Document 1 of 1 Tony Randall , 84, Dies; Fussbudget Felix in 'Odd Couple,' He Loved the Stage Severo, Richard. Times [New York, N.Y] 19 May 2004: .22.

Abstract Two years later he won a role on television that in a sense would presage his [Felix Unger] portrayal in that people began to feel that Mr. Randall and this character -- a schoolteacher named Harvey Weskit -- were really the same. The show was called ''Mr. Peepers.'' Produced by Fred Coe for NBC, it starred Wally Cox as Peepers, a sweet, shy, somewhat befuddled teacher. As Weskit, Mr. Randall was cast as Peepers's posturing, swaggering sidekick. It earned Mr. Randall an Emmy nomination. The role made both Mr. Cox and Mr. Randall stars. They certainly remembered Felix. Even 20 years after '''' went off the air, Mr. Randall was often stopped on the streets of New York (he loved to walk and when he did not, he almost always took public transportation) by people who never forgot Felix and were convinced that Unger and Randall were one and the same. Mr. Randall, left, with [] in a 1972 scene from ''The Odd Couple.'' The show, which ran on ABC for five seasons, gave Mr. Randall his best-known role. (Photo by ABC via ); From left, [], [Tony Randall] and [] in ''Pillow Talk'' (1959), the first of three romantic comedies they appeared together in. Mr. Randall portrayed a foil to Hudson's romantic lead, and he played similar roles in other films. (Photo by Everett Collection)

