When was walter matthau born

Share this page:. The Rise of Will Smith. Around The Web Provided by Taboola. Create a list ». Mel Brooks and Neil Simon Collaborators. My Favorit Actors and Actresses. See all related lists ». Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDb page. Find out more at IMDbPro ». How Much Have You Seen? How much of Walter Matthau's work have you seen? Won 1 Oscar.

See more awards ». Known For. The Odd Couple Oscar Madison. Charley Varrick Charley Varrick. The Fortune Cookie Willie Gingrich. Show all Hide all Show by Hide Show Actor credits. Albert Einstein. Video short Narrator voice. Charley Nichols. Julian Winston. Horace Vandergelder. John Slaton - Andrew Johnson Andrew Johnson.

Slaton John Slaton. Franklin Gaer. Aram Rodesko. Tony Maruzella. Harley Downing. Martin Pitt. Show all 8 episodes. Tom Gregory. Charles Thatcher. Max Lewine. Peter Kanopolis. Tony Gagouts. Tom Dutton. He was 79 years old. Walter's father was a poor Jewish peddler in Kiev, Russia, who went to America in He saw little of his father who spent little time at home. His mother Rose was a seamstress who worked on ladies underwear.

The family were frequently evicted for non payment of rent.. One day when he was in junior high school he fought with a boy called Rocco Barbella, broke his nose and beat him. Walter was just over 6 foot by the age of 15 The first money he earned was by selling soda pop and ice cream in Jewish theatres.. Soon he got walk on jobs for 50 cents a night , After graduating from Seward Park High School he got various jobs chopping down trees in Montana, dipping picture frames in gold plating solution then enlisting in WWI in the Air Corps as a radio cryptographer in a European heavy bomber division in Europe.

After the war he studied under the G. He made his film debut in in ;The Kentuckian' which he said was terrible. They each have a son and daughter by previous marriages. He has an older brother, Henry, who lives in New York. Sign In. Edit Walter Matthau. Showing all 74 items. Frequently worked with Jack Lemmon.

Brought to the St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California by ambulance from his home on the late evening of June 30, after suffering a heart attack and was pronounced dead shortly afterward at a. People were never sure if he was joking or saying things seriously, either on-screen or off-screen. He once claimed that his father was an Orthodox priest in Czarist Russia, who was removed after he claimed that the Pope was infallible.

Once claimed that his wife's name was Carol Wellington-Smythe Marcus, just to give it a more "aristocratic" sound. When he inscribed himself formally to the U. Social Security in , he included "Foghorn" as his middle name. He never changed it. After filming Grumpy Old Men in in freezing weather in Minnesota, he was hospitalized for double pneumonia.

Reports are that he made up "Matuschanskayasky" as a joke and that his real "real" name is Matthow. The existence of Michelle Matthow would seem to confirm this According to son Charles Matthau , Walter's real name was Walter Matthow, but he changed it to Walter Matuschanskayasky to sound more exotic.

Was passionate about classical music and often sang pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on the set. Father, with Carol Grace , of son Charles Matthau. He made his first film appearance in in The Kentuckian, as a villain.

Through the rest of the s, he played bad guys and drunks in a variety of modest movies, including the Elvis Presley movie King Creole and a Western, Ride a Crooked Trail David Ansen described Matthau's physique in a Newsweek article. Fields and a bloodhound, poured into a stooped, 6-foot-3 frame. No Hollywood leading man has ever looked or sounded or shuffled like Walter Matthau: out of that craggy sourpuss face, with its seen-it-all eyes, came a growl of withering disdain that could stop any outburst of innocence in its tracks.

Matthau had a serious gambling habit. In the s, he owed several hundred thousand dollars in gambling debts. He fell in love with a fellow cast member, actress Carol Marcus, the former wife of the writer William Saroyan.

At the time, Matthau was married to Grace Johnson, whom he had wed in and with whom he had two children, David and Jenny. Matthau and Johnson divorced in He married Marcus in , and the two had one son, Charlie. In her book Among the Porcupines Carol Matthau wrote of her husband, "To the outside world, he is casual, a man's man, funny, rude.

He is the most tender, the most romantic, the most sensual. Carol Matthau co-starred with her husband in Gangster Story , which he directed and described as one of the worst movies ever made. He played a ship's doctor in Ensign Pulver , a professor in Fail-Safe , and a private detective in Mirage His part as the ambulance-chasing lawyer opposite his friend, actor Jack Lemmon, in The Fortune Cookie earned him his only Academy Award, for best supporting actor.

Matthau's true calling was comedy, although he disliked being labeled a comic actor. Describing his work habits, his wife noted, "I don't know of anyone who works that hard and yet seems never to work at all.

He insists on maintaining his relaxed manner when he is working, in order to make the rest of the players feel more comfortable. That, too, is acting. It is not Walter. Walter is not a relaxed man. That was the plutonium I needed. It all started happening after that. Besides comedic roles, Matthau could successfully play a romantic leading man, a bank-robber hero, or even a horse trainer.

Neil Simon praised him as "the greatest instinctive actor" he'd ever seen. Although he worked throughout the s, his films from this period were not memorable. The hit movie Grumpy Old Men in which he starred once again with Lemmon rejuvenated his career. Charlie Matthau, a filmmaker, directed his father in 's The Grass Harp.