Klugman was honoured by the Television Academy in 1964 for his work on The Defenders, starring E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed.
His career went back further, with an attention-grabbing role in Mr. Roberts at the Erlanger Theatre in New York starting in July 1950. He appeared on TV even before that, performing in sketches with Frank Sandford and Nancy Coleman on Hollywood Screen Test on KECA-TV in Los Angeles the previous April. After getting out of the service, he enrolled at Carnegie Tech and took to the stage in a production of The Time of Your Life in October 1946. Eventually, Broadway beckoned with a top-notch part. He was interviewed about it in a syndication story published Aug. 20, 1959.
Musical Star Admits He Can’t Sing
By STEVEN H. SCHEUER
Jack Klugman, who plays an agent and Ethel Merman's love interest in "Gypsy," the biggest musical smash hit Broadway has had in years, credits his performance as an agent in Playhouse 90’s "The Velvet Alley" for the opportunity to play the Broadway role.
Tonight, Playhouse 90 repeats "The Velvet Alley," and you can see for yourself why Klugman was approached to play a major role in a musical.
"I have an agent with guts," is the way Jack prefers to tell it.
In a way, Jack knows what he's talking about. Though he's a veteran of the legitimate theater and has over 400 TV acting roles under his belt, his only previous experience with a musical was in the recent TV version- of "Kiss Me Kate," in which he played one of the comedy gangsters and croaked his way through "Brush Up Your Shakespeare."
Learned Sons
"When I auditioned, for 'Gypsy,' " Jack said, "the only song I knew was 'Brush Up Your Shakespeare' and they refused to let me sing it. So I learned 'Isn't it Romantic' and I sang that at the audition—but rotten! You have never heard anyone sing anything so rotten! Finally, from the dark of the theater a really disgusted voice said: ‘All right! Read lines!’ So I did and then the voice said, almost beggingly: 'Can't you sing anything?'
"I answered, 'Sure, "Brush Up Your Shakespeare’," Jack continued.
"And the voice, full of resignation, said: 'Oh, all right Sing it!' So I did and I was hired.
"Luckily, 'Gypsy' has such strong dramatic values that it doesn't matter that I'm the worst singer on Broadway. I'm not out to prove I can sing," Jack insisted. "I can't."
Free Time
Anyway, Jack has what could amount to a lifetime job in "Gypsy." So all he talks about now is TV. He's writing TV scripts and he expects to do an awful lot of acting on TV this season.
"I've never had so much free time in my life," Klugman said.
"All my days and all day Sunday. And with 200 spectaculars [specials], lots of them on tape, I’ll act myself silly. TV's going to have to turn to Broadway for actors, and I'm ready."
It should be interesting to see what sort of roles Jack Klugman ends up with on TV this fall. Like so many other working actors, his career has run in cycles.
He put in a couple of years in which he played nothing but mean gangsters and was usually the first actor anyone thought of when a part like that came up.
"Finally," Jack said "my agent said 'No more gangsters!' and I started playing nothing but cops. Now nobody casts me as a gangster any more. It's been years. I'd love to play a good nasty part again."
Oddly enough, despite his 400-plus TV roles, Jack has appeared in only one western, a truly fantastic record. "It was a 'Gunsmoke,'" he reminisced, "and one was enough. Can you imagine going on location in 110-degree heat, surrounded by tarantulas?"
Considering that he's now prominently identified with Broadway, Jack Klugman hasn't turned on TV the way so many other performers have done. On the contrary, he feels he's still a part of it.
"I've found more fun and more opportunity and more integrity in TV than in almost everything else I've ever done," he said. "I'm only sorry that it's almost impossible to find any of those good, juicy, controversial scripts they used to do.
Perhaps Klugman’s next significant role on Broadway was replacing Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple. This led to Garry Marshall casting him in the TV version. It carried on for several season, boosted by some cast-cutting (farewell, Garry Walberg and Larry Gelman) and being filmed in front of an audience.
Klugman still wasn’t happy. He was interviewed almost annually through the second half of the ‘70s by Marilyn Beck of the Gannett News Service. When he was starring as Quincy, he told Beck almost every year the scripts stunk and he was going to quit. The situation seems no different when he was shooting The Odd Couple. This appeared in print Nov. 24, 1974.
Two Odd Couples May Not Survive Another Season
By Marilyn Beck
Jack Klugman says he can thank The Odd Couple for a lot: “For fame and fortune but more than that for an attitude of arrogance.
“That's right," said the fellow who has carried his portrayal of Oscar Madison, lovable slob, from the Broadway and London stage to five years of video stardom. “The series has made me a very arrogant person. Its success has given me self-confidence and strength for the first time in my life. I used to be afraid to assert myself for fear of hurting someone’s feelings. Now I do what’s best for me. I’m true to myself.”
Arrogance has resulted in some dramatic changes in the life of the veteran actor. He started off the year testing newly discovered muscles of inner strength by parting from Brett Sommers, his wife of 18 years.
“She told a friend that I left because ‘he wanted his freedom — whatever that means.’ And that about sums it up. There was no one else involved. It was just well. Brett’s a strong woman and suddenly I realized I’d be happier setting my own mood, leading a life as a loner.”
He credits Brett with having taught him tremendous lessons about life and acting, and said, “I don’t really know what happened to us. I do know I owe her a lot. But I've got to do what makes me happy now. And I’m much happier living by myself at our Malibu Beach condominium.”