Full Text Tony Randall, the sardonic actor with the commanding voice and precise diction whose career in light-comic parts in Hollywood and on the New York stage seemed the perfect preparation for his signature role as the fussbudget Felix Unger in the classic television series ''The Odd Couple,'' died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 84 and lived in Manhattan. Mr. Randall died in his sleep at N.Y.U. Medical Center with his wife, Heather, by his side, said Joe Trentacosta of Springer Associates, Mr. Randall's publicity firm. Mr. Trentacosta said Mr. Randall had been hospitalized since December, when he underwent a triple heart bypass and later contracted pneumonia. Theaters on Broadway dimmed their lights last night at 8 in tribute. Mr. Randall felt at home in Shakespeare and Shaw as well as in expounding the virtues of Verdi and other operatic composers, which he did on many occasions on public broadcasting and during intermission programs of Saturday broadcasts of the . But he was best known for comedy, for which the public was eager to accept him, even when the material was flimsy. He had so many frothy parts in the movies and on television that Mr. Randall slipped into ''as if into a warm bath, to play with the rubber ducks the writers have provided,'' John Leonard wrote in in 1976. ''Dignity is his wash rag. He is so talented that one wouldn't blame him for a hint of disdain, even of contempt, for many of the lines he has had to speak, the predicaments to be endured. There never has been any such hint. He somehow civilizes the material.'' Suave and urbane, his rich baritone the vehicle for the clipped diction of the demanding elocution professor that he easily could have been, Mr. Randall said he had been pleased to play Felix Unger, whose roommate and temperamental opposite was Oscar Madison, the slovenly, unkempt, cigar-smoking sportswriter played by Jack Klugman. These two New Yorkers were thrown together by the vicissitudes of life (mostly rejection by their wives) and made the worst of it, in a series that ran from 1970 to '75, continung in reruns. Founder of Repertory Theater But Mr. Randall, who won an Emmy Award for his portrayal, made clear that he did not want to be always or only thought of as Felix Unger, because he could do so many other things. He had a great love of repertory theater and in 1991 founded, with a million dollars of his own money and much more from the moneyed sources who backed his commercial acting, the National Actors Theater in New York. Its purpose was to keep the works of playwrights like Ibsen, Chekhov and Arthur Miller before the public, and at a reasonable price. The critics were not especially kind to his efforts, and he said more than once that he was especially disappointed in the reviews that his company got from The New York Times. But he stuck with it, saying he refused ''to be brushed aside'' by The Times or any other newspaper. He made clear, whenever he was asked, that his favorite role in more than 50 years of acting was that of a middle-aged American diplomat in the Broadway stage production of ''M. Butterfly,'' David Henry Hwang's 1988 Tony winner. In it, Mr. Randall's character falls in love with a gorgeous Japanese woman who turns out to be a male spy in disguise. ''It was the closest I ever came to being the kind of actor I believe in,'' he said on more than one occasion. Tony Randall was born Leonard Rosenberg in Tulsa, Okla., on Feb. 26, 1920, the son of Mogscha Rosenberg, a dealer in artworks and antiques, and the former Julia Finston. He was drawn to acting as a child. He had a most expressive, elastic face and used it in class when he was not expected to, with the result that one of his grade school teachers sent a note home, asking his parents to order him to stop making funny faces. He appeared in his first production in grade school and liked it so much that he decided acting was what he would do with the rest of his life. But when he went to Central High School in Tulsa, he was unsuccessful when he tried out for parts in school plays, perhaps because he then had a childhood stammer he was in the process of overcoming. As a teenager he went to see plays whenever he could, and on one occasion came to town in a touring production of ''Romeo and Juliet.'' Mr. Randall went backstage to get her autograph, for which he was asked to pay 25 cents; Cornell informed him that such money went to charity. She borrowed the boy's pen to write her name. ''Someday,'' Mr. Randall said, ''I'll give you mine.'' ''Autograph or pen?'' Miss Cornell inquired. After high school Mr. Randall enrolled as a speech and drama major at in Evanston, Ill., but dropped out after a year and moved to New York, where he began to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater. His teachers there included , a stern taskmaster, and , the dancer, who gave him lessons on how to move about the stage gracefully. He found work in radio in the early 1940's. One of his first parts was on a weekly show called ''I Love a Mystery,'' which revolved around three adventurers named Jack, Doc and Reggie. Mr. Randall was Reggie. His voice was also heard on radio soap operas like ''Portia Faces Life,'' ''When a Girl Marries'' and ''Life's True Story.'' In 1941 he made his New York stage debut in an adaptation of the 13th-century Chinese fantasy ''A Circle of Chalk,'' and later that year appeared in Shaw's ''.'' He was in rehearsal for a part in Thornton Wilder's ''Skin of Our Teeth'' in 1942 when he was drafted into the Army. He quickly rose from private to first lieutenant but saw no combat action overseas. His last job with the Army was delivering classified documents to various offices in Washington. After his discharge in 1946 he returned to New York and made appearances on a radio show then presided over by the satirist Henry Morgan. Over the next two years he renewed his acquaintance with Cornell, with parts in a touring production of ''The Barretts of Wimpole Street'' and on Broadway in ''.'' Eva Wolas wrote what was then described as a ''sex comedy'' in 1948, called ''To Tell the Truth,'' and Mr. Randall got a part in it. He was noticed by Brooks Atkinson of The Times, who