Posted 5/18/2004 10:21 AM Updated 5/18/2004 10:57 AM Actor Tony Randall dies at 84 NEW YORK (AP) — Tony Randall, the comic actor best known for playing fastidious photographer Felix Unger on The Odd Couple, has died. He was 84. Randall died in his sleep Monday night at NYU Medical Center, according to his publicity firm, Springer Associates. By Ron Frehm, AP Randall died in his sleep Monday night at NYU Medical Center of complications from a long illness, according to his publicity firm, Springer Associates. He is survived by his wife, Heather Harlan Randall, who made him a father for the first time at age 77, and their two children, 7-year-old Julia Laurette and 5-year-old Jefferson Salvini. Randall won an Emmy for playing Unger on the sitcom based on Neil Simon's play and movie. The show ran from 1970-75, but Randall won after it had been canceled, prompting him to quip at the awards ceremony: "I'm so happy I won. Now if I only had a job." The show's charm sprang from Randall's chemistry and conflict with Jack Klugman as sloppy sportswriter Oscar Madison, with whom he's forced to share an apartment after both men get divorced. Before that, Randall was best known as the fastidious "best friend" figure in several Rock Hudson-Doris Day movies, including 1959's Pillow Talk and 1961's Lover Come Back. The actor became a fixture on David Letterman's late-night talk shows, appearing a record 70 times on the Late Show alone. He made fun of his own prim image by taking part in Letterman's wacky antics, including allowing himself to be covered in mud. And in 1993, when Conan O'Brien took over the time slot at NBC that Letterman had vacated for a new show at CBS, Randall was a guest on O'Brien's debut episode. After The Odd Couple, Randall had two short-lived sitcoms, one of which was The Tony Randall Show, in which he played a stuffy Philadelphia judge, from 1976-78. From 1981-83, he played the title role in the sitcom Love, Sidney, as a single, middle-aged commercial artist helping a female friend care for her young daughter. The show was based on a TV movie in which Sidney was gay; in the TV show, the character's sexual orientation was implied, but never specified. This occurred more than a decade before the much-hyped coming-out on Ellen in 1997, which made Ellen DeGeneres' character the first openly gay central figure on a network series. For his television work, Randall got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1998. In an effort to bring classic theater back to Broadway, Randall founded and was artistic director of the non-profit National Actors Theatre in 1991, using $1 million of his own money and $2 million from corporations and foundations. The company's first production was a revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, starring Martin Sheen and Michael York, which hadn't been staged on Broadway in 40 years. The next year, Randall's production of Ibsen's The Master Builder didn't exactly draw raves. AP Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara called it "deadly earnest — and dull." Subsequent performances included Night Must Fall,The Gin Game and The Sunshine Boys, in which Randall reunited with Klugman, in 1998. Randall also starred in his company's Tony Award-winning staging of M. Butterfly. The actor also was socially active, lobbying against smoking in public places, marching in Washington against apartheid in the '80s, and helping raise money for AIDS research in the '90s. Born Leonard Rosenberg on Feb. 26, 1920, Randall was drawn as a teenager to roadshows that came through his hometown of Tulsa "One night, the entire town turned out to see the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo perform Swan Lake and Sheherezade," he wrote. "I — and most of the audience — had never seen a ballet before. We stood and cheered, thinking it was a 'once in a lifetime' event." Randall attended Northwestern University before heading to New York at 19, where he made his stage debut in 1941 in The Circle of Chalk. After Army service during World War II from 1942-46, he returned to New York, where he appeared on radio and early television. He got his start in movies in 1957. He was married to his college sweetheart, Florence Randall, for 54 years until she died of cancer in 1992. "I saw her in a bank — I never saw another girl in my life. She was gorgeous, the most beautiful girl I ever saw," Randall said in a TV interview in 1995. Later that year, he married Harlan, who was 50 years his junior. Randall met her through his National Actors Theatre; former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani performed the ceremony. Harlan gave birth to their first child, Julia Laurette Randall, in April 1997. Their second child, Jefferson Salvini Randall, was born in June 1998.
