TMC
07-25-2022, 08:27 PM
I'm bringing this up since Ken Levine has asked a similar sort of question (http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2022/07/weekend-post_0823158561.html) on his blog. Here are his own thoughts on the matter:
I watched the movie of THE ODD COUPLE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odd_Couple_(film)) recently starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. A lot of it still holds up, but when I first saw it as a kid I was hysterical. I couldn’t imagine any better casting than Matthau & Lemmon.
Seeing it again, after many many years, one thing struck me – I now greatly prefer Jack Klugman and Tony Randall as Oscar and Felix (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odd_Couple_(1970_TV_series)). Sure, part of it is familiarity, but Randall really WAS Felix Unger. Jack Lemmon was a gifted comic actor who played the part very well. And Klugman’s Oscar was the equal to Matthau’s, plus he played better off of Randall as Felix. To me. You may prefer Matthau & Lemmon. Or you may have seen the original Broadway production (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odd_Couple_(play)) with Matthau and Art Carney and to you that’s the real Odd Couple.
Or even Morris Fishbine and Larry Crellman, who played them in a local community theatre in your town and to you those are the guys.
Probably the only thing that everyone can agree on is that when there was a revival on Broadway a few years ago and Nathan Lane played Oscar that was absurd.
I watched the movie of THE ODD COUPLE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odd_Couple_(film)) recently starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. A lot of it still holds up, but when I first saw it as a kid I was hysterical. I couldn’t imagine any better casting than Matthau & Lemmon.
Seeing it again, after many many years, one thing struck me – I now greatly prefer Jack Klugman and Tony Randall as Oscar and Felix (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odd_Couple_(1970_TV_series)). Sure, part of it is familiarity, but Randall really WAS Felix Unger. Jack Lemmon was a gifted comic actor who played the part very well. And Klugman’s Oscar was the equal to Matthau’s, plus he played better off of Randall as Felix. To me. You may prefer Matthau & Lemmon. Or you may have seen the original Broadway production (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odd_Couple_(play)) with Matthau and Art Carney and to you that’s the real Odd Couple.
Or even Morris Fishbine and Larry Crellman, who played them in a local community theatre in your town and to you those are the guys.
Probably the only thing that everyone can agree on is that when there was a revival on Broadway a few years ago and Nathan Lane played Oscar that was absurd.