Reel Classics: The Odd Couple

Oscar Madison is a New York sports­writer who is divorced from his wife and lives alone in an apart­ment build­ing.  On Friday nights he has his pok­er-play­ing bud­dies over for a night of cards and cama­raderie, and a mem­ber of this group is Felix Ungar.  One night Felix shows up late and is depressed and con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide as he has learned that his wife is leav­ing him.  Oscar, out of con­cern for his friend, offers to let him move in with him. 

Unfortunately, Felix and Oscar are com­plete and total oppo­sites in per­son­al­i­ty.  They soon learn that they are not suit­ed to be room­mates.  Oscar is out-going, loves to go out and have fun and is a bit of a slob.  Felix is shy, wants to stay at home and is an obses­sive-com­pul­sive neat freak.  Felix is con­stant­ly clean­ing the apart­ment and com­plain­ing about Oscar’s slop­pi­ness.  Needless to say, they begin to quick­ly get under each oth­er’s skin, and are indeed The Odd Couple.

The Odd Couple was based on a very pop­u­lar Neil Simon play of the same name.  When the deci­sion was made to bring the play to film, Neil Simon was hired to write the screen­play.  The film stars Jack Lemmon as Felix Ungar and Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison.  A cou­ple of oth­er famil­iar faces you may rec­og­nize are the pok­er bud­dies Murray (Herb Edelman) and Vinnie (John Fiedler).  Two oth­er impor­tant char­ac­ters in the film are the Pigeon sis­ters, Cecily (Monica Evans) and Gwendolyn (Carole Shelley).  They also have an apart­ment in the build­ing where Oscar dwells. 

The crux of the sto­ry is how dif­fer­ent Oscar and Felix are from one anoth­er, but also how they both care about each oth­er.  Oscar attempts to get Felix’s mind off of the break­down of his mar­riage by invit­ing the two English sis­ters to the apart­ment for din­ner and drinks—a dou­ble date.  Needless to say, the evening does not go the way that Oscar had planned.  Tension con­tin­ues to build between the two unlike­ly room­mates.  But this is a com­e­dy, so the inter­ac­tions are hilar­i­ous.  And the ties that bind a friend­ship are exhib­it­ed between the two. 

The Odd Couple ini­tial­ly appeared on Broadway in 1965 and starred Art Carney as Felix and Walter Matthau as Oscar.  It ran for 966 per­for­mances and was nom­i­nat­ed for a Tony Award for Best Play in 1965.  Walter Matthau won the Tony for Best Actor in 1965.  Reportedly Neil Simon came up with the idea for the sto­ry line after his friend Mel Brooks moved in with a friend after his divorce. 

When cast­ing for the film roles sev­er­al actors were con­sid­ered.  Those con­sid­ered for the role of Felix includ­ed Frank Sinatra, Dick Van Dyke, and Tony Randall (who lat­er played the role of Felix in the TV series.) For the role of Oscar, Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney, and Jack Klugman (who played Oscar in the TV series) were considered.

Though the play was set in the apart­ment, the film uti­lized shots in New York. One scene includ­ed a seg­ment from a New York Mets base­ball game.  The staged seg­ment was filmed before the actu­al game with the Mets and Pittsburgh Pirates.  We see the Pirates bat­ter, Bill Mazeroski, hit into a triple play.

As men­tioned, the core of the film and the com­e­dy is the inter­play between Felix and Oscar.  They con­tin­ue to become more and more upset as they learn just how dif­fer­ent their per­son­al­i­ties are.  One exam­ple of this is a quote from Oscar, who has grown tired of Felix’s lit­tle notes to him.  Oscar: “I can’t take it any­more, Felix, I’m crack­ing up.  Everything you do irri­tates me.  And when you’re not here, the things I know you’re gonna do when you come in irri­tate me.  You leave lit­tle notes on my pil­low.  Told you 158 times I can’t stand lit­tle notes on my pil­low. ‘We’re all out of corn­flakes.  F.U.’  Took me three hours to fig­ure out F.U. was Felix Ungar!”

The movie was released in 1968 to both pop­u­lar and crit­i­cal acclaim.  It grossed over $44 mil­lion the year it was released and was the third high­est gross­ing film in the United States in 1968.  When it opened at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in May of 1968 it ran for a record-break­ing 14 weeks.  Variety called The Odd Couple an “excel­lent film” and the “team­ing of Lemmon and Matthau has pro­vid­ed each with an out­stand­ing com­e­dy partner.” 

The crit­ic with the Los Angeles Times wrote “My not very fear­less fore­cast is that The Odd Couple will cause more peo­ple to do more laugh­ing than any film you are like­ly to see all year.” Roger Ebert praised the per­for­mances as “uni­ver­sal­ly good.”  Judith Crist of the New York Magazine wrote “The Odd Couple, one of the very best come­dies to have emanat­ed from Broadway in recent years, arrived on screen not only intact but actu­al­ly enhanced by the transition.” 

Liam Sullivan wrote, “What I real­ly like about this movie is that it allows men to break from macho stereo­types and actu­al­ly show feel­ings.  Both men dis­cuss their sad­ness of sep­a­ra­tion from their fam­i­lies.  Felix admits that he knows that his neat freak ten­den­cies come from deep­er prob­lems, and they even express affec­tion for one anoth­er despite dri­ving each oth­er crazy.” 

The score from the film was com­posed by Neal Hefti.  The instru­men­tal jazz theme was also used in the sequel released in 1998 and in the 1970 TV series.  It was nom­i­nat­ed for a Grammy Award in 1969 for Best Original Score. 

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of the movie led to sev­er­al film remakes, sequels and TV shows.  The most pop­u­lar and well-known rein­car­na­tion is prob­a­bly the TV series that appeared in 1970 with Tony Randall as Felix and Jack Klugman as Oscar.  That series ran until 1975. Randall and Klugman revived the char­ac­ters in 1993 in a made for TV movie The Odd Couple:  Together Again.  There was a short-lived remake of the TV series in 1982 enti­tled The New Odd Couple with an African-American cast. 

In 1998 Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau reprised their roles in a sequel enti­tled The Odd Couple II.  And, in 2015, the series was res­ur­rect­ed on TV star­ring the late Matthew Perry (of Friends fame.) 

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates The Odd Couple at 7.6 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes has a crit­ic’s score of 98% and an audi­ence score of 89%.  Unfortunately, I was not able to find The Odd Couple on any free stream­ing sites, and the Clark County Public Library does not have a copy on the shelves. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.” I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page.