From another story... Randall joked in September about how he envisioned his funeral: President Bush (news - web sites) and Vice President Cheney would show up to pay their respects but they'd be turned away, because his family knows he didn't like them. I always liked Tony Randall and apent way too much of my youth watching "The Odd Couple." I always thought he was gay until he showed up at 70 something with a babe on his arm. Funny, talented, a veteran, and supporter of good causes... RIP Tony.
Sad to say, if someone asked me "Tony Randall, dead or alive?" I would have said dead, I never knew he was still around. RIP
A great loss. It kills me that he's remembered today more for a sitcom than for his splendid career on stage and screen. RIP, Tony.
I think that having kids at that age is absolutely ridiculous and irresponsible. I dont care how much money you had or how famous you are, the kids are the ones that lose. What kind of family heritage can you have when you dad is older than other peoples grandparents? Why should they suffer without a father their entire lives. Do you think an old fart like Tony Randall at age 77 could help take care of young kids? I'm 26 with a 6 and 3 year old and it is hard as hell on me. My mom does not like having the kids for more than several days by herself because it is rough on her at age 53. Crap like that really irritates the hell out of me.
Too funny. I'm as old as your mom and have an 8 year old and a 12 year old. I wouldn't be too sorry for the kids of that "old fart". They have several things going for them... they have their father's genes, their father loved them while he was there, their father had a whole host of friends who will no doubt keep an eye on them, they still have their mother, and their father was worth a great deal of money. All of those things are more than a lot of kids have.
Yeah, but you arent pushing 80 either. You will also (hopefully) be around for the majority of your kids lives. When you are 77, you know your days are numbered, and I dont care how great of shape you stay in, your ass is breaking down big time. The only game of catch that he would have with his kids that is having them go get the tennis balls for his walker. I also bet if you asked those kids if they would rather have the money or their father, they would choose their father.
His wealth was the last thing I mentioned and the least important. Of course children would rather have their father. I wish I still had mine. He didn't die of old age and neither did Tony Randall.
He was 84 years old. How can you say he didnt die of old age? When you are 84, do you expect to live very much longer? At best you have less than 20 years, and that is pushing it. My dad died at age 50. Now that isnt dying from old age. I would pretty much give up everything I have for another 5 minutes with the old b*stard.
I hate to hijack a thread which is a tribute to an excellent actor (I do community theater myself, and have a lot of respect for Mr. Randall). I just fail to see how Tony Randall having kids at his advanced age was in any way irresponsible. His wife is certainly a young enough woman, and while you are right that money is no subsitute for love, the widow Randall's means will insulate the children from the poverty that so often afflicts single parent households, and I am sure that there is at least a servant or two to help Mrs. Randall avoid exhaustion. Remember that Tony married his first wife very young and was with her better than 5 decades, consider that perhaps she might have been unable to bear children. I'm sure Tony and his wife, were well aware that he might not live to see his children graduate high school (all though it certainly wasn't out of the realm of possibility) and I am sure, after a suitable period of mourning, Mrs. Randall will marry again. My own father had been out of my life for a couple years by the time I was 7....I think I would have been happier having had the last years of a great man, than some of the 20's and 30's of a putz who didn't care about his children. Rest In Peace Tony Randall.
How horrible for his kids......I question his judgement for having children so late in life. But R.I.P. T-R. DD
When I was a kid, my family saw Randall and Klugman (?) in The Odd Couple at The Alley Theatre (?) RIP, Felix...
Exactly, his wife is young and can push out a kid. Basically she pimped her womb for a ton of money. There is no way a woman can be attracted to an old man like that. Adam Sandler said it best in Big Daddy, "Hey, you just made the biggest mistake of your life, baby. I know you're gonna be missing me when ya got that big, white, wrinkly body on top of ya, with his loose skin and...old balls! Gross!" It is ALWAYS purely about the money.
