September 24, 1970: "The Odd Couple" Premieres On TV

Tony Randall (left) and Jack Klugman

September 24, 1970: The Odd Couple premieres on ABC. It turns out to be one of the funniest shows in the history of television.

It began as a Broadway play, written by Neil Simon. Just as the TV show would have continuity issues, including 3 different versions of how the 2 main characters met (as children, while serving together in World War II, and years later on a jury), there are conflicting reports as to the play's inspiration.

What everybody agrees on was that the play was written about a couple splitting up. The version usually agreed upon was Neil's brother, Danny Simon, who was a good cook but a bit high-strung, moving in with another newly-split husband, the sloppy theatrical agent Roy Gerber. The competing version was that the high-strung one was Mel Brooks, who moved in with a writer named Irving "Speed" Vogel.

Which version is true? Well, it does seem likely that Neil would get the idea from watching his brother. But both brothers, and Brooks, as well as Carl Reiner, M*A*S*H co-creator Larry Gelbart, and, later on, Woody Allen, had all been writers for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. And the fact that one of the poker-playing buddies on The Odd Couple would be nicknamed "Speed" (on the show, his real name was given as Homer Deegan, played by Garry Walberg) lends some credence to the Brooks version.

At any rate, the opening of the TV show, narrated by Bill Woodson, explains the story:

On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife. Deep down, he knew she was right. But he also knew that, one day, he would return to her. With nowhere else to go, he appeared at the home of his friend, Oscar Madison. Several years earlier, Madison's wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return. Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?

November 13 was chosen because it was the birthday of one of the show's producers, Garry Marshall.

The play and the movie that came from it may surprise people who only know the TV show. For one thing, Felix's name is spelled "Ungar." For another, Felix is a news writer. Oscar is still a sportswriter, but he has children, which he didn't have on the show. Felix's ex-wife is named Frances, while on the show, she was Gloria. But Felix is still a neat freak, a hypochondriac, and hung up on his ex, while Oscar has moved on from his ex. Neither ex appears as a character in the play or the film.

When Simon finished the play, he showed it to actor Walter Matthau, saying, "I wrote it for you." Matthau was excited to play Felix. Simon said no, he wanted Matthau to play Oscar. And so, on March 10, 1965, at the Plymouth Theatre, the play opened with Matthau as Oscar and Art Carney, previously best known as Ed Norton on The Honeymooners, as Felix. Mike Nichols directed. It was a hit, and lasted for a little over 2 years. A film version was released in 1968. Again, Matthau played Oscar, and Jack Lemmon played Felix.

The TV version had Tony Randall as Felix, now a commercial photographer -- as he said, "Portraits a specialty" -- and Jack Klugman as Oscar, now promoted to sports columnist for the New York Herald. (In real life, there was a paper with that name, merging in 1924 with the Tribune, to form the Herald Tribune, which was noted for a great sports section, but it went out of business in 1966, enabling Paramount Television to get around copyright laws.)

They lived on the 11th floor of 1049 Park Avenue, which is a real address, between 87th and 88th Streets on the Upper East Side. "Park Avenue" was already a byword (byphrase?) for "rich in New York." Neither man could afford the rent on their own, but they could afford it together. The building is still there, and, while the famous awning from the show's opening has been changed, the building looks pretty much the same.

The only performers from the play and the film who reprised their roles on the TV version were the Pigeon Sisters, British ladies who lived upstairs: Monica Evans as Cecily and Carole Shelley as Gwendolyn. But the characters only appeared in 4 episodes, all early in the 1st season.

The ex-wives were Gloria, played by Janis Hansen; and Blanche, played by Brett Somers, Klugman's real-life wife. A flashback episode showed a New Year's Eve party, with both couples still together, but both already fighting. Blanche seemed to have caught Oscar with another woman. The audience knows he wasn't actually cheating, but she didn't know that, and she was already drunk, assumed the worst, and, contradicting the show's opening, left him, rather than staying and throwing him out. Unlike Felix, Oscar was glad to be divorced, the alimony payments that he was frequently late on being the only part he didn't like.

Life imitated art: The Klugmans split up during the show's run. It didn't help that Klugman had been a panelist on the 1st week of the revived game show Match Game in July 1973, and Somers said it looked like fun and asked if he could get her on it, and he did, and she proved more popular on it than he did. 

From October 1973 until the show was canceled in May 1982, Somers was on nearly every installment, often making jokes about her ex-husband and kids; verbally sparring with fellow panelists Charles Nelson Reilly, Betty White and Fannie Flagg; hinting that she and host Gene Rayburn would be heading to a motel in Encino after the show; and having the other panelists make references to her apparently excessive drinking and her vain attempts at staying young.

