**Behind The Scenes: The Odd Couple (Saks, 1968) With Jack Lemmon And Walter Matthau**

I only wanted Jack Lemmon to play the part. I wanted Walter Matthau to play the other part. I think Neil had complete casting control on almost everything he did. Everybody in New York wanted Art Carney because he only cost $100,000, not a million. I was Mr. Hollywood. That's what I became, Mr. Hollywood. I wanted to pay a million and get Jack Lemmon. Well, I think twofold. Number one is that the reason that Art Carney did not do the film was because Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon had previous success as a couple. And also, Jack Lemmon was an enormous star. Jack was a premier comedic actor and also won Oscars for dramatic performances. He was a top-ranked Hollywood actor. Art was a very good actor, an excellent actor, It took longer time to negotiate the deal than it did to make the picture. And the reason was money. Jack Lemmon was a big star. And at that time, I don't think Walter was yet a big star. He was on his way, but I think that Paramount didn't want to turn its back on star power. And it so happened that Jack and Walter had worked together before this on a Billy Wilder picture. They had done The Fortune Cookie together, and my dad had won the Oscar for it. And they decided Billy Wilder was going to direct it. He was the top director of comedy at the time, and William Morris represented the entire project. And we were at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the owner of the company of Gulf and Western, which owned Paramount, was a man named Charles Ludon. He was looking for bargain prices. William Morris wasn't. And it ended up they only wanted to spend less to make the picture than they paid Jack Lemmon. They wanted $1 million for Jack Lemmon, that gets 10% of the gross. And we wanted to pay the entire picture at $1.4 million to make the whole picture. To say that we were frugal at the time would be certainly an understatement. Jack and Walter double-crossed Billy Wilder, their good friend, because they just didn't have enough money for Billy Wilder, Jack Lemmon, and Walter Matthau. My agent was Abe Lastfogle. I don't know if you ever heard of him. He was like the founder, one of the founders of William Morris. And he said, they want you to do the odd couple, and I want to have a meeting on Saturday at the hotel, and seal it up right away. And Jack got $1 million and 10% of the gross, again 10% of the gross, and Walter got $300,000. And I thought, what's the pressure? Well, it was pressure. I know Billy Wilder wanted to do it. And very resentfully, management in the East at the time, where management was, East Mid-New York, resentfully paid the tariff of the stars. And it proved a star power discount. And that's the signing of the end of the war. And the beginning of the film. In 1968, we did this film with Paramount, which is a very good studio to work for, I remember. I had done other things, subsequently did other things there. And the atmosphere was going, and the producer was a marvelous, wonderful fellow, Howard Koch. Kindest, nicest man, and he set the tone of our relationship to Paramount. We did something in those days which was almost unheard of, I think, we rehearsed the movie for three weeks. Howard Koch was adamant that we rehearse the movie for three weeks before we shot. And he said, you can say anything you like. You can bring up anything you like. You can talk about the way you want to do it. Because once we start shooting, everybody just shuts up and gets on with it. And it worked out wonderfully. Because it was a play, and there were a lot of lines, rehearsal was really important. You know, today movies have fewer and fewer words and more and more pictures. And how do you rehearse those? We knew that it was a very important project. And so we wished to be as good as we could be. And so we would rehearse, the four of us together, constantly. First of all, Howard Koch, as a producer, was a wonderful, professional, personable guy. They became very close friends over the next decade. And it was a great set to visit. Howard Koch was just one of the most wonderful men. If he hadn't been a producer, I think he'd have been a wonderful director. No, there were no creative conflicts, except that he was always pushing for time. And when I was doing the scene with the two girls, I remember he was always on the floor. Always on the floor. He was like a great stage manager. Because he had a great say in the direction of the movie. Although Gene Sachs is credited with the direction and certainly was there and strong and wonderful. Howard had very strong opinions. And he was always with the crew and joking. Anyway, I did a shot of them at a, I think it was a medium-length shot. And then I planned to do a close-in shot. And suddenly I walked back to the camera and it was a completely different position. And I said, what happened? And Howard said, aren't you through? I thought you were through. Oh, I'm sorry. But he was that kind of guy. And nice fellow. I would eavesdrop on occasion to the discussions that Lemon and Walter Matthau and Gene Sachs had about scenes. And they were at such a high level of intellectuality and of technique that half the time I didn't understand what the hell they were talking about. They were that good and that impressive. And it came from Gene. Just brilliantly directed by Gene Sachs. And I think he's one of the most underrated directors out there. He directed my father in two movies, Cactus Flower with Goldie Hawn and The Odd Couple. And they were two of my father's biggest hits. And although he's mostly known for his stage directing, I