Walter matthau

New Yorker Walter Matuschanskayasky (the actor’s real name is unpronounceable) was born on October 1, 1920. When he was 3 years old, the family was abandoned by his father, a humble Jew of Russian origin who had recently immigrated to the United States. The would-be actor’s childhood on the lower East Side, along with his mother and his older brother, Henry, was filled with financial hardship. The person who had the most influence on him was his mother, Rose, whom he defined as “the worst cook in the city, and even in the world.” She was the first viewer of it, because “due to the misery in which we lived, I was the only person capable of making her laugh,” the comedian commented.

During his first years of life, he took his first steps as an actor in school plays, and he was also forced to plot all kinds of tricks to mislead the landlord. He developed a humorous and sarcastic outlook on life that helped him survive and also become a memorable comedian. At an early age he began working in the Second Avenue venues, which put on Yiddish-language plays, first as a soda vendor, but later he was recruited for bit parts. “I did first as an old woman in a crowd,” he commented.

After graduating from high school in 1939, Walter Matthau enrolled in a government program for unemployed youth. Thanks to this he carried out all kinds of tasks for the next three years, such as cleaning floors in a factory, working as a lumberjack in Montana, and even becoming a boxing instructor.

During World War II he served in the army as a bomber radio operator, receiving six medals, although he always downplayed this fact. “During the war, the most important thing is that I was the ping-pong champion of the Armed Forces,” he said. He was in the same unit with James Stewart , one of the great stars of Hollywood, although he only met him in a volleyball game.

During his journey on the British front, he fell in love with a young woman who convinced him to go to New York together at the end of the conflict, to take an acting course. He was able to fulfill his purpose, thanks to the fact that a law of Congress assigned him a pension that allowed him to survive. After enrolling in Drama at the School of Social Research in his hometown, he discovered that it was good for her to act to escape his shyness. “When you have the spotlight on your face, you only see the other actors.” At the center he learned the Stanislavsky method, surrounded by some illustrious peers such as Tony Curtis and Eli Wallach .

Upon finishing his studies, in 1948, he made his Broadway debut playing eight small filler roles in “Anne of a Thousand Days,” with Rex Harrison as Henry VIII. He would start out as a messenger who would come on the scene saying “I’ve ridden for 38 years and I can’t wait to sleep”, then he would collapse. To give it more realism, on opening night he decided to run all over the theater to look exhausted on stage. He arrived on stage so exhausted that he was unable to utter a word.

Over the next five years, he was a supporting role in numerous theatrical productions, making ends meet with small television appearances. He married Grace Johnson, with whom he had two children, although the marriage did not last long. At the time, Matthau was sympathetic to socialist ideology, but he slipped under the radar of Senator McCarthy’s Committee on Un-American Activities, as he was still a completely unknown and irrelevant actor.

But in 1955, life took a radical turn for Walter Matthau . He had huge success with George Axelrob’s “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” He fell in love with one of the actresses in the cast, Carol Marcus, understudy for Jane Mansfield, the lead actress. “We were made for each other. She was crazy. I was crazy. It was a balanced relationship,” he recalled. They married four years later and had a son, Charles, who would direct his father in The Grass Harp , one of his last works.

During a hiatus in the performances of “Will Success”, Matthau made his film debut as a villain, in The Man from Kentucky , one of the two films directed by Burt Lancaster , also the lead, with whom he faced off in a duel. He was also the antagonist of André de Toth ‘s Pact of Honor , opposite Kirk Douglas .

Although Walter Matthau returned to performances for a long time afterwards, he had been dazzled by the immense possibilities of cinema. He focused all of his attention on succeeding on screen. He played a friend of James Mason ‘s , who was a cortisone-addicted professor, in Nicholas Ray ‘s More Powerful Than Life . During filming, Matthau had three car accidents in three weeks, but according to the police, none of them were the fault of the actor, who on all occasions respected traffic regulations. It was just a matter of bad luck.

