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.