think he's wonderful with a camera. Gene Sachs had that sensibility. He also had a long history with Walter. You see, they had been students together. They had done plays together. And they knew each other intimately. And it was really a real collaboration, I think. So many sets and so many scenes are competitive. I want to be better than you. So many actors, oh, you're not that good? Fine, that makes me feel good. There was none of that here. None of that is here. We were all devoted to the material. And because of that and because of Gene Sachs, we were wedded to the material. And so everybody tried to do the best they could for the play, for the film, for the material. And obviously, I think it worked. I didn't know Monica before the stage play, but we became terribly close during that. And, well, we were pigeons for quite some time. We got to look like each other, I think, after a while. I wonder what she looks like now. I haven't been in touch with her since about 1980. Neil Simon was in London overseeing his musical Little Me. And while he was there, he thought he'd look for his two pigeons because he'd looked in New York and he couldn't find them. And I remember there being eight of us at the very first audition. And those two were paired and those two were paired and these two and those two. And the next audition, one pair had been eliminated and everyone was switched around with everybody else. And at the third audition, there were four girls left and I was teamed up with Monica for the first time. And it just happened. It just clicked. And he came through the power store because he'd been sitting in the orchestra and he said to the two of us, well, we open in Washington. And we said very seriously, that's very nice for you. And he said, no, we're opening in Washington. And we screamed. To me, their contribution to that film is enormous, absolutely enormous. Very difficult parts to come in, to be as silly, as funny, as attractive as they are in the film. And if you notice, that film just peaks when they're on stage, just goes up when they're on stage. The giggles, they were so adept at what they were doing and besides being very nice. Without a blink, we just were buddies, friends, close. She was my maid of honor when I got married. I spent the night with her before getting married in her apartment. Yeah, we were incredibly close. Being involved in all three is probably on a short list of people who have ever had that privilege to have been in the stage play, the movie, television series. I can't think, I know there are other people who have done it, but I can't think of any offhand. I'm very lucky, so is Monica. How I came to the role was this, is that Walter was a good friend, as I told you. I had worked with Gene Sax as an apprentice in a Cherry Lane theater down in New York. I did not know until a day or two before the rehearsal period that I was going to play Roy, because he, Gene, had not made up his mind between me playing Speed or Roy. And then what he did, he made a decision, and I played Roy and Larry Haynes played Speed. That cigar, you know, it's very difficult working with a cigar. It gets wet and, you know, and whatever, and it's hard to keep it in your mouth. And Larry Haynes was really, in a way, the most successful of all the actors in the show theatrically. Never stopped working, never stopped working. He was on a soap opera for 35 years, or 40 years. Oh, Herb was a lovely guy, a lovely guy. Very tall. Herb was funny and nice and talented, and he became a friend, and he became a friend until his death. Johnny Fiedler, Johnny was very much like the character he played, but not at all. He was a very strong fellow, albeit the high voice, you know, but he was, you know, and a lovely guy. My favorite scene from The Hot Cup was probably the spaghetti-throwing scene. It's a lot of people's favorite scene. I like it when he goes, Now it's garbage. I saw the play in its third week with Art Carney and Walter Matthau, and I thought at the time, and still think, it probably is the best comedy ever written for the American stage. That is, it's almost a perfect comedy. The levels of laughter are great. The introduction of Felix and the playoff of Oscar are almost near perfect, and I've talked to Neil Simon about it. I see Neil a lot, and he's probably proudest of that play. When he got the script for The Odd Couple play, he was living on the beach, and he called me, and he said, Would you come out and cue me? I said, Sure. So I went out there. I cued him, and that was my first relationship with The Odd Couple. It was perfect. It was perfect comedy, perfect routine, perfect set-ups. The opening of the second act as a stage device, when Oscar, the sloppiest man in the world, comes home from work, and Felix, who is now living with him, has turned that apartment into a gorgeous spectacle. It's spotless and white and clean and beautiful, and Oscar takes three steps forward, stops at the staircase, and says, I'm home, dear! One of the greatest laughs in Broadway history. Neil Simon is the quintessential playwright of our times. I know it's comedy, and people say it's light, but it's really not light. There's an underlayer, and as he told me once, every comedy he writes is based on tragedy. He was funny, deadpan funny. Wasn't yuck, yuck, yuck funny. He was deadpan. You know, he really, he just makes sure that the writing is, you know, it's so succinct, it's almost like a dance, his writing, you know, and he just wanted it put out there the way it was written. He had a very big role in shaping everybody's performance. That's his play, and he owned the play, and he wrote the play, and he ran the