Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,113

This is the grave of Jack Klugman.

Born in 1922 in Philadelphia, Klugman grew up in a Jewish immigrant household. His parents had come over from Russia. He was in World War II and then it was onto what is today Carnegie Mellon using his GI Bill benefits. He wanted to be an actor. Famously, one of his teachers told him to be a truck driver instead. This was a teacher in Pittsburgh though, so really, what did they know? He moved to New York to take his shot in acting, rooming for another aspiring young actor for awhile named Charles Bronson.

Very slowly, Klugman moved his way up into the theatre. It probably helped that this was a good age for good plays that had not particularly attractive ethnic characters in them, speaking as well of Bronson. He got small roles in good plays, working with Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee in Stevedore in 1949 for instance. He wasn’t even paid for that. But he got touring roles and the roles got a bit better and a bit better. He hit Broadway in 1952 in Clifford Odets’ Golden Boy. I tried to visit Odets’ grave once. It’s in a fancy private section of an LA cemetery. NOT MUCH OF A LEFTIST ARE YOU IN DEATH CLIFF?????

Anyway, Klugman got a role in a soap opera on TV in 1954 and then was on one of the early TV theater productions, with Bogart and Fonda in a version of The Petrified Forest. What an era in TV, thinking Americans would watch good acting in good plays. Wow, postwar America was a lot more optimistic about this population than I can ever be.

Where you probably first ran into Klugman–chronologically in his work if not in our own lives since most of us weren’t watching movies in 1957 (even here at LGM that might be true) is his role as Juror No. 5 in 12 Angry Men, that master class of American acting and one of the finest films ever made that take place in one room. That gave him a boost. He started getting lead roles on Broadway after this and was nominated for a Tony in 1960 for his work in Gypsy: An American Fable. He lost to Tom Bosley, a point I find amusing in that both Boswell and Klugman were not conventionally attractive men who would later be big TV stars.

TV became Klugman’s usual home in the 60s. He did some episodes of The Twilight Zone and would end up tying Burgess Meredith for the most episodes as the star, with four. One reason I enjoy posts on relatively minor actors like Klugman is that you remember a bunch of other guys you’ve forgotten like Bosley and Meredith. He won a Emmy for a guest appearance on The Defenders in 1964. He got cast in a sitcom called Harris Against the World in 1965 that only lasted for a season. He did a little film in the 60s still too, including playing Ali McGraw’s father in the film adaptation of Philip Roth’s Goodbye Columbus and one of Sinatra’s cronies in 1968’s The Detective.

In 1965, Walter Matthau left the role of Oscar Madison in the original Broadway production of The Odd Couple. Klugman was cast to replace him. So when the play was reconceptualized as a TV series, it made sense to hire Klugman to play the role and for Tony Randall to play Felix Unger. This was one of the iconic shows of the early 70s. It ran from 1970-75. Klugman got the role over Mickey Rooney and Martin Balsam. Randall pushed hard for Rooney, but Garry Marshall was all in for Klugman and won out. At first it used a laugh track, but eventually the creators convinced ABC to let Randall and Klugman–true professional stage veterans after all–do the show live with an audience. The show was never that highly rated but the critics loved it, so ABC moved it around in the ratings rather than cancel it. Klugman won two Emmys and a Golden Globe for his work on it.

After The Odd Couple finished, Klugman immediately got another lead TV role, in Quincy, M.E., one of the first major medical procedurals. Here, he was a medical examiner who participated in police investigations. This lasted for eight seasons. Critics were generally favorable to the show, more or less, but no one pretended this was the quality of The Odd Couple. Audiences liked it though, so Klugman had consistent starring work until 1983, making a nice run of 13 years as a lead TV star. Good work if you can get it.

One of the interesting things about Quincy is that it actually had an impact on American medical policy when it went after drug companies for not producing so-called “orphan drugs,” which meant drugs that helped a few people but because they weren’t profitable for the drug companies were not produced. After an episode about this, Congress passed the Orphan Drug Act in 1983, which offered companies financial incentives to produce such drugs. Hard to imagine anything coming out of television or anything else that would lead to this Congress doing anything that helped anyone ever except for Donald Trump. What a country we’ve become.

Klugman got another show in 1986, working with John Stamos in something called You Again? I have no memory of this and all and I watched way way too much TV as a kid. It lasted two seasons. But in 1989, Klugman got throat cancer. He had it once before, but it was more serious this time and he did not work for four years. I imagine smoking was a big part of this. He survived it though. Mostly, his comeback consisted of being a senior respected TV and theater figure, working here and there. Lots of guest star appearances. He and Randall did an Odd Couple reunion TV movie that appealed to old people I guess. He was in a bunch of whatever mediocre 90s movies. He did a couple of revivals of The Sunshine Boys. Basically, he was a respected actor getting work and that’s pretty good. And who could play rumbled cranky-funny guy better than Klugman?

Klugman also loved to play the ponies. He invested in race horses as well. In fact, he owned a horse named Jaklin Klugman that finished 3rd in the 1980 Kentucky Derby, so that’s a big deal. He was also married for over 20 years to Brett Somers, who I know strictly as one of those figures from 1970s game shows who were everywhere for reasons that no one understood since no one knew who they were outside of that context.

Klugman died of prostate cancer in 2012. He was 90 years old.

Jack Klugman is buried in Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California.

The fact that someone named Unger is buried before Jack Klugman is amazing work by fate. Amazing work.

If you would like this series to visit other television nominees for the 1973 Golden Globes, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Redd Foxx is in Las Vegas and Mary Tyler Moore is in Fairfield, Connecticut. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.