When Walter Matthau was first offered the script of The Odd Couple, he said he'd do it but he wanted to play Felix. He was quickly talked out of this silly notion. Later on, when they made the movie, he again announced that he wanted to play Felix and he was again talked back into the role for which he was most suited. At least once, he told an interviewer that during the Broadway run, he and Art Carney had occasionally swapped parts. This is apparently not true, though it spawned a minor urban legend. Indeed, one occasionally encounters someone who swears they went to see the original Odd Couple and saw Matthau playing Felix and Carney playing Oscar, which apparently did not happen.
At other times, Mr. Matthau told reporters that it was among his life's greatest regrets that no one had ever allowed him to play the role that would have truly challenged him as an actor…Felix. It's not hard to deduce that he was kidding. After the movie, he was a superstar and there were thousands of productions of The Odd Couple everywhere, including some pretty large, lucrative ones. If he'd called any theatrical producer anywhere and said he yearned to do a run as The Neat One, they'd have sent limos full of cash. But he never did that, and he never chose many movie roles that cast him much against "type." Jack Lemmon once said of his frequent co-star, "Walter gives due consideration to every script submitted to him and then does the ones that pay the most."
As I said an item ago here, I wish I could have seen Matthau and Carney do the original Odd Couple…and especially back then, when everyone in the audience didn't already know the play by heart. It has definitely lost a lot for being so familiar. Still, I can't imagine better casting than the originals…and while the notion of Matthau as Felix doesn't interest me, I have a hunch Carney would have made a great Oscar, too. We'll never know, of course, but he had quite a range as an actor. It is said he often received scripts that described his role as "an Ed Norton type," but he was never Ed Norton anywhere but in The Honeymooners. I thought he was quite convincing as a private detective in The Late Show and as the doctor in House Calls, to name two. It's real easy for a second banana, as he was with Gleason, to get typed at that level and in those kinds of roles, but Carney made it out.
I'm thinking back on when he won the Oscar for Harry and Tonto in '74. No one expected that win, up against Nicholson in Chinatown, Pacino in Godfather II, Dustin Hoffman as Lenny, and Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express. When they called the name of Art Carney, he had a reaction I don't think I've ever seen from anyone else on the Academy Awards. It was kind of a stunned "Really?" not just at the name but at a sudden roar of approval from the audience. They liked that choice even if the recipient couldn't quite wrap his brain around it for a moment. You kind of got the feeling that he was used to being first runner-up in life and couldn't quite grasp that he'd climbed out of the "also starring…" pit. Still, being a pro, he rose to the occasion (and his feet) and did a little victory gesture that I can't describe but which seemed to say, "Hey, I did it." I don't recall what he said, other than that he was charmingly unprepared. But I remember that little gesture which said more than any acceptance speech by anyone I've seen before or since. Next time you watch anything with Art Carney in it, don't even listen to whatever he says. Just watch the way the guy moves. That's where the real show is.