The Odd Couple (Paramount Pictures) (1968)

Matthau: Success A Rugged Road I feel very grateful about the wonderful course my career has taken since I picked up an Oscar for my role in “The Fortune Cookie.” I teamed with Jack Lemmon to do “The Odd Couple” at Paramount which opens ................ Bile WENO sta evakyoixuns Theatre. It hasn’t been an overnight thing. The road to the Oscar was pretty rough and rugged as I reflect upon the past. I lived in cold-water flats until I was 28, and had guilt problems about being a success, But acting is a form of self-expression and social adversity frustrates you. So you need to express yourself. Had I grown up in a palace I doubt I would have made much of an actor. As a kid in New York I used to lock myself in the bathroom reading Shakespeare for hours at a time. I just liked the sound of words. My father was a sensitive, intelligent man who was completely crushed by the competitive system. He left the family soon after I was born. My mother worked in the garment industry as a seamstress to support my brother and me, I remember always being cold as a kid. Even now I like places that are warm. In 1940 I went to work for the WPA as a boxing coach. I had had a lot of fights as a kid but I don’t know much about boxing. The WPA instructors showed me a couple of principles like keeping your chin down and your right up. Then they said: “Don’t get into a fight with any of these kids. They’ll lick hell out of you.” When Brando was in “Streetcar,” I saw 186 performances—but only the last two acts. I’d wander inside at intermission and when the buzzer rang, I moved with the crowd into the standing room section and watched Brando. He was one of the great actors of our time. It is the actor’s job to say what the author has written and to play it the best way he knows how— not to try to bring it into his own squalid little area of experience. Every good actor for centuries has used the Method. The Method is simply coming onstage from some place the character might have been—a New York bar, a railroad track. Most actors coming onstage are just actors coming in from offstage. They have no density, no dimension. They are bad actors. When Mike Gordon was directing me on One Bright Day I told him there was a line I couldn’t say because I didn’t feel it. He said, “What if you were playing Othello and you just didn’t feel like killing Still #72 Mat 1C ENOUGH IS ENOUGH says Still #16 Oscar (Walter Matthau) of Felix’s (Jack Lemmon) over cleanliness. This Paramount Picture “THE ODD COUPLE’”’ is in Technicolor and Panavision. It opens ...... at the 5 Astana theatre. Desdemona?” I got the point. I never said that again. I am afraid when I ride the subway. I usually try to project the image of a detective, and often it works. I don’t want my son Charlie to become an actor, There are too many losers in the profession. I think I have worked more than any actor in the world—TV shows, skits and sketches and religious shows my name wasn’t in, in settlement houses, YMCA’s and YMHA’s. In 20 years I took two weeks off. I love to act. The future? I’d just like to have these nice parts in movies like “The Odd Couple” and stay healthy. Garson Kanin advised me that in the future I should do romantic parts, something to do with the girl, even if I kill her. Mat 2A “MY HOUSE SHOULD BE CLEANER THAN MY MOTHERS” -.asks Oscar of Felix’s constant cleaning and spraying. Starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau “THE ODD COUPLE” opens cdiauetiossse at the ...... theatre. In Technicolor and Panavision. FROM STAGE TO SCREEN, A RARE OPPORTUNITY—Director Gene Saks did three weeks of rehearsals with the cast of Odd Couple before the picture began. “T know it’s no new thing to rehearse,” Saks says, “and not always necessary, as with most Westerns. But when you’re doing a play you know it’s largely verbal and interior. It would be a serious disadvantage not to rehearse. In anything written with character humor in mind, the actor should have the same opportunity to explore the character he’d have on stage.” It is still rare for a film author to be able to watch his work go into production. Simon, who interrupted work on a new play to attend the rehearsals, welcomed the chance. “The Odd Couple” is Gene Saks’ second film, A Paramount Picture Opening te... ke atethe* see Theatre. His first was Simon’s “Barefoot In The Park,” which he directed for Hal Wallis and Paramount. Saks has an impressive list of Broadway hits as a director: “Enter Laughing.” “Nobody Loves An Albatross,” “Generation” and the musicals, “Half A Sixpence” and “Mame.” FAMILIAR FACE—A funny thing happened to Jack Lemmon on the way to Paramount for his role in “The Odd Couple,” opening. .......... ch A ot) Sepeeeee ae Theatre. The star stopped at a gas station to have a flat tire replaced. “Your face looks familiar,’ the mechanic said. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” Lemmon quipped: “Maybe at your neighborhood theatre.” The mechanic mulled over this for a moment, then nodded. “Maybe,” he said, “Where do you usually sit?” In Technicolor. ODD FIRE—Rowland Stitch, a studio fireman working with the Paramount crew on “The Odd Couple,” which opens ............ at the Nees Theatre proved an old adage. A special effects man was operating a flame-throwing machine to give the illusion of a kitchen stove on fire for a scene with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau on Stage Nine. The sheet of flame suddenly went out of control, igniting curtains. Stitch grabbed a fire extinguisher, doused the blaze. “There’s a perfect example,” cracked director Gene Saks, “of a Stitch in time saving Nine—Stage Nine, that is.” VERY FUNNY TALENT—Paramount’s film adaptation opening SaRecetics at the ............ Theatre from Neil Simon’s screenplay The Odd Couple with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau playing the battling bachelors, promises to be even funnier than the play. Howard W. Koch produces and Gene Saks directs. Matthau, of course, is recreating the role of Oscar Madison for which he won a 1965 Tony Award. Lemmon, one of the finest comedic talents in Hollywood history, portrays Felix Ungar. The two actors, admirers of each other’s work, each said he would do the screen version of “The Odd Couple” only if the other was his partner. The world will be richer in laughter as a result of the teaming of these two incomparable talents. Both are winners of Academy Awards, Lemmon for his role of Pulver in “Mr. Roberts” and Matthau for the shyster lawyer in “The Fortune Cookie.” Lemmon Lives His Roles Jack Lemmon, who stars with Walter Matthau as the battling bachelors in Paramount’s “The Odd Couple,’’ which opens eater at the ............ Theatre in Technicolor says he identifies completely with the character of Felix Unger that he plays in the film. “T identify with all the characters I play,” says Jack, “if they have real depth. To perform a serious role to my own satisfaction, I have to go into a little world of my own. I completely become the character in the film. “T guess,” Lemmon grins, “I bug everybody with it, because I’ve been told that people have come into my dressing room and heard me holler. ‘Get lost! I don’t want to talk to you! Don’t disturb me!’ ” Lemmon says he never remembers doing that later, and he has to walk around like an ass apologizing to everyone. “But even on nights and weekends when I’m with friends,” the actor confides, “I’m still the guy in the picture I’m making. I have to be that way. He is me and I’m him. When I was making ‘The Odd Couple,’ for several months I was that poor little schnook who didn’t completely know the score. I was so close to him that I was afraid, with all the sweat, all the emotional blood I had put into him, that nobody would know a damn thing about it. I had the same feeling on a totally different level with “Some Like It Hot,” which was a broad farce. I was worried that the farce would fall flat. “IT got an Academy Award for Mister Roberts—and I’ve never seen the ending, because I was so mad at what I did in it. I know I had a great part to play, beautifully written. But it became so important to me that it was difficult to satisfy the high level of acceptibility I had unconsciously imposed OfeaiGe Did the Oscar for his performance help convince Lemmon that he had succeeded ? “Not really,” Lemmon said, “Success is always somebody else’s opinion of you; but it doesn’t amount to a damn compared to your own opinion of yourself—though naturally I felt honored to get the award. Honored? I was thunderstruck. It made a nervous wreck out of me. I remember on Oscar night I took a wrong turn driving to the awards and got there late.” Lemmon remembers countless kleig lights, hundreds of people milling around outside, and all the nominees being interviewed on television. “T sort of got swept up in the surge of people,” he recalls, “and to support myself grabbed a guardrail. It was wet with paint. There I stood, in my grandfather’s white tails and tie, with green paint on my hand, I tried to reach in my Still #54 Mat 1D BOUNCED BY HIS’ WIFE Felix finds refuge in Oscars apartment. The cast is headed by Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. “THE ODD COUPLE” in Technicolor and Panavision opens: Laie PSOE UW NESE” scree theatre. pocket for a handkerchief. No handkerchief. So I put my hand in my other pocket and began wiping it off on the inside. At that moment, of course, the television cameras focused on a full-length shot of me. Very fast, they cut to above-thewaist shots. What the viewers had seen for a moment was very oddlooking, shall we say, to appear on the screen. It looked like I had an itch in the damnedest place.” The actor says when he finally got out of that situation, he walked to the entrance and reached for his tickets. “No tickets” Lemmon sighed. “I had left them at home; so they didn’t know where I was supposed to sit. And then, when my name was announced, I was so excited I almost fell on my posterior getting up to the stage. I still had the green paint on my hand when I took the Oscar. But at that point I couldn’t have cared less if it was purple or black paint on my hand or whatever. I was in shock.” Still #48 Mat 2C IT LOOKS LIKE THE END OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP as “THE ODD COUPLE”, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, almost come to blows. A Paramount Picture which opens ...... HEPC Os onc rt es theatre, in Technicolor and Panavision.