play. But he ran it through Gene Sachs, who was the director. I think he also likes actor's input, meaning if they're bringing something specific, he can use that. Was Odd Couple his best play? I think it probably was. One of the things that always perplexed my father was the fact that there had to be a differentiation between drama and comedy. As a matter of fact, after he did The Apartment, one of his famous quotes was, why can't you do both? Meaning in the same film, which he did so seamlessly in The Apartment. And it was one of the attributes that he was able to bring to pretty much every performance he ever gave. If you take a look at Felix, there's marvelous pathos in this character. Pop has the ability to really weave some pretty serious, as does Walter, by the way, pretty serious depth into a comedic character. Now, a beautifully sketched, very three-dimensional character, of course, but still, this was always Pop's quandary. Why can't you play drama and comedy? The two should fit together seamlessly. And if you take a look at that, it really is one of the things that made Jack Lemmon such a brilliant actor. Jack was emotional, and he was full of life with everything he did, and Jack was much more exuberant than Walter, much more excited about the profession. Both were serious, but Jack was really, he was a serious actor. Jack was wonderful. Jack took his comedy incredibly seriously. He would do something in a rehearsal, and he'd say with a very serious face, Is that funny? Is that funny? Yes, that's funny. And then he'd go back, and he'd do it, and it was brilliant, you know, but very serious. Jack Lemmon was the hardest-working actor I've ever worked with, and I've done over 200 television shows in about 15, 20 movies. He's the hardest-working man I've ever seen. I think Jack is one of the most accommodating, most loving people that I ever met. When it was your turn to be fed, that's who he gave everything to. And when the camera was not on him, he was sitting next to it, feeding you the lines. If it's politics or sports or movies or theater or life or relationships, Jack will be right there. He'll be in your face. Jack is in your face. Something that Pop did, as far as I know before, every take in every film or every entrance onto any stage, anywhere his entire career, he had two words that he used to say to himself, and those words were magic time. And I remember being on the set of The Odd Couple and seeing Pop say those two words and just go to that wonderful place he was able to go and then march on camera and stand toe-to-toe with the man who would become his favorite working partner and his very best friend, Mr. Walter Matthau. Well, the first time I met Walter was for an interview in Miami. I was doing a local show in Miami. He had done a movie. He had come down to Miami, and the first thing he said when we finished is, I think the fascination for gambling probably stems from the fact that his mother, having come over at the turn of the century and worked in sweatshops and valued every dollar desperately, became a great miser, and I think that that was his way of rebelling. You know, probably that's what a shrink would probably say, you know, just sort of having no respect for money. And it was his way of getting back at her. You know, bet $500,000 on the Super Bowl, you know. I don't know. Walter would have bet on two cockroaches crossing the floor. Who would make the other side first? He'd bet on anything. When we were walking out, we went to the same dinner one night, a black-tie dinner, and as we're walking out together, he said, I'll bet you $10 my car comes before your car. We would take my grandmother, my father's mother, he didn't want her to disapprove of his gambling, so he would bet on every horse in the race, and he'd put a different ticket in every pocket, and no matter who won, he'd pull out the ticket, and he'd say, see, Mom, there you go. You should come here more often, Wally. Some people like to lose in life. Some people like to get hurt. He liked to lose. When it came to a deal, it wasn't that way. He didn't want to lose on a deal. He just liked to lose at the track. He had been losing in basketball like 33 straight games, football getting wiped out, baseball destroyed, and he called his bookmaker. He said, I'm getting killed, I'm getting killed, murdered, I can't win anything, and the bookmaker said, why don't you try hockey? And he said, what do I know about hockey? Well, Walter always looked as though he had done no work from the last rehearsal to this rehearsal, but I am sure he did. It just was very loose. He didn't make any demands on himself, seemingly. He just let it happen. Well, that was the appearance he gave. I'm not sure. He was so good at what he did. Walter, for instance, fitted so well with Neal's writing because Walter is a devil. I mean, he has a wicked personality, and his put-downs of Jack in The Odd Couple were terrific. I've seen him in almost everything he's done, and for a while, at the beginning, I always wondered whether he could do serious drama as well as he does comedy because there's a difference in technique, you know, and I think comedy's harder. I always had thought that, and I wondered about Walter, and then subsequently, he did some marvelous, marvelous things as well as any dramatic actor could ever do. I was very close to him for years, and he had the most, the driest sense of humor. I think the only one he reminds me of is W.C. Fields. That seems like a strange combination, but they were both so angry underneath. They were funny. My father said that the role of Oscar Madison was the plutonium that he needed to become a star because