wrote that Mr. Randall moved about the stage ''with the grace of a dancer.'' That led to his appearance in 1950 in ''Caesar and Cleopatra,'' which starred and . Sidekick of 'Mr. Peepers' Two years later he won a role on television that in a sense would presage his Felix Unger portrayal in that people began to feel that Mr. Randall and this character -- a schoolteacher named Harvey Weskit -- were really the same. The show was called ''Mr. Peepers.'' Produced by Fred Coe for NBC, it starred Wally Cox as Peepers, a sweet, shy, somewhat befuddled teacher. As Weskit, Mr. Randall was cast as Peepers's posturing, swaggering sidekick. It earned Mr. Randall an Emmy nomination. The role made both Mr. Cox and Mr. Randall stars. By the late 1950's Mr. Randall was swamped with work, appearing in some of Max Liebman's television spectaculars and briefly substituting for Steve Allen on the ''Tonight'' show and for Arthur Godfrey, who then had a popular daytime show. There were also a great many television plays. Throughout all of this he maintained his connection to the legitimate theater. In 1954 he played the part of a boozing movie star in ''Oh, Men! Oh, Women!'' and he also got the role of E. K. Hornbeck, the iconoclastic reporter in ''Inherit the Wind,'' a dramatization of the 1925 Scopes ''monkey trial'' about the teaching of evolution in Tennessee. Walter Kerr, writing in The New York Herald Tribune, said Mr. Randall played the role well, ''uttering juicy sarcasms with great finesse.'' He started to make Hollywood pictures, too. He appeared in the film version of ''Oh, Men! Oh, Women!'' and he was an advertising man in ''Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?'' That same year, 1957, 20th Century Fox asked him to appear as an alcoholic car salesman in Jerry Wald's ''No Down Payment,'' a melodrama about young marrieds. In the late 50's and early 60's he appeared prominently in three Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies, ''Lover Come Back,'' ''Pillow Talk'' and ''.'' He was cast as the foil to Mr. Hudson's romantic lead. He had roles of a similar vein in movies like ''Let's Make Love'' (with ), and ''Boys Night Out'' (with Kim Novak). Among his other television credits are ''The Tony Randall Show'' (1977-78), in which he played a judge and ''Love, Sidney'' (1981-83), in which he played a middle-aged man who took in an unwed mother and offered to help raise her child. The Sidney character is often said to be the first gay lead character on television. The character was portrayed as gay in a television-movie version that preceded the series; the issue of was played down in the series. Voice of Aluminum As he gained fame as an actor, Mr. Randall became active in a number of causes, including a futile effort to save the old Metropolitan Opera House. After the new opera house was finally built, Mr. Randall became a frequent visitor, showing up at the stage door for rehearsals and happily sitting through them when he was not working himself. He had a fine baritone voice but disparaged it, explaining: ''I have a nice, healthy tone, but it's not terribly musical. Musicality is something that can't be taught.'' Mr. Randall, who studied voice for 32 years, added, ''If beautiful voices are golden, mine is aluminum.'' During this same period he became national chairman of the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation, a post he occupied for some 30 years. Myasthenia gravis is an incurable neuromuscular disease. Mr. Randall disliked maudlin pronouncements, and so when he was asked why he became involved with the foundation, he replied, ''My agent told me I needed a disease.'' Mr. Randall married Florence Gibbs in 1939. She died of cancer in 1992. They had no children. In 1995 he married Heather Hanlan, a former intern with the National Actors Theater, in 1995, when he was 75 and she was 24. She survives him, as do their two children -- Julia Laurette Randall, named after Mr. Randall's mother and Laurette Taylor, the Broadway star who died in 1946; and Jefferson Salvini Randall, named after Tommaso Salvini, a 19th-century Italian Shakespearean actor. Although unfailingly good humored about his television fame, Mr. Randall remained dismayed that most of the television-watching public did not often, if ever, go to stage productions, and many did not recall ''M. Butterfly'' and the role he had enjoyed so much. But they certainly remembered Felix. Even 20 years after ''The Odd Couple'' went off the air, Mr. Randall was often stopped on the streets of New York (he loved to walk and when he did not, he almost always took public transportation) by people who never forgot Felix and were convinced that Unger and Randall were one and the same. ''It was fun for the first 15 years,'' Mr. Randall said. Mr. Randall, left, with Jack Klugman in a 1972 scene from ''The Odd Couple.'' The show, which ran on ABC for five seasons, gave Mr. Randall his best-known role. (Photo by ABC via Associated Press); From left, Rock Hudson, Tony Randall and Doris Day in ''Pillow Talk'' (1959), the first of three romantic comedies they appeared together in. Mr. Randall portrayed a foil to Hudson's romantic lead, and he played similar roles in other films. (Photo by Everett Collection)

Indexing (details)

Subjects: Deaths

People: Randall, Tony

Title: Tony Randall, 84, Dies; Fussbudget Felix in 'Odd Couple,' He Loved the Stage: [Obituary (Obit)]

Authors: Severo, Richard

Publication title: New York Times

Pages: A.22

Number of pages: 0

Publication year: 2004

Publication Date: May 19, 2004

Year: 2004

Section: A

Publisher: New York Times Company

Place of Publication: New York, N.Y.

Country of publication: United States

ISSN: 03624331

CODEN: NYTIAO

Source type: Newspapers

Language of Publication: English

Document Type: Obituary

ProQuest Document ID: 432762243

Document URL: http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/ docview/432762243?accountid=10226

Copyright: Copyright New York Times Company May 19, 2004

Last Updated: 2010-08-06

Database: 4 databases - ProQuest Central - National Newspapers Premier - New York Times - Arts & Humanities Full Text

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