Detective Columbo, We Hardly Knew Ya: Remembering Peter Falk

Why a blog on Peter Falk?  Well obviously his passing deserves much notice as he was a great actor on the large and small American screen for 50 years, nominated twice for Academy Awards and for a generation of Americans the quirky, funny and inscrutable TV detective Columbo.  And more than that, Peter Falk came to Fort Lee in 2003 to shoot a film with Paul Reiser.  

The Fort Lee Film Commission is blessed with an archive of thousands of stills of stars who graced our streets in the early 1900s when Fort Lee was the first American film town.  However, in our lifetime these sightings are a bit rare.  Sure we do get in many independent productions and large scale TV shows such as NBC  / Universal’s Law & Order SVU with stars such as Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni to name but two.  However for those of us of the baby boom generation who were born in the 1960s Peter Falk has some special meaning.

Perhaps we first saw him in Sinatra's 1964 romp in Robin and the 7 Hoods on the 4:30 Movie on WABC in the 1960s - 70s, or in Blake Edward's 1965 The Great Race where Falk was the hilarious henchman to Jack Lemmon's Professor Fate.  And Murder Inc. where a dead on serious Falk played real life gangster Abe Reles.  For that turn Falk was nominated for an Academy Award and he said this was the role that launched his career, a career that took him from a vicious gangster to America's beloved Lt. Columbo and more, much more.  I especially loved his turns in the films of his great pal independent filmmaker John Cassavetes where they both made classic movies that are appreciated to this day, films where their friendship shone through especially in 1970’s Husbands.

I will always remember Falk in one of the great films of my childhood and adulthood for that matter, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World from 1963 where Falk, in a small but hilarious role, plays a wise talking cab driver with a thick New York accent amidst a score of America’s greatest comedians of the day. 

 Most of all I will remember the day Peter Falk came to Fort Lee and for a brief moment we had a brilliant, funny, dramatic and charming American actor in our presence filming on our streets.  And by the way, when we met, Peter Falk threw his arm around me and put his hand in my back pocket and took my wallet as I laughed and shouted “I’m being rolled by Lt. Columbo!”