Born:
April 27, 1922
in
Philadelphia
Best Known For:
His TV roles on The Odd Couple and Quincy, ME.
Early-life:
Jacob Joachim Klugman was born in Philadelphia on April 27, 1922. His mother was a hat maker and his father was a house painter. He studied at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), and served in the United States Army during the Second World War.
Career:
Klugman made his TV debut in an episode of Actors Studio in 1950, and in 1952, he made his bow on Broadway in Golden Boy. He appeared on the big screen in 1957 in the acclaimed 12 Angry Men. He returned to Broadway in 1959 and was nominated for a Tony Award for Gypsy: A Musical Fable. Klugman won his first Primetime Emmy Award for a guest role on The Defenders. In 1965, he replaced Walter Matthau in the lead role of Oscar Madison in the original Broadway production of The Odd Couple. He went on to reprise the role in the 1970s alongside Tony Randall in a TV version that ran for 114 editions. He won two Emmy Awards for this series. Following the end of The Odd Couple, Klugman struck gold again as a forensic pathologist in Quincy, ME. The show ran from 1976 until 1983, clocking up 148 episodes. Throat cancer sidelined his career for a number of years. He returned to acting in a 1993 Broadway revival of Three Men on a Horse. In the same year, he reunited with Randall in the TV movie The Odd Couple: Together Again. He also worked with Randall on Broadway in The Sunshine Boys. Klugman died from prostate cancer in California on December 24, 2012 at the age of 90.
Quote:
(On Tony Randall): "The best friend a man could ever have. I loved him dearly. He was a gentleman in the truest sense of the word."
Trivia:
A heavy smoker, he lost a vocal cord to throat cancer in 1989.