Peter Falk dead: Columbo star dies aged 83

Peter Falk, 83, who created one of TV's greatest detectives, died Thursday at his home in Beverly Hills. He had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for several years. A family representative said he died in his sleep.

Mr. Falk won four Emmys for the title role in Columbo, which was one of three rotating NBC Sunday mystery movies from 1971 to '77. Eleven years after it ended, he reprised the role with new films for ABC.

They may never have heard Lt. Columbo's first name, but fans around the world thought of him as a friend. In his rumpled raincoat and baggy brown suit, he spoke in a voice that no cough-drop manufacturer would ever sponsor, inspiring the contempt of all the villains he encountered.

Every rich and snotty one of them thought the squinting and shambling Columbo was a boob, and spent almost all of each episode putting him down - until he snapped on the cuffs just in time for the closing credits.

Mr. Falk appeared in nearly 50 feature films and worked on the stage. But for millions of viewers, he will always be Columbo, driving a wheezing 1959 Peugeot, lighting a cheap cigar, and interrupting his exit from a mansion to rattle a suspect with, "Oh, just one more thing."

Sometime afterwards Columbia Studios chief Harry Cohn is said to have rejected him for a part declaring: “For the same money, I can get an actor with two eyes!”

But it was for his role as Columbo in the 70s that Falk will be best remembered. In the end, sadly, he did not even remember the cult show that made him a household name.

He won four Emmys and a Golden Globe as the persistent Los Angleles lieutenant whose catchphrase whenever he turned to go was, “Just one more thing...”

The popular whodunit-style drama has been shown for more than 30 years in 40 countries – with possibly a record number of repeats.

Mirror film reviewer David Edwards last night described Columbo as “the 20th Century’s most memorable TV detective”.

And British comedian Steve Furst tweeted: “I hope Peter Falk walked to death’s door and turned round to say, ‘Oh, just one more thing...’ ”

Falk leaves his actress wife Shera Danese, 61, and daughters Catherine and Jackie, who he adopted with his first wife, Alyce Mayo.

Peter Falk as Columbo

Although Falk appeared in numerous other television roles in the 1960s and 1970s, he is best known as the star of the TV series Columbo, "everyone's favorite rumpled television detective", writes historian David Fantle. His character was a shabby and ostensibly absent-minded police detective lieutenant, who had first appeared in the 1968 film Prescription: Murder. Falk described his role to Fantle:

"Columbo has a genuine mistiness about him. It seems to hang in the air and he's capable of being distracted. . . . Columbo is an ass-backwards Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had a long neck, Columbo has no neck; Holmes smoked a pipe, Columbo chews up six cigars a day.":216

Television critic Ben Falk adds that Falk "created an iconic cop . . . who always got his man (or woman) after a tortuous cat-and-mouse investigation." He notes also that the idea for the character was "apparently inspired by Dostoyevsky's dogged police inspector, Porfiry Petrovich, in the novel Crime and Punishment.

Falk tries to analyze the character and notes the correlation between his own personality and Columbo's:

"I'm a Virgo Jew, and that means I have an obsessive thoroughness. It's not enough to get most of the details, it's necessary to get them all. I've been accused of perfectionism. When Lew Wasserman (head of Universal Studios) said that Falk is a perfectionist, I don't know whether it was out of affection or because he felt I was a monumental pain in the ass.":216

With "general amazement", Falk notes that "the show is all over the world". He added, "I've been to little villages in Africa with maybe one TV set, and little kids will run up to me shouting, 'Columbo, Columbo!'" Singer Johnny Cash recalled acting in one episode, and although he was not an experienced actor, he writes in his autobiography, "Peter Falk was good to me. I wasn't at all confident about handling a dramatic role, and every day he helped me in all kinds of little ways."

The debut episode in 1971 was directed by 25-year-old Steven Spielberg in one of his earliest directing roles. Falk recalled the episode to Spielberg biographer Joseph McBride:

"Let's face it, we had some good fortune at the beginning. Our debut episode, in 1971, was directed by this young kid named Steven Spielberg. I told the producers, Link and Levinson, This guy is too good for Columbo. . . . Steven was shooting me with a long lens from across the street. That wasn't common twenty years ago. The comfort level it gave me as an actor, besides its great look artistically—well, it told you that this wasn't any ordinary director."

The character of Columbo had previously been played by Bert Freed in a single TV episode and by Thomas Mitchell on Broadway. Falk first played Columbo in Prescription: Murder, a 1968 TV-movie, and from 1971 to 1978 Columbo aired regularly on NBC as part of the umbrella series NBC Mystery Movie. All episodes were of TV-movie length, in a 90 or 120 minutes slot including commercials. The show returned on ABC in the form of a less frequent series of TV-movies, still starring Falk, from 1989 until 2003.