Jack Klugman, RIP

One of the great icons of TV (and stage and film) has died at the age of 90. Jack Klugman first came to fame as the male lead in the classic Broadway musical Gypsy in 1959. He was a co-star in such film classics as 12 Angry Men and The Days of Wine and Roses. He  starred in a number of Twilight Zone episodes on TV in the 1960s. But his greatest claim to fame came when he took on the role of “Oscar Madison” in the TV series The Odd Couple, and then followed that great success with the starring role as a fictitious Los Angeles chief medical examiner in the long-running TV series Quincy, M.E.

(I had the great pleasure of seeing Klugman and his The Odd Couple co-star, the late Tony Randall, on stage in a Broadway revival of the comedy Three Men on a Horse in 1993.)

A clip from Klugman’s favorite episode of The Odd Couple:


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A scene from Klugman’s second hit TV series Quincy, M.E.:


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Here’s a YouTube video that uses the recording of Klugman singing “Together, Wherever We Go” from Gypsy with his co-star Ethel Merman.

[Thanks to Franklin Harris]

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5:24 pm on December 24, 2012