Monthly Archives: June 2011

All the obits for Peter Falk focus, of course, on his stint as the rumpled and crumpled Lt. Columbo. Not to take anything away from that masterful creation but we do have to mention that he was a key player in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — a curious bit of casting. The premise was that they were going to hire very famous comedians…and at the time, Mr. Falk was not very famous and certainly not thought of as a comedian. My research suggests that the answer to most questions like this — why were some people in the film and not others? — is simply a matter of who was available at a given moment and who wasn't and whether a deal could be made. And also, there were a few stars who didn't get in because they unwisely tried to hold out for better roles, billing or money and the film's producer-director Stanley Kramer chose to not play that game and instead opted for someone else. I suspect Peter Falk was the beneficiary of one of those contests.

However he got in, he was very good in the film. The two or three times I got to meet him, we always got to talking about that movie and he was very, very proud to have been a part of it. He called the few lines he had with Spencer Tracy "the moment I knew I'd arrived in Hollywood." Yeah, that would do it.

He did so many wonderful things in his career that the obituaries can't begin to mention them all. In addition to Mad World, most don't seem to be mentioning a TV series he starred in called The Trials of O'Brien. I haven't seen an episode since they first aired in 1965-1966 but I recall thinking it was one of the best dramatic shows I'd ever seen. Maybe someone will resurrect them some day so we can all see if they're as good as I remember.

I only have one real Peter Falk anecdote and I'm afraid it's more about me than about him. But I'm going to tell it anyway because it's an example of what a nice man he seems to have been.

This was back around 1976 or so. Mr. Falk was doing Columbo and he was, of course, a very big star. I was a relatively new writer in the teevee business. One day, I got a phone call from a woman at Universal Studios who identified herself as Peter Falk's secretary. She was calling to verify my address because Mr. Falk was having something messengered to my home. I told her she had my address right but there still was some mistake. Peter Falk didn't have a clue who I was.

She said there was no mistake. Mr. Falk had just handed her an envelope along with my name and address. He told her to have a messenger deliver the envelope to me.

I asked her what was in it. She said, "I don't know. It's 9 by 12 and it has papers inside it. It's too thin to be a script but it might be an outine or treatment or something like that." She told me I'd have it within the hour and I could open it myself and find out what it was.

For the next hour, I wondered. And wondered. What in the world could Peter Falk be sending me? I kind of half-decided that he'd read something I'd written (I had no idea what or how) and had decided I was a writer of great skill. He had some outline for a movie or maybe a short story he wanted to turn into a movie or something and he'd decided I was the guy. But even though I couldn't think of anything else it could be, I couldn't believe that.

The package arrived. I signed for it and immediately tore it open. It was a copy of the previous day's Hollywood Reporter.

I hadn't received my copy of the Hollywood Reporter the day before. I went through the one Mr. Falk sent me, looking for a note or an article that had been circled…anything that would explain why he'd gone to the trouble of having a messenger bring it to me. Nothing. In the grand spirit of Lt. Columbo, I decided to conduct a dogged, time-consuming investigation.

The delivery label on the envelope had the phone number of the woman who'd called me. I called and told her what was in the package she'd sent over. She didn't understand, either. She said, "Mr. Falk should be back here for a meeting shortly. I'll ask him and let you know."

A half-hour later, she rang me back with the answer: My copy of the trade paper had accidentally been delivered to him. I looked and sure enough, the copy he'd messengered to me had my mailing label on it…a little clue that, like any good TV detective with 90 minutes to fill, I'd overlooked at first. Apparently, the machine that affixed mailing labels to subscriber copies of the Hollywood Reporter applied them in alphabetical order and "Evanier" came right before "Falk." My copy had gotten stuck to the back of his.

Both were delivered to his home. Peter Falk brought my copy into the office the next day, copied my name and address onto a slip of paper, stuck the Reporter in an envelope and sealed it, then handed the paper and the envelope to his secretary and said, "Send this over to this guy."

Now, admittedly it was probably Universal Studios that paid for the messenger…to hand-deliver me a little magazine that cost fifty cents. But I thought that was darned nice of Peter Falk to do when he could have just chucked my copy into a wastebasket. Those times I got to meet and chat with him — once because he wanted to meet my partner, Sergio Aragonés — he struck me as, yes, that nice.

