Peter Falk

Born on September 26, 1927 in New York, Peter Michael Falk was the son of a Russian and a Pole. He had an unhappy childhood due to a malignant tumor that left him without his right eye at the age of 3. At first he had a hard time. “My eye was the favorite joke in my neighborhood,” he commented in interviews, but he soon got over it. “When something like this happens to you as a child, you learn to live with it.”

During World War II he was unable to enlist in the marines, as he wished, because of his glass eye. After spending a year working as a cook on a merchant ship, he earned a BA in Political Science from the New School University, and studied acting at the White Barn Theatre, Westport, Connecticut. His first professional role was in an Off-Broadway production of Molière’s “Don Juan.” He soon became a regular performer on the alternative theater circuit, for which he achieved enormous prestige. And that at the beginning of his career one of his agents told him: “Kid, you will never achieve anything with that eye.” Time would leave that man at the level of bitumen.

In cinema he made his debut with a brief role, as a writer, in Death in the Swamps , by Nicholas Ray . For The Crime Syndicate he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Role, thanks to his brilliant portrayal as Reles, a hitman for the New York mob in the 1930s. Another mob-related role earned him another nomination, Joy Boy, El Dandy’s ( Glenn Ford ) right-hand man in A Gangster for a Miracle . In the tape of the master Frank Capra , Falk contributed good shots of humor.

And it is that Falk shone in the field of comedy, as evidenced by his small role as a taxi driver in It ‘s a Mad, Mad, Mad World , and especially that of Maximiliam, the hilarious henchman of the evil Professor Fate ( Jack Lemmon ) in The Race . of the century , by Blake Edwards .

But popularity came to Peter Falk after the TV movie Prescription: Murder , where he played Lieutenant Colombo for the first time, a guy who seemed disastrous, disheveled and unintelligent, and who nevertheless concealed an enormous insight that led him to solve the most complicated murders, who always repeated the same phrase: “One more thing…”. He never had a first name, but he was so successful that he shot a total of 69 similar telefilms between 1968 and 2003.

Falk alternated the Colombo episodes with other work. His friend John Cassavetes turned to him for two of his best films, Husbands and A Wife Under the Influence , although he also made a cameo appearance on Opening Night . He had a memorable acting duel with Alan Arkin in the comedy The In-Laws , where he was a CIA agent. He was also a movie star, in The Sky Over Berlin , by Wim Wenders and above all, the grandfather who read an unforgettable story to his grandson in The Princess Bride .

At the end of 2007, his health condition worsened after undergoing various dental operations. It was not known if it was due to a reaction to the anesthesia, but he sank into senile dementia, and worsened after a hip operation. Even so, he continued working for a long time, until American Cowslip, from 2009, where he played a small role.