In The Kingdom Of The Blind …
Back in the seventies, my grandad used to love watching Columbo. He loved the way he missed nothing and always managed to get the suspect to tie themselves in knots. “He’s a clever one, that Columbo”, he told me. Of course, my grandad had never heard of Peter Falk. Columbo was real to him and, in a way, he was right to think so.
Typecasting is a common fear among TV actors – although, of course, it’s something they all secretly pray for – but there are few who have deserved it and embraced it as much as Falk. William Link and Richard Levinson may have created Columbo, but Falk owned him.
It was not inevitably so. Falk wasn’t even the first person to play him. The character first appeared in the person of one Bert Freed as part of a 1960 TV show called The Chevy Mystery Show,...
Back in the seventies, my grandad used to love watching Columbo. He loved the way he missed nothing and always managed to get the suspect to tie themselves in knots. “He’s a clever one, that Columbo”, he told me. Of course, my grandad had never heard of Peter Falk. Columbo was real to him and, in a way, he was right to think so.
Typecasting is a common fear among TV actors – although, of course, it’s something they all secretly pray for – but there are few who have deserved it and embraced it as much as Falk. William Link and Richard Levinson may have created Columbo, but Falk owned him.
It was not inevitably so. Falk wasn’t even the first person to play him. The character first appeared in the person of one Bert Freed as part of a 1960 TV show called The Chevy Mystery Show,...
- 6/25/2011
- by John Ashbrook
- Obsessed with Film
Robert Culp was a popular leading actor best known for his work in television. He starred as Kelly Robinson in the popular espionage series I Spy with Bill Cosby from 1965 to 1968, earning three Emmy Award nominations for his acting on the series and one for scripting an episode. He later starred as government agent Bill Maxwell in the super-hero adventure series The Greatest American Hero with William Katt from 1981 to 1983.
Culp was born in Oakland, California, on August 16, 1930, and began his career on stage in New York City in the early 1950s. He was soon appearing frequently on television, and starred as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman in the western series Trackdown from 1957 to 1959. He was also seen in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Chevy Mystery Show, the 1960 Shirley Temple’s Storybook production of The House of the Seven Gables, several episodes of the science fiction anthology The Outer Limits...
Culp was born in Oakland, California, on August 16, 1930, and began his career on stage in New York City in the early 1950s. He was soon appearing frequently on television, and starred as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman in the western series Trackdown from 1957 to 1959. He was also seen in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Chevy Mystery Show, the 1960 Shirley Temple’s Storybook production of The House of the Seven Gables, several episodes of the science fiction anthology The Outer Limits...
- 4/7/2010
- by Jesse
- FamousMonsters of Filmland
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