I figure you already know what a terrific actor he was and yes, it's possible that he wasn't always as considerate and caring as he was in my very, very brief encounters with the man. But I'd like to think he was always both. He sure was always a great actor.

Gene Colan, one of the most prolific and respected artists in comics, has passed away at the age of 84. Gene worked in comics from around 1944 until his retirement in just the last few years, working for every major company in almost every genre and on a large percentage of all the major characters, but is probably best known for his work for Marvel in the sixties and seventies. For them, he drew Daredevil, Howard the Duck, Tomb of Dracula, Doctor Strange, Iron Man and so many others. There are many fans who consider his versions of some of those characters to be the defining versions.

Gene was born in the Bronx on September 1, 1926. "I began drawing at an early age and never stopped," he once said. A graduate of the Art Students League of New York, he did some work in comics before enlisting in the Army Air Corps. After his discharge in 1946, he went to work for Timely Comics (now Marvel) and would ever after credit its star artist and art director, Syd Shores, with teaching him the business. In 1948, Timely laid off much of its staff and Colan began freelancing for every company that would buy his work. He continued working for Timely/Marvel drawing hundreds of tales for their war, western and mystery comics of Atlas Comics. He also became a mainstay of DC's war, romance and western comics, including a long stint as the main artist of their Hopalong Cassidy comic book.

In the sixties, the DC editor who most often bought his work was Robert Kanigher. Colan did not get along with Kanigher and that drove Gene to pester Stan Lee for work on the Marvel line. When another artist defaulted on the assignment of drawing a new Sub-Mariner feature, Stan gave the job to Gene, who worked under the pen name of "Adam Austin," lest Kanigher find out. Colan's unique, photographic approach to comics did not mimic the style of Jack Kirby, which was then the norm at Marvel but it was exciting and even revolutionary in its own way. Before long, Stan had Gene drawing Iron Man and then Daredevil…and the name of Adam Austin was displaced in the credits by that of Gene Colan. Readers learned to know it usually promised a well-drawn, dramatic tale.

In the early eighties, a clash with the then-current management at Marvel drove Gene to DC where he drew Batman, Wonder Woman and many others. As you can tell, it's difficult to list all the work Gene did in his long, fruitful career. It might be easier to list the comics he didn't draw.

As a reader, I loved Gene's work. There was a credibility about it: No matter how outlandish the premise or plot, Gene somehow made you believe it. His pencil art was magnificent…in many ways, too good for the assembly line production process and the flimsy printing that it usually received. As good as his work looked in your comics, it was always probably better.

I later got to love Gene. He was a charming, self-effacing gentleman who was genuinely moved when fans tried to tell him how good he was and how much joy his work had given them. He heard that a lot and remained utterly unspoiled by all the praise. In a way, it seemed to make him try harder to improve his drawing and live up to what they said he was.

His last decade or so was heartbreaking, plagued by constant eye problems and other illnesses, as well as financial woes. In 2010, his second wife Adrienne was consumed by severe emotional and drug problems. She injured Gene in a physical altercation and later took her own life. Gene spent most of the rest of his life in and out of hospitals as doctors tried to deal with a wide array of injuries and heart failures. That he survived as long as he did had a lot to do with the well wishes and efforts of his friends, especially writer Clifford Meth. (Cliff, thank you.) Given what Gene was going through, I am frankly surprised he lived as long as he did.

I'll write more about him in the coming days, I'm sure. His passing was not, of course, unexpected and yet it's still jarring. Gene was so much a part of comics as long as I've read comics. He was the kind of artist who rarely drew less than two comics a month (sometimes, three) and I think a lot of people took him for granted. If he had drawn a handful of comics as fine as what he did in the sixties and seventies and then gotten out, readers would still be haunting their comic shops, praying for his return. I also enjoyed his friendship…and I have to tell you that the one time he drew a script of mine was one of those moments when I would have paid the company for the honor. I received Xeroxes of his pencilled pages — so much more wonderful, of course, than the printed product — and I just grinned for days…because I'd just written a comic drawn by Gene Colan. He always made everything look so damned good.