he had, he was really one of the stars that really broke down the barriers of, you know, there were certain exceptions, there were like, you know, your Spencer Tracys and people like that, but pretty much the Hollywood leading man stars, especially romantic leading men, were all, you know, they kind of looked like cholerads, and, you know, my father was one of the first to break down those barriers. It's funny, he played a slob brilliantly, but in real life, he was the most immaculate, beautifully dressed man you have ever seen. He was careful about, he was careful about what he said. He was not bombastic, but he could play it. You know, he could play bombast well. He could be over-the-top well, but he wasn't an over-the-top person. The similarity between the character and the actor is the similarity between an actor who was acting something. Walter was nothing like that. Walter was very neat. Walter was very succinct. Walter was an absolute gentleman. Walter was a man who loved music. He was a man who loved the finer things of life. And, of course, in the play, in the film, that's not the man he's playing. If someone said, would you like to work again with Walter Matthau, in a heartbeat, I would love it. And I'd probably have more balls this time. He was, he was, he was a character. If somebody asked me, if somebody asked me about Walter, preparing to work with Walter, I would say, be prepared, because Walter is, is, is sometimes off the wall. That's the strength of him as an actor. I mean, he will do things you never expect him to do. You know, it wasn't just, it was his versatility that was amazing, but it was also, and his longevity, because he was in important films in six different decades, but also, you know, what I had mentioned before, which is that I think he helped to break down the boundaries of what a leading man was, and kind of paved the way for your Dustin Hoffman's or your Robert De Niro's or your Al Pacino's. I know from some interviews, those guys have said the same thing, which is really nice. You know, you can't help but allow what is you as an actor, what is you as a person. If you're a good actor, you utilize those aspects of your own persona. And the great teams, you know, in history, did the same thing. Whether that was a conscious act, or whether it just happened because of chemistry, or whether it was probably a mixture of both, but it was certainly the case for Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. What they were off screen simply served to become a catalyst for the marvelous craftsmanship they were able to show as individual actors and as a team on screen. And, I mean, it was seamless, you know? You just couldn't tell, and that's what the great actors can do. I love the fact that they adored each other, which everybody knows. They were soul brothers. They really, honest to God, were soul brothers. The fact that Jack died one year later says something extraordinary and karmic about their relationship. The relationship that Walter and Jack had paid off enormously in every scene. You believe that they were very good friends, because in actuality, they were very good friends. They were tremendous friends. When they were on our show, their last appearance together, the warmth between them, because they were so different. I mean, Matthau and Lemmon were unbelievably different as characters, as people, but they loved each other. That was a true, true love. Their relationship actually started with what could have become almost a tragic note. Walter had a minor heart attack before filming and was in the hospital and asked Pop to come. Well, he didn't ask, but Pop came by for a visit, and while he was there, Walter turns to him and says, Hey, Lemmon, could you do me a favor? My bookie, I'm supposed to meet my bookie in front of Fox Studio at 3 o'clock. Could you take this over to him? Hands Pop an envelope. Well, they just met, right? So here, you know, fade out, fade back in. Here's Pop in front of Fox Studios with an envelope full of cash, you know, and some guy, you know, with the cauliflower ears, Hey, Mr. Lemmon, you's my favorite actor. Could I get an autograph? You know, and he's signing an autograph for Walter Matthau's bookie in front. Walter was a very gambler, and Jack was a good drinker, and they got along well. They went to the track together all the time. They just worked, just, it was magic. Pop was working with Walter, and Walter had to do a stunt where he came down a laundry chute onto a 10-foot-high platform, and unfortunately, an accident happened, and Walter fell off and took a really, really bad fall, and everybody was absolutely horrified, and for a second there, thought the worst, and Pop went running over, and there's Walter laying on his back on the floor, pretty much unconscious, and Pop folded up his coat, tears streaming down his face. You know, he loved the man. They adored him. Gently picked up his head and put his coat underneath and looked at Walter, who fluttered his eyes open, and he said, Walt, are you okay? Are you comfortable? And Walt looks up at him and goes, I make a living. They're both alike in the sense they're both very, very giving people. They were always thinking about other people, and, you know, they're really one in a billion, both of them. Very, very talented, brilliant people, but very loving and giving people. You know, it's not a combo you see that often. They were great friends together. They finished each other's sentences. They were made for each other. In fact, they would say that. We were made for each other. It was very comfortable when Pop and Walter were together. You know, I mean, again, you know, it's so