Quote of the Day (Frank Capra, on Peter Falk)

“Peter Falk was my joy, my anchor to reality. Introducing that remarkable talent to the techniques of comedy made me forget pains, tired blood, and maniacal hankerings to murder Glenn Ford. Thank you, Peter Falk.”—Veteran director Frank Capra, on his 1961 film, Pocketful of Miracles, and its marvelous supporting actor, Peter Falk, in The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (1971)

At the time of Capra’s memoir, Peter Falk was about to ascend to another level of stardom, as Columbo, TV’s premiere detective of the Seventies and, more rabid fans might insist, of all time. Within a few years, many people would forget that for two years in a row, at the beginning of the 1960s, the actor had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscars, in Murder, Inc. and Pocketful of Miracles.

Those who worked with the actor—who, sadly, died of Alzheimer’s this past weekend—never could forget his prior work, though. They knew that Falk pulled off the same trick in the early Sixties that he would later in the decade: take two figures on the same side of the law and make of them vastly different human beings, each with their own highly individual, quirky lives.

In Murder, Inc., Falk’s portrayal of violent hitman Reles first caught the attention of Hollywood. But a year later, when Frank Capra was fuming over how star Ford was throwing his weight around, Falk managed to save the director’s faith in humanity (though not in Hollywood, as this turned out to be his last movie) as a gangster’s bodyguard, appropriately named Joy Boy, in Pocketful of Miracles.

The energy flags in parts of this remake of the director’s 1933 Lady for a Day (itself an adaptation of Damon Runyon’s short story "Madame le Gimp"), but never when Falk is on screen. The climax comes when he’s asked to masquerade as the rich husband of boozy street beggar Apple Annie, whom his boss, bootlegger Dave the Dude, is convinced brings him luck with her fabulous fruits.

In sputtering rage that reaches hilarious heights, Falk's Joy Boy declares, in no uncertain terms, that this is beyond the limit of even his loyalties: “I ain't gonna marry her! An' y'know why? 'Cause my wife don't like it when I go around marryin' people! She's funny that way!” This scene alone probably netted him the Oscar nomination.

As for Columbo: In my tween years, I never missed an episode—and, I’m convinced, neither did a number of classmates, who remarked that my raincoat of the time reminded them of the police lieutenant’s. We were all caught up on the multiple idiosyncrasies—not just the raincoat, but also the cigar, the car as worn as the raincoat, and the references to a wife who never appeared—that made Columbo as unlikely and memorable a master of crime ratiocination as Sherlock Holmes.

(It's hard to believe anyone else inhabiting this role, but Bing Crosby, of all people, had originally been offered the part. He rejected it, joking that it would interfere with his golf game!)

I was surprised to find out nearly a decade ago that Falk had had an earlier go at the detective show format, in a TV series called The Trials of O’Brien. He wasn’t a married police officer this time, but a divorced attorney who, despite constantly having to hustle because of his spendthrift ways, invariably found the killer. Yet the two characters shared the same crafty intelligence.

I watched an episode of this short-lived (one season, 1965-66) series--which mixed comedy with homicide--at the Paley Center for the Arts in Manhattan, and was delighted to see that Elaine Stritch played the lawyer's secretary. (The series came out on DVD a couple of years back, if you can get your hands on it.)

Besides his brilliance (the producer of Trials, Richard Alan Simmons, echoed Capra in calling Falk “a comedic genius”), co-workers remembered the actor for his generosity. One of the great guest stars of Trials, Faye Dunaway, found herself, by the early ‘90s, in a career trough. No longer receiving good offers on film, the Oscar-winning actress consulted her old friend about a TV series pitched to her.

Now on his second run as Columbo, Falk pulled out a script that he’d written himself some years ago and had put aside until he could find the appropriate actress. He offered it to Dunaway. The role, on an episode called “It’s All in the Game,” led to an Emmy for the actress--a bright point in a year that saw her own attempt at a sitcom end miserably.

Why was Columbo such a success? As a youngster, I was too caught up in the detective’s uncanny unraveling of the crime to notice the overwhelming pattern of the criminals he stalked: not street hoodlums, but mystery novelists, music maestros, fitness gurus, big-time lawyers--the rich and famous. TV analyst Jeff Greenfield noticed the pattern early on, writing in The New York Times in 1973 about “the most thoroughgoing satisfaction ‘Columbo’ offers us”: “the assurance that those who dwell in marble and satin, those whose clothes, food, cars and mates are the very best, do not deserve it.”

For the child of a blue-collar family coming to terms with the role of class in this world, then, watching Columbo offered a fun egalitarian fantasy, a kind of revenge on the nation's elite who brought a perfect storm of disorder and corruption on America in the late '60s and early '70s. Thank you, Peter Falk.