Tony Randall, the sardonic actor with the commanding voice and precise diction whose career in light-comic parts in Hollywood and on the New York stage seemed the perfect preparation for his signature role as the fussbudget Felix Unger in the classic television series ”The Odd Couple,” died on Monday in Manhattan. He resided in Manhattan and was 84 years old.
Mr. Randall passed away peacefully at New York University Medical Centre, with his wife, Heather, by his side, according to Joe Trentacosta, who works for Springer Associates, the publicity business that Mr. Randall used. As stated by Mr. Trentacosta, Mr. Randall had been admitted to the hospital since December, when he had undergone a triple heart bypass and subsequently developed pneumonia. As a mark of respect, Broadway theatres turned off their lights at eight o’clock last night.
This was something that Mr. Randall did on numerous occasions on public broadcasting and during intermission programmes of Saturday broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. He felt at home in the works of Shakespeare and Shaw, as well as in elaborating on the qualities of Verdi and other operatic composers. Nevertheless, he was most well-known for his comedic performances, for which the audience was prepared to receive him with open arms, even when the material was weak. According to an article that was published in The New York Times in 1976, John Leonard, Mr Randall went into sitcoms “as if into a warm bath, to play with the rubber ducks the writers have provided.
This was because he had so many bubbly parts in films and on television. Dignity is the wash rag that he uses. The fact that he is so skilled makes it impossible to blame him for showing even a trace of disdain or even contempt for many of the lines he has been forced to deliver and the situations that he has been forced to suffer.
There has never been any indication of this kind. He manages to “civilise” the material in some way. Mr. Randall, who is slick and urbane, said that he had been pleased to play Felix Unger, whose roommate and temperamental opposite was Oscar Madison, who was played by Jack Klugman.
Oscar Madison was a slovenly, unkempt, cigar-smoking sportswriter. Mr. Randall’s rich baritone served as the vehicle for the clipped diction of the demanding elocution professor that he easily could have been.
The hardships of life, much of which consisted of rejection by their wives, brought these two New Yorkers together, and they made the best of the situation in a series that aired from 1970 to 1975 and continued in reruns after that length of time.
