dictionaries October 1, 1920 – July 1, 2000) was an American actor, known for his "hangdog face" and for playing world-weary characters. He starred in 10 films alongside his real-life friend Jack Lemmon, including The Odd Couple (1968) and Grumpy Old Men (1993). The New York Times called this "one of Hollywood's most successful pairings". Among other accolades, Matthau won an Academy Award, two , and two Tony Awards.
On Broadway theatre, Matthau originated the role of Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple by playwright Neil Simon, for which he received a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play in 1965, his second after A Shot in the Dark in 1962. Matthau won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the Billy Wilder film The Fortune Cookie (1966), with further Best Actor nominations for Kotch (1971) and The Sunshine Boys (1975). He gained further recognition for his portrayal of the coach of a hapless little league team in the baseball comedy The Bad News Bears (1976).
Matthau is also known for his performances in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957), the Elvis Presley vehicle King Creole (1958), Stanley Donen's romance Charade (1963), Fail Safe (1964), Gene Kelly's musical Hello, Dolly! (1969), Elaine May's screwball comedy A New Leaf (1971) and Herbert Ross's ensemble comedy California Suite (1978). He also starred in Plaza Suite (1971), Charley Varrick (1973), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), The Sunshine Boys (1975), House Calls (1978), Hopscotch (1980) and Dennis the Menace (1993).
In 1982, Matthau received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Matthau's parents were Jewish; his mother, Rose (née Berolsky or Beransky), was a Lithuanian Jews who worked in a garment factory, and his father, Milton Matuschansky then Matthow was a Ukrainian peddler and electrician from Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine). They got married in New York in 1917.subscription required
A New York Times interview described his early years: "When Matthau was 3 years old, and his older brother, Henry, was 5, his father...lit out for parts unknown, leaving him and his brother to be raised by their mother....In 1935...Matthau learned of his father's death in Bellvue Hospital....During his childhood, Matthau...lived in a succession of cold-water tenement apartments in the Ukrainian area of the Lower East Side...being forced to vacate each apartment after only a few months because they'd got so hopelessly far behind in the rent that their landlord would have them evicted....Matthau...hasn't the slightest nostalgia these days for his poverty-ridden childhood, 'It was a nightmare—a dreadful, horrible, stinking nightmare,' he grimly remembers."
As part of a lifelong love of practical jokes, Matthau created the rumors that his middle name was Foghorn and his last name was originally Matuschanskayasky (under which Matthau is credited for a cameo role in the film Earthquake).
As a young boy, Matthau attended a Jewish non-profit sleepaway camp, Tranquillity Camp, where he began acting in the shows that the camp staged on Saturday nights. Matthau also attended Surprise Lake Camp. His high school was Seward Park High School. Matthau acted in several Yiddish theater productions and worked for a short time as a concession stand cashier in the Yiddish Theatre District.
Matthau played the gym teacher, Coach Burr, in the pilot episode of Mister Peepers (1952), credited as David Tyrell. He made his motion picture debut as a whip-wielding bad guy in The Kentuckian (1955) opposite Burt Lancaster. Matthau played a villain in King Creole (1958), where he gets beaten up by Elvis Presley. Around the same time, Matthau made Ride a Crooked Trail with Audie Murphy, and Onionhead (both 1958) starring Andy Griffith; the latter a box-office flop. Matthau and Griffith appeared previously in the critical and box-office hit A Face in the Crowd (1957), directed by Elia Kazan. Matthau appeared with James Mason in Bigger Than Life (1956), directed by Nicholas Ray. Matthau directed a low-budget film called The Gangster Story (1960) and played a sympathetic sheriff in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), which starred Kirk Douglas. Matthau appeared in the Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn crime thriller Charade (1963).
On television, Matthau appeared twice on Naked City, as well as in four installments of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He appeared eight times between 1962 and 1964 on The DuPont Show of the Week and as Franklin Gaer in an episode of Dr. Kildare ("Man Is a Rock", 1964).
Matthau achieved great success in the comedy film The Fortune Cookie (1966) as shyster lawyer William H. "Whiplash Willie" Gingrich, starring yet again opposite Lemmon; the first of many with Billy Wilder, and a role that would earn him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Filming had to be placed on a five-month hiatus after Matthau had a serious heart attack. He gave up his three-pack-a-day smoking habit as a result. Matthau appeared during the Oscar telecast shortly after having been injured in a bicycle accident; nonetheless, he scolded actors who had not attended the ceremony, especially the other major award winners that night: Paul Scofield, Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis. The Fortune Cookie Lemmon & Matthau Behind-the-Scenes , Hollywood Legacy. Retrieved November 3, 2022. Broadway-hits-cum-films continued to cast Matthau in lead roles such as Hello, Dolly! and Cactus Flower (both 1969); for the latter, Goldie Hawn received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.'', 1969]]
Matthau played three roles in the film version of Simon's Plaza Suite (1971), and was in the cast of its followup California Suite (1978). He starred in House Calls (1978), sharing the screen with Glenda Jackson and his Odd Couple stage partner, Carney.
Matthau starred in three crime dramas in the mid-1970s: as a detective investigating a mass murder on a bus in The Laughing Policeman (1973), as a bank robber on the run from the Mafia and the law in Charley Varrick (also 1973) and as a New York transit official in the action-thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). He also reunited with Lemmon in the black comedy-drama The Front Page (1974). A change of pace about misfits and delinquents on a Little League baseball team turned out to be a solid hit when Matthau starred as coach Morris Buttermaker in the comedy The Bad News Bears (1976).