For some time Matthau was an illustrious secondary. He played a character journalist in Elia Kazan’s A Face in a Crowd , shared the lead with Elvis Presley in Michael Curtiz ‘s The Neighborhood , and was Kirk Douglas ‘ annoying neighbor in A Stranger in My Life . Richard Quine . In 1960, Walter Matthau tried his luck as a director with Gangster Story , co-starring himself and his wife. But it was not successful, so the experience would not be repeated.

After The Brave Ones Walk Alone , by David Miller , and Trap My Husband , by Daniel Mann , he made one of his most memorable compositions in Charade , by Stanley Donen , where he was the head of the CIA who made Audrey Hepburn wonder if the villain of the story was either him or the ambiguous character played by Cary Grant . His consecration came to Walter Matthau in 1965 with The Odd Couple , a play by Neil Simon, written specifically with him in mind for the character of Oscar Madison. “Every actor spends his life waiting for the role that combines his talent and his personality. The odd couple was mine. That’s where it all began for me,” the actor declared. On stage, every night he played the role in a different way. “Monday like he’s Jewish, Tuesday Italian, Wednesday Irish… and I’d mix them all up as well. I’d do it for fun, and it always worked.” He won the Tony in 1966, and in 1968 he starred in the film version with Jack Lemmon , directed by Gene Saks .

Billy Wilder had been following the theatrical career of Walter Matthau for years, whom he had wanted to cast as the lead in his 1955 film Temptation Lives Upstairs . Darryl Zanuck, Fox boss, wouldn’t let him. But he finally called the actor for On a Silver Platter , where he would play a crooked lawyer who propositions a rugged TV cameraman ( Jack Lemmon ) to fake permanent damage in order to collect on insurance. Matthau agreed to participate without reading the script. When he finally read it he called Lemmon, surprised that his character had the better part. “About time you were the star,” replied the humble Lemon.

During filming he suffered a heart attack that endangered his continuity in the film. But Wilder decided to wait seven weeks until he could count on him again. When he won the Oscar for best supporting role, he said “my classmates want to reward me before he dies.”

Walter Matthau would become a good friend of Lemmon, with whom he would participate again in six other films: the aforementioned The Odd Couple , the comedies again directed by Wilder Primera Plana and Here’s a Friend , and already in his mature years Two Grumpy Old Men , The Grass Harp and Discords a la carte . Also, Matthau was managed by Lemmon in Kotch .

After titles such as Hello, Dolly , Cactus Flower , Laughter and Tears and The Big Swindle , he shot another two adaptations of works by Neil Simon, The Nutty Couple and California Suite , both directed by Herbert Ross . In 1980 he starred in The Knave and His Garment , a classic comedy in which he was accompanied by Julie Andrews and Tony Curtis .

After the poor critical reception of Here is a friend , his last work with Wilder and Lemmon, from 1981, Matthau appears more and more sporadically on the screens. He almost always shoots low-quality films, such as Suffering Citizens and The Patients of a Psychiatrist in Distress , both by Michael Ritchie , or I’m the Little Devil , by Roberto Benigni who was still far from mastering Life Is Beautiful . He also appeared in the low-key Naughty Daniel , an adaptation of the famous comic.

He still played some worthy role, for example in Pirates , a twist to the conventions of the genre, by Roman Polanski . He also played a senator in Oliver Stone ‘s JFK . In the last years of his life, he gave in to commerciality to reunite with Lemmon in the previously mentioned Two Grumpy Old Men , from 1993, and its sequel, Discords à la carte , from 1995. Both shone a little more in The Grass Harp , adaptation of a text by Truman Capote , where they exchanged their classic roles.

His last work, Colgadas , from 2000, directed by Diane Keaton , was not a dignified farewell. She once again embodied a curmudgeon, the father who constantly embitters the daughter who takes care of her until she dies, which foreshadowed what would unfortunately happen shortly after filming in real life.