TCM had an evening of Blake Edwards movies the other night, in honor of the recently deceased director. I was surfing past a showing of Days of Wine and Roses, a drama about alcoholism which I’d never seen, when I noticed one of those great weird casting moments:
Yep, that’s Jack Lemmon (not, I’ll admit, one of my favorite actors) and Jack Klugman. I watched a long scene with the two. The notable aspect, of course, is that Lemmon originated the role of Felix Unger in the film version of The Odd Couple, while Jack Klugman replaced Lemmon’s frequent screen partner Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison in the classic TV sitcom version of the movie.
This raised an obvious question: Had their counterparts, Tony Randall and Matthau, ever appeared onscreen together? Indeed, both co-starred in a comedy called Island of Love (1963).
As this lobby card indicates, they did share at least one scene. (That’s Robert “Music Man” Preston with them, coincidentally the star of Blake Edward’s Victor/Victoria.) Anyway, it would be fun to spring those two movies on people (assuming they are as old as I am) as a double bill and see if they got the connection.
By the way, if you want to see an Edwards movie in his honor, I’d nominate A Shot in the Dark, the 2nd Inspector Clouseau movie and probably one of my top ten comedies ever.