Matthau was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his portrayal of former CIA field operative Miles Kendig in the elaborate spy comedy Hopscotch (1980), reuniting with Jackson. The original script, a dark work based on the novel of the same name, was rewritten and transformed into a comedy to play to Matthau's specific talents. The rewrite was a condition of his participation. Matthau participated in the script revisions, and the film's director Ronald Neame observed that Matthau's contributions entitled him to screen credit, but that was never pursued. Matthau wrote the scene in which Kendig and Isobel—apparently strangers—meet in a Salzburg restaurant and strike up a conversation about wine that ends in a passionate kiss. He also wrote the last scene of the film, where Kendig, presumed to be dead, disguises himself as a Sikh to enter a bookshop. Matthau also helped to choose appropriate compositions by Mozart that made up much of the score. TCM's Susan Doll observes that " Hopscotch could be considered the end of a long career peak or the beginning of (Matthau's) slide downhill, depending on the viewpoint", as character parts and supporting parts became the only thing available to an actor his age.
The next year, Matthau was nominated again for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for his portrayal of the fictional Associate justice Daniel Snow in First Monday in October (1981), about the (then-fictional) first woman (played by Jill Clayburgh) to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. The film was scheduled for release in early 1982, but when Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed to the high court in July, 1981, the release date was moved up to August, 1981. The New York Times critic Janet Maslin disliked the film but praised Matthau's performance.
Matthau reunited with Lemmon in the comedy Buddy Buddy (1981), the final film from Billy Wilder. He portrayed Herbert Tucker in another Neil Simon comedy I Ought to Be in Pictures (1982) with Ann-Margret and Dinah Manoff. Matthau co-starred with Robin Williams in the 1983 dark comedy film The Survivors. Although initially a box-office dud that barely grossed its budget, the film became a cult classic via repeated broadcasts on cable TV in the following years. He took the leading role of Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red in Roman Polanski's swashbuckler Pirates (1986).
During the 1980s and 1990s, Matthau served on the advisory board of the National Student Film Institute.
Matthau's partnership with Jack Lemmon became one of the most enduring collaborations in Hollywood. They became lifelong friends after making The Fortune Cookie and would make a total of 10 movies together—11 counting Kotch, in which Lemmon has a cameo appearance as a sleeping bus passenger. Apart from their many comedies, the two appeared (although they did not share any scenes) in the Oliver Stone drama JFK (1991). Matthau and Lemmon reunited for the comedy Grumpy Old Men (1993), co-starring Ann-Margret, and its sequel Grumpier Old Men (1995), co-starring Sophia Loren. This led to further pairings late in their careers, including appearances in The Grass Harp (1995), Out to Sea (1997) and a Simon-scripted sequel to their much earlier success, The Odd Couple II (1998).
Hanging Up (2000), directed by Diane Keaton, was Matthau's final appearance onscreen.
Matthau married Carol Grace in 1959. She died in 2003. Their son, Charles Matthau, was born in 1962. Charlie is a director and directed his father in several movies.
In 1976, 10 years after his first heart attack, Matthau underwent heart-bypass surgery. After working in Minnesota for Grumpy Old Men (1993), he was hospitalized for double pneumonia. In December 1995, Matthau had a colon tumor removed; it was deemed to be benign. He was hospitalized in May 1999 for more than two months, again owing to pneumonia.
In the late evening of June 30, 2000, Matthau had a heart attack at his home and was taken by ambulance to the St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, where he died a few hours later at 1:42 a.m. on July 1 at age 79. Matthau's death certificate lists the causes of death as "cardiac arrest" and "atherosclerotic heart disease", with "end stage renal disease" and "atrial fibrillation" as significant contributing factors. He is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. A celebration of his life was held on August 20 at the Directors Guild theater. Matthau's wife, Carol Grace, died in 2003, and her body is interred in the same plot as her husband.Photograph of Matthau's grave
| 1966 | Academy Awards | Best Supporting Actor | The Fortune Cookie | ||
| 1971 | Best Actor | Kotch | |||
| 1975 | The Sunshine Boys | ||||
| 1969 | British Academy Film Awards | Best Actor in a Leading Role | Hello, Dolly! and The Secret Life of an American Wife | ||
| 1973 | Charley Varrick and Pete 'n' Tillie | ||||
| 1976 | The Bad News Bears and The Sunshine Boys | ||||
| 1975 | David di Donatello Awards | Best Foreign Actor | The Front Page | ||
| 1966 | Golden Globe Awards | Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy | The Fortune Cookie | ||
| 1968 | The Odd Couple | ||||
| 1971 | Kotch | ||||
| 1972 | Pete 'n' Tillie | ||||
| 1974 | The Front Page | ||||
| 1975 | The Sunshine Boys | ||||
| 1980 | Hopscotch | ||||
| 1981 | First Monday in October | ||||
| 1966 | Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Supporting Actor | The Fortune Cookie | ||
| 1971 | Best Actor | Kotch | |||
| 1966 | Laurel Awards | Top Male Supporting Performance | The Fortune Cookie | ||
| 1968 | Top Male Comedy Performance | The Odd Couple | |||
| Top Male Star | |||||
| 1970 | |||||
| 2016 | Online Film & Television Association Awards | Film Hall of Fame: Actors | |||
| 1976 | Photoplay Awards | Favorite Movie | The Bad News Bears | ||
| 1963 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role | The DuPont Show of the Week | ||
| 1993 | ShoWest Convention | Lifetime Achievement Award | |||
| 1981 | Stinkers Bad Movie Awards | Most Annoying Fake Accent – Male | Buddy Buddy | ||
| 1959 | Tony Awards | Best Supporting or Featured Actor in a Play | Once More, with Feeling! | ||
| 1962 | A Shot in the Dark | ||||
| 1965 | Best Leading Actor in a Play | The Odd Couple |
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