Tony Randall (February 26, 1920 – May 17, 2004) was an American comic actor.
Early life
He was born as Arthur Leonard Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Mogscha Rosenberg, an art and antiques dealer, and his wife, Julia Finston.
Known as Leonard, he had a sister Edna.
Show business
He was first attracted to show business when a ballet company played in Tulsa. He attended Northwestern University for a year before traveling to New York
City to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. He studied under Sanford Meisner and choreographer Martha Graham around 1935.
Under the name Anthony Randall, he acted in radio soap operas and worked onstage opposite stars Jane Cowl in George Bernard
Shaw's Candida and Ethel Barrymore in
Emlyn Williams's The Corn Is Green.
Randall then served for four years with the United States Army Signal
Corps in World War II, refusing an entertainment assignment with Special Services.
Then he worked at the Olney Theatre in Montgomery County, Maryland before
heading back to New York City.
A noted raconteur, Randall co-wrote (with Mike Mindlin)
a collection of amusing and sometimes racy show business anecdotes called Which Reminds Me.
Acting career
Randall began his career on the stage, appearing in minor roles on Broadway, and supporting roles on tours. His first major
role in a Broadway hit was in Inherit the Wind in 1955. In 1958 he played the
leading role in the musical comedy Oh,
Captain!, taking on a role originated on film by Alec Guinness. Oh,
Captain! was a critical failure, but a personal success for Randall, who received glowing notices for his legendary dance
turn with prima ballerina Alexandra Danilova.
He is perhaps best known for his work on television. His breakthrough role was as gym teacher Harvey Weskit in
Mr. Peepers from 1952-1955. After a long hiatus from the medium, he returned in 1970 as fussbudget Felix
Unger in The Odd Couple, opposite Jack
Klugman, a role he would keep for five years. The names of Unger's children on The Odd Couple were Edna and Leonard, named after Randall's sister and Randall
himself.
Subsequently, he starred in The Tony Randall Show and Love, Sidney. In the TV movie that served as the latter show's pilot, Sidney Shorr was written as a
gay man, but his character was neutered in the show. Disappointed by this turn of events
and the series' lack of acceptance, Randall stayed away from television thereafter.
Randall's film roles included Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
(1957), Pillow Talk (1959), Let's Make Love (1960),
Boys' Night Out (1962), The King of Comedy (1983), and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).
He also played the title role(s) in the cult classic The 7 Faces of Dr.
Lao.
He appeared in Pillow Talk (1959), the first of
three movies in which Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Randall
all starred, and, by all accounts, ended up with the best lines ('It takes an early bird to take a worm like me'; on the crying
Doris Day: 'I never knew a woman such a size had so much water in her', etc). The other two are Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers. Elements from the
plots of these films, particularly Pillow Talk, were parodied in the 2003 comedy
Down With Love, with Renée Zellweger in
the Doris Day role, Ewan McGregor in the Rock Hudson, and David Hyde Pierce as the Tony Randall character. Randall's final role was a cameo in this film.
Tony Randall was the host during the breaks for the October 30 - November 2, 1987 free preview of HBO's short lived premium channel, Festival.
In 1991, he founded the National Actors Theatre (ultimately housed at
Pace University in New York City) where he gave his final stage performance in
Luigi Pirandello's "Right You Are." Periodically, he performed in stage revivals of
The Odd Couple with Jack Klugman including a stint
in London in 1996. The following year, Randall and Klugman reunited to appear on Broadway in a revival of The Sunshine Boys.
He was a frequent and popular guest on The Tonight Show Starring
Johnny Carson and often spoke of his love of opera, claiming it was due in no small
part to the salaciousness of many of the plotlines. He also admitted to (actually bragged about) sneaking tape recorders into
operas to make his own private bootleg recordings. He would often chide Johnny Carson for
his chain-smoking, and was generally fastidious and fussy, much like his Felix Unger characterization. He seemed to have a wealth
of facts and trivia at his disposal, and he told Carson that the secret was simply "to retain everything you were supposed to
have learned in elementary school." Randall was also a frequent guest on both of David
Letterman's late-night shows (Late Night with David
Letterman and The Late Show with David Letterman),
making 70 appearances, according to his obituary in the Washington Post; Letterman
said that Randall was one of his favorite guests, along with Regis Philbin.
In keeping with his penchant for both championing and mocking the culture that he loved, during the Big Band Era revival in the mid-1960s he produced a record album of 1930s songs,
Vo Vo De Oh Doe, inspired by (and covering) The New Vaudeville Band's
one-hit wonder, "Winchester Cathedral." He mimicked (and somewhat exaggerated) the
vibrato style of Carmen Lombardo, and the two of them
once sang a duet of Lombardo's signature song "Boo Hoo (You've Got Me Crying for You)" on the Carson show.
Marriages
He was married to Florence Gibbs from 1942 until her death from cancer in 1992 and then, from November 17,
1995 until his death, to Heather Harlan, with whom he had two
children, Julia Laurette Randall (b. 1997) and Jefferson Salvini Randall (b. 1998). To say the least, Randall became a father
late in life but Heather talked of how he adored his children and how loving he was with them. She said he faced death bravely,
but his greatest sorrow was leaving them behind.
Death
At the age of 84 Tony Randall died in his sleep of complications from pneumonia, which he
contracted following bypass surgery in December 2003. He is interred at the Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
Awards
Miscellany
- In 1974, Tony Randall and Jack Klugman appeared in television spots endorsing a Yahtzee spinoff, Challenge Yahtzee. Although not identified as Felix and Oscar, the impression they
left was clearly that of those two characters, especially as the TV spots were filmed on the same set as The Odd Couple.
- In 1984, Randall endorsed the game Word Quest where the objective was to guess the proper definition of a given
word.
- He starred as nearly all of the leading characters in the 1963 film 7 Faces of Dr.
Lao. The film received an Oscar for William Tuttle's makeup artistry, but many
believe Randall never received proper acknowledgement for his versatile performances in the film, which required him to provide
several different voices and portray a variety of characters.
- Randall, along with John Goodman and Drew
Barrymore was one of the first guests on the debut episode of Late Night
with Conan O'Brien on September 13, 1993. He would
also appear in Conan's 5th Anniversary Special with the character PimpBot 5000.
- Was one of the earliest advocates against smoking, and often would chide celebrities in person on the air for the habit.
- In September 2003, Randall joked that if President George W. Bush or Vice President
Dick Cheney should come to his funeral, they were to be turned away. [1]
- Bikini Kill have a song based on him, also named "Tony Randall".
- Tony Randall named Felix Unger's TV children after himself (Leonard) and his sister (Edna).
- In 2005, Jack Klugman published Tony And Me: A Story of Friendship, a book about his
long friendship with Randall, of their long working relationship and how good Randall had been to Klugman after his cancer
operation.
- A fine game player, Randall appeared frequently on What's My Line?,
Password, The Hollywood Squares, and
The $10,000 Pyramid. He also sent up his somewhat pompous image with a single
appearance as a "contestant" on The Gong Show in 1977.
- Appeared in commercials for Eagle Potato Chips in the early 1990's with former "Odd Couple" co-star Jack Klugman.
External links
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