much of what they were on screen came from what they were off, and the two of them were marvelous. I mean, if you think they were funny on, you know, being around them, Walter loved to tell a joke, you know. Two Irish guys walk out of a bar. Hey, it could happen. You know, I mean, it's one of my favorites. It ended up being one of Pop's, too. They loved each other. They were incredible friends. It lasted till the end. That relationship was always there between the two of them, and that delicious sense of humor that Walter had, and, you know, Pop's, you know, it's Mutt and Jeff. I mean, the great teams are always Mutt and Jeff, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, you know. But they had, you know, their own unique aspects as well. You know, Lemon and Matthau will go down in history. There was never anything like them. There never will be. I miss them so much. I can't tell you. Walter was his best friend. He was the big brother that Pop never had. As a matter of fact, I think if Walter had learned to play golf, Pop would have married him. You know, I remember the first time that I realized basically who Jack Lemon was, and by that I mean not who Jack Lemon was so much to me as who Jack Lemon was to everyone else. And it was when I was in, I think, about the 5th or 6th grade, and I was in a play school yard, and a little kid came running up to me and says, hey, Lemonhead, you see that kid over there? That's Robert Conrad's son. Robert Conrad is the guy who plays Jim West on The Wild Wild West. He's more famous than your dad. And I thought about it for two seconds. I said, well, yeah, of course he is. He's Jim West. And as the kid went running away, I remember thinking to myself, I didn't know my father was famous. I thought he was just an actor. So I guess that's when it hit me. I think I saw the fortune cookie, and I kept staring at him on the way home in the car. Finally I said, Dad, you know, that guy in the movie looks just like you. I think under, you know, against all odds, and those odds being not only the fact that my mother and father were divorced at a very early age, but also the fact that Hollywood, at the level of stardom my father achieved, puts a hammerlock on you, he did his very best to be as much of a father as he could. And despite those disparities created by the two things I just mentioned, he really was a hell of a father, and I think equally importantly, he truly grew to become my very best friend. We were always best friends from the moment I was born. Every year we'd go someplace together, and, you know, it was Mom who sat at home and dried the tears 24-7, and when Pop would show up at the door every couple of weeks with a guilt present under his arm, of course he's a superhero to his son, but those trips were the real deal. They were the real McCoy. It started out with a catch-and-release fly fishing in Alaska, and then later on, as I achieved my own success, we were both invited to play many years at the AT&T Pebble Beach Celebrity Golf Tournament together, and they truly were some of the greatest memories I'll ever have. Well, we liked to do all the same things, so it was like, you know, hanging out with your best friend, you know. We'd go to baseball games, basketball games, football games, the racetrack, you know, and that was on a slow day. I can say that as far as my decision to go into showbiz, I always wanted to be a classical pianist. I actually even went so far as to graduate from CalArts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in classical piano and composition, as well as theatrical arts. I just couldn't make up my mind. And it was just one of those things that, you know, it was as my father used to say, it's in the genes. So the decision was made for me. I think for me, becoming a director just kind of happened naturally because, you know, I was always playing with the Super 8 camera. He had one, and then he got me one for my 8th birthday, and I was always playing with it and making little films, and of course I went to film school. And then when I wasn't doing that, I was hanging out with him and watching him work with other directors. It was anything but follow in my father's King Kong-sized footsteps. I tried, you know, ice cream salesman, race car driver, classical pianist, no, no, actor. Well, my father would have much preferred had I gone into medicine or something. I mean, he used to say that his stand on abortion was it's the fetus until it graduates medical school. But I didn't listen. I can't stand the sight of blood. And, you know, I don't trust myself because, you know, the worst thing I can do is make a bad movie. At least I'm not going to kill anybody. Pop and I were fortunate enough to work together a few times. I wish it could have been more, but we were so much alike. Personality and physically that we really had no choice but to play father and son. And so you could only do that, you know, so many times. You know, with my father, we had a sort of a shortcut. We could look in each other's eyes and know what the other one was thinking. And so it was actually very pleasurable and very easy to direct him. And also because you never know what he would do and he'd do every take differently and more brilliant than things you could think of. And the same was true with Jack. I love my father very much and I know that Charlie loved Walter very much. You know, we were blessed to have parents like that. And one thing I think if you sat Charlie and me down side by side. Hiya, Charlie. If you sat the two of us down side by side, that's one thing where you'd actually hear a stereo answer. You know, yeah, we loved our pops very, very much.