Sketch o’the Week: The Odd Couple!

As promised (or threatened depending on your perspective) we are moving on to caricature sketches of classic 1970’s sitcom stars, starting with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman of “The Odd Couple”.

I meant to mention with last week’s “Gilligan’s Island” sketch the timeless question that fans of that show have been asking themselves for decades…

“Mary Ann or Ginger?”

Well the Odd Couple has a similar conundrum…

“Tony Randall/Jack Klugman or Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau?”

Okay… not exactly the same connotations but the point is those are two distinct camps when it comes to fans of Felix and Oscar. Randall and Klugman played the duo in the long running TV series, and Lemmon and Matthau played them in the 1968 film. Both pairs were terrific, IMO. 

Then there was Art Carney and Matthau, who played Felix and Oscar in the original Neil Simon Broadway play. Lemmon took over for Carney for the film, but Matthau left the Broadway production to do the movie and was replaced by… Jack Klugman.

My parents loved “The Odd Couple” so I saw a fair number of episodes while peeking around the corner of our living room, and later in syndication. Great show.