Star of Odd Couple, QuincyTHE WASHINGTON POST
Jack Klugman, an Emmy Award-winning actor whoexcelled in disarming everyman roles, notably in the sitcom The Odd Couple and in the police drama Quincy, M.E., died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 90.
His son, Adam Klugman, confirmed the death. The cause was not immediately determined.
Klugman became a household name with his comic role in The Odd Couple, for which he received two Emmys during the show’s run on ABC from 1970 to 1975.
The series was adapted from a 1965 Neil Simon comedy about mismatched New York oddballs: a compulsively tidy photographer named Felix Unger who rooms with his best friend and fellow divorced man, an unkempt sportswriternamed Oscar Madison.
Klugman played Oscar, while Tony Randall was cast as Felix.
In 1976, Klugman starred in television’s Quincy, M.E., as a medical examiner in the Los Angeles County coroner’s office who used forensic science to get to the bottom of suspicious deaths. Quincy aired on NBC until 1983 and netted Klugman four Emmy nominations for lead actor in a dramatic series.
Jacob Joachim Klugman was born April 27, 1922.
In 1953, Klugman married actress and comedian Brett Somers, best known as a game-show panelist on the Match Game in the 1970s. He and Somers separated in 1974 but never divorced. She died in 2007.
Klugman’s 18-year relationship with actress Barbara Neugass ended in 1992 and led to an ugly palimony suit that Neugass ultimately lost.
In 2008, Klugman married actress Peggy Crosby. She survives him, along with two sons from his first marriage.
Golden Globe, Tony Award winnerTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES - Charles Durning, the two-time Oscarnominee who was dubbed the king of the character actors, died Monday at his home in New York City. He was 89.
Durning’s longtime agent and friend, Judith Moss, said that he died Monday of natural causes in his home in Manhattan.
Although he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials to comic foils to putupon everymen, Durning may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982’s The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The year after The Best Little Whorehouse, Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks’ To Be or Not to Be. He was also nominated for a Golden Globeas the harried police lieutenant in 1975’s Dog Day Afternoon.
He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald in the TV film The Kennedys of Massachusetts and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in the Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
He was the would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in Tootsie; the infamous seller of frog legs in The Muppet Movie; and Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy.
He was born into an Irish family of 10 children in 1923, in Highland Falls, N.Y. He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to survive. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.
Durning and his first wife, Carol, had three children before divorcing in 1972. In 1974, he married his high school sweetheart, Mary Ann Amelio. He is survived by his children, Michele, Douglas and Jeannine.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 8 on 12/26/2012