In the play and film, Felix's son, Leonard, was the older sibling. On the show, the daughter, Edna, was older. Pamelyn Ferdin played Edna (named for Randall's real sister), before Doney Oatman took over the role; while Willie Aames and later Leif Garrett played Leonard (named for Randall's real name, Aryeh Leonard Rosenberg -- yes, both Randall and Klugman were Jewish, something that is only hinted at for the characters, never explicitly said).

Then there were the poker buddies. Along with Wahlberg (who would later co-star on Quincy, M.E., as a police lieutenant to Klugman's titular medical examiner) as Speed, Al Molinaro played Murray Greshler, a well-meaning but dumb police sergeant; Larry Gelman played Vinnie Barella, whose job was never mentioned; and Ryan McDonald played Roy, Oscar's accountant, whose last name was never mentioned. Roy was written out after Season 1, and the poker games became fewer and further between; but Wahlberg (no relation to singer-actors Donnie and Mark) and Gelman would make occasional appearances after that.

Both main characters would eventually get girlfriends who appeared in several episodes across the seasons. Oscar started dating Nancy Cunningham (Joan Hotchkis), a doctor; while Felix dated Miriam Welby (Elinor Donahue). Oscar had also made some references to an on-again-off-again girlfriend, whom he called Crazy Rhoda Zimmerman, but she was never shown onscreen.

Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson were the show's producers, and Garry's sister, Penny Marshall, later to star on Laverne & Shirley and became a major film director, played Oscar's secretary, Myrna Turner. Myrna's defining feature was that she had a really strong N'Yawk accent and a ridiculous, equally nasal laugh, like Fran Fine, Fran Drescher's character on The Nanny; or Janice Hosenstein, Maggie Wheeler's character on Friends. (In real life, Wheeler doesn't have much of a New York accent. Marshall did and Drescher does, but none of theirs was as bad as those of their characters.) On one episode, Rob Reiner of All in the Family, Penny's real-life husband at the time, played her boyfriend Sheldn -- that's how he spelled it -- until then often mentioned but never seen.

There were plenty of celebrity guest stars. Football legends Deacon Jones, Bubba Smith and Sonny Sixkiller all appeared, the 1st 2 as themselves, who knew Oscar within the show's reality; the latter as a quarterback offered a scholarship because of his Native American heritage, but loved to play the cello, and Felix tried to get him to drop football for a music conservatory scholarship.

Tennis stars and rivals Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs appeared together on one of the show's best episodes, with Riggs hustling Oscar for more and more money until King helps him get it back. ABC sportscaster Howard Cosell played himself, hating Oscar, and the feeling was mutual; but Cosell also belonged to the same opera-fan club as Felix, whom he told, "Don't call me 'Howie'!"

Opera singer Marilyn Horne played a secretary with a thing for Felix, while opera singers Martina Arroyo and Richard Fredericks, the last of whom played on a Central Park softball team with Oscar, played themselves. Also playing themselves were singer Jaye P. Morgan, and singer-songwriter Paul Williams, whom Edna wanted to run away and follow on tour. (This must have been a parody of such stories: While Williams is immensely talented, and a good guy by all accounts, he is 5-foot-2, and, even when young, was not the most handsome or charismatic of men.)

Game show hosts Monty Hall, Richard Dawson and Allen Ludden played themselves, as did Ludden's wife, Betty White. Ludden hosted Password, on which White was often a celebrity panelist, and Felix and Oscar got on the show. But Felix's answers and clues both turned out to be, as Oscar put it, ridiculous. And when they appeared on Let's Make a Deal, Hall told them that, because he and Oscar were friends, their winnings would have to be donated to charity. This led to perhaps the funniest final scene in the show's history.

The show ran for 5 seasons. In the final episode, airing on March 7, 1975, Gloria takes Felix back, they remarry in Oscar's apartment, and Felix moves out. Randall and Klugman would occasionally appear in the play version of the show, and in character in commercials. When Klugman was hired to do commercials for Canon copiers, Randall was hired by rival Minolta, and couldn't resist doing it as Felix might have.

There would be a reunion movie in 1993: Edna is getting married, and Felix is driving everyone crazy with the preparations, so Gloria kicks him out again, just until the wedding. This works out well for Oscar, because, with art imitating life, Klugman was recovering from surgery for throat cancer, his voice reduced to a whisper, so Felix moves back in to take care of Oscar.

In 1998, Lemmon and Matthau starred in The Odd Couple II, a direct sequel to the 1968 film, which totally ignores the TV show. In this one, Felix and Oscar haven't seen each other in many years, until Oscar's son proposes to Felix's daughter.