As he moved deeper into discussion of his marital situation, it turned out that Brett had actually been the first one to move out. “She had always warned me that if we ever split, she didn't want the children. So she left me with the house and kids. But I knew she wouldn’t be happy without them, and she wasn't. She came back, and I left.”
The bonds that tied the Klugmans together for nearly two decades of matrimony are obviously still strong. He visits their sons (10-year-old Adam, and David, who is 15) often. “When I go over to the house I usually end up sitting and talking with Brett ’til 2 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “Hell I don’t even do that with my girl friends.”
He had the look of a Basset Hound awaiting a gesture of affection as he said, “You know what happens to me? I go out with a young chick and all of a sudden a voice goes off inside me. ‘Aren’t you ashamed?’ it says. ‘How do you have the guts to pull a line like this?’ So I get up and tell her I’m taking her home.
“It's like Brett is watching over my shoulder,” he complained with a self-conscious grin. “She always told me she wasn’t worried about the young, dumb women taking over with me. It was the smart, homely ones she was worried about.”
Though he expects the estrangement to continue, he said he had no plans for divorce. “Why divorce?” he asked. “Who wants to remarry? Things are fine this way — an easy relationship with Brett, the same joint checking account we always had. Except now I'm free to be me.”
A rumble of laughter accompanied the comment, “See what happens in Hollywood? There's no place else in the world where it's so easy to escape reality.”There had been times when his family lived in Connecticut that he and Brett had almost split, he admitted. “I'd yell, ‘I’m leaving” and I’d walk. But where the hell was there to go? I’d drive around for a couple of hours, sleep in some crummy motel. And the next day I'd be back home.
“Out here you split and 20 minutes later you’re in paradise, you’re at the beach. Yeah, it does make it much easier to escape out here.”
He would never have asserted himself in such a permanent independent way, he said, if it wasn't for The Odd Couple. “Wow, how self-confidence can change you,” he said with a laugh.
He has spent 29 years developing such professional confidence and looking back recalled that the early years "were hell.”
“Like a lot of others I almost starved waiting for my break,” he said. “I sold blood for $2 a pint. Charlie Bronson and I used to live in a place that had a community kitchen— and would steal food from the icebox. It was either that or go without food for days.”
He spent decades paying his professional dues before Odd Couple stardom came along, gaining a solid theatrical reputation with a decade of summer stock work, over 400 T V guest appearances, featured roles in such films as “Goodbye Columbus” and “There Must be a Pony,” and Broadway performances that ranged from “Golden Boy” to “The Odd Couple.”
“Let me tell you,” he said. “After all that time you learn something: You know what’s best for you. And after you finally land a series— and you’re lucky enough to have a hit— you know what’s responsible for that hit. It’s the star.
“Sure it’s arrogant to say that, but it has to be said. Any hit series has more to do with the stars taking over that it has to do with producers or writers or directors.”
He noted my reaction and he asked, “You don’t understand? You think that’s a terrible thing for me to say? It is, but I’ll tell you why I have to say it: A good performer puts himself into the hands of a producer and he dies. Carroll O’Connor and Redd Foxx know what’s better for them than Norman Lear does though he produces Sanford and Son and All in the Family. Any actor knows what’s best for himself.”
I disagreed but Klugman was not to have his theory denied. It’s hard to argue with success, and he has chalked up five successful seasons as a television star. He’s convinced the responsibility for that victory can be credited strictly to him and costar Tony Randall.
“We’ve got 60 years of combined experience and training in this business,” he said. “We’re the well-oiled team that makes the show go always, throwing ad libs to one another, polishing up a script to cover weak spots.”
If he has ever done battle over the series’ direction, it has never been with Randall, he said. “How can you argue with a guy who doesn’t fight back? Me, I hold a grudge. Man, it can be personal vendetta time where I’m concerned. But Tony, he apologizes even when he’s right. You can’t get mad at someone like that.”
Because he and Randall have maintained a united front against management, “we’ve usually managed to get what we want,” Klugman assured.
“But I want you to know, whatever disagreements there have been have been ironed out before we shoot. There have never been temper tantrums on the set. When the cameras roll it’s time to be professional.”
He expects— he hopes— the Odd Couple cameras to shut down permanently the end of this season. “I want out after this year. I know, with the competition from The Waltons it would take a miracle for the show to survive. But even if it does, I want to move on. My series’ exposure has given me enough of a reputation that I’m able to say to a theater owner, ‘This is the play I want to do.’ And he’ll say, ‘O.K., do it.’ ”
And that’s exactly what Jack Klugman intends to do: Devote his time to growth on the legitimate stage.
He said he’s going to continue to do exactly what he wants to do instead of what others might decide is best for him.
After nearly 30 years of paying his professional dues, that’s what success has done for Jack Klugman.
Somers never divorced Klugman, but she played Oscar Madison’s ex in some funny episodes of The Odd Couple. It has been said that Klugman pushed to get her as a panelist on The Match Game in 1973 (he appeared on the pilot), and it turned out her banter with Charles Nelson Reilly resulted in some of the best moments on the show.
Throat surgery in 1989 didn’t stop Klugman’s career. He sounded like Jack Klugman with laryngitis. He also reunited with Randall in New York stage productions of The Odd Couple and The Sunshine Boys. He died of prostate cancer on Christmas Eve 2012. He lived to 90.
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