Walter Matthau died in 2000, Jack Lemmon in 2001, Tony Randall in 2004, Jerry Belson in 2006, Brett Somers in 2007; Neal Hefti, who composed the beloved them esong, in 2008; Jack Klugman and Garry Wahlberg in 2012, Al Molinaro in 2015, Garry Marshall in 2016, Bill Woodson in 2017; Neil Simon, Carole Shelley and Penny Marshall in 2018; Ryan McDonald in 2020, and Larry Gelman and Janis Hansen in 2021. As of September 24, 2022, Monica Evans, Joan Hotchkis, Elinor Donahue, Willie Aames, Leif Garrett, Pamelyn Ferdin and Doney Oatman are still alive. (UPDATE: Joan Hotchkis died on September 27, 2022.)

In 1975, right after the show ended, ABC aired The Oddball Couple, a cartoon version. Frank Nelson, best known as the "Yeeeeeeeessss?" guy on The Jack Benny Program, played Spiffy, a neat-freak cat; while Paul Winchell, a legendary ventriloquist who had already made a name for himself in cartoon voiceovers (Dick Dastardly on Wacky Races, Tigger on Winnie-the-Pooh, and eventually Gargamel on The Smurfs), was a dog, whose name, Fleabag, spoke for itself.

In the 1982-83 TV season, ABC tried The New Odd Couple, with Ron Glass of Barney Miller as Felix and Demond Wilson of Sanford & Son as Oscar. The main characters, and their exes, were the only ones who were switched to black: Everyone else stayed white. Most of the episodes were redos of the original, with the cultural references updated. It was good, but not as good as the original.

In 1985, Simon rewrote the play for women. Sally Struthers of All in the Family played Florence Ungar, and Rita Moreno played Olive Madison. It didn't work nearly as well. (Personally, I would have switched them: Rita as Florence, and Sally as Olive.) The game was switched from poker to Trivial Pursuit, and the other players were also women, named Mikey, Sylvie, Vera, and Renee. The English-born Pigeon sisters became the Spanish-born Costazuela brothers, Manolo and Jesus. The play lasted 8 months, and Rita and Sally didn't get along.

Eventually, CBS bought the rights to the original show, and in 2015, tried a new The Odd Couple, which ran for 3 seasons. Matthew Perry of Friends played Oscar, updated to be host of a sports-talk show on radio. But Felix, as played by Thomas Lennon of Reno 911!, was a total betrayal of the character. The one time I watched the show, just out of curiosity, Lennon as Felix was walking around the apartment naked (creatively covered by various household objects). Tony Randall's Felix wore a bathrobe over a suit to go to bed.

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September 24, 1970 was a Thursday. Only 6 Major League Baseball games were played that day:

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Detroit Tigers, 7-4 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Mike Cuellar advanced to 24-8, outpitching John Hiller. Paul Blair hit 2 home runs, Brooks Robinson 1. Frank Robinson went 0-for-2, but drew 3 walks. Tiger legend Al Kaline, playing in his hometown, went 2-for-4.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 4-3 at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington. Carl Yastrzemski went 2-for-3 with a walk. Tony Conigliaro hit 2 home runs, but his eyesight was fading again, and he was feuding, not just with Sox management, but with his own brother and teammate, Billy. These were the 158th and 159th home runs of his career. He was 25 years old. He would only hit 7 more: He was traded to the California Angels, played 74 games with them, and was released.

He made a brief comeback with the Sox in 1975, but his eyes still hadn't healed enough, and played just 21 games before being released, before he could appear in the postseason. He became a broadcaster, but had a heart attack in 1982, and spent the rest of his life in hospitals before dying in 1990.

* The San Diego Padres beat the Atlanta Braves, 5-0 at Atlanta Stadium (later Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Dave Roberts pitched a 6-hit shutout. Hank Aaron went 1-for-4.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Montreal Expos, 8-0 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. They did this without Roberto Clemente, who did not play, and mostly without Willie Stargell, who went 0-for-4. But Gene Alley had 4 RBIs, and he and Manny Sanguillen each had 3 hits. Luke Walker pitched a 7-hit shutout.

* The Milwaukee Brewers beat the California Angels, 7-3 at Milwaukee County Stadium.

* And the Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-1 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Ernie Banks did not play, but Joe Pepitone hit a home run for the Cubs. Lou Brock went 2-for-4 for the Cardinals, but also made a key error. Ken Holtzman went the distance, outpitching Mike Torrez. Both would be key pitchers for the New York Yankees when they won the World Series in 1977.