Arthur Leonard Rosenberg was born on Feb. 26, 1920 in Tulsa, OK to art and antiques dealer Mogscha Rosenberg and his wife Julia Finston. He also had a sister named Edna. Known as Leonard, the actor graduated from Tulsa Central High School, then enrolled in Northwestern University to major in speech and drama. After a year at Northwestern, Randall moved to New York City to continue his studies at Columbia University and the Neighborhood Playhouse with the renowned Sanford Meisner. He also spent time with other masters of movement and voice, including Martha Graham and Henri Jacobi, respectively.
After years of intensive training with the masters, Randall was ready for Broadway. He made his debut in 1941’s “A Circle of Chalk,” followed by critically praised performances in “The Corn is Green” with Ethel Barrymore and “Candida” with Jane Cowl. Randall was set to star in Elia Kazan’s “The Skin of Our Teeth,” although it was cut short because he was called to serve in the U.S. Army for World War II. The future Felix Unger served four years in the Signal Corps, until he was discharged as a Lieutenant. Randall did not waste any time after his discharge to return to acting. He moved back to New York City and, after a brief stint in Harry Morgan’s popular radio show, was ready to take on the theater world once again.
In 1958, Randall starred in the musical “Oh, Captain,” based on the Alec Guiness film “The Captain’s Paradise” (1953). He was hilarious in the lead role of a ferry captain who had a wife in every port, and although the musical was not a critical success, the actor received a Tony Award nomination for his performance. It was not long until television and film came knocking at Randall’s door. Both mediums became outlets to showcase his talents to a much wider audience than theater. In the early 1950s, the actor appeared in a role that largely foreshadowed Felix Unger, as overbearing Mr. Weskitt in the high school sitcom “Mr. Peepers” (NBC, 1952-55). His film career also flourished in the same decade, with a breakthrough performance in “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter,” a 1957 film opposite Jayne Mansfield, followed by a successful trio of romantic comedies alongside Doris Day and Rock Hudson, including “Pillow Talk” (1959), “Lover Come Back” (1961), and “Send Me No Flowers” (1964). Those films were considered sex farces – generating lines such as “It takes an early bird to take a worm like me” – and were eventually parodied in 2003’s Ewan McGregor/Renee Zellweger film, “Down With Love,” where Randall made a cameo – the final role of his long and illustrious career.
Perhaps no role suited Randall better than Felix Unger, the neurotic neat freak from “The Odd Couple” who clashed with his cigar-smoking slob of a roommate Oscar Madison, played by Jack Klugman. For five years, the duo entertained audiences with their witty lines and physical comedy, earning Randall his Emmy Award. Even though the theater and 1968 film version of “The Odd Couple” starred other actors – the hit film belonged to Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau – Randall still managed to make the character his own, even adding the comedic noises Felix would make during his sinus attacks, and also making his character love opera because he was a fan in real life. When Klugman was promoting his 2005 memoir, Tony and Me: A Story of Friendship, he said his co-star “was a person who liked to be in charge of things” and also that he “never made a promise to me that he didn’t keep.”
After “The Odd Couple” ended, Randall got his own show, simply titled “The Tony Randall Show” (1976-78), where he played Walter Franklin, a stuffy Philadelphia judge. The series first aired on ABC, then moved to CBS. Three years later, the actor was on the Peacock network, playing a single, middle-aged commercial artist in “Love, Sidney” (NBC, 1981-83). There was speculation that his character was gay, especially after it was implied in the show’s pilot “Sidney Shorr: A Girl’s Best Friend” (1981), but not specified. The series was unsuccessful and controversial, because it upset religious and conservative groups. He never starred in his own series again, instead appearing in variety shows like “The Sonny and Cher Show” (CBS, 1976-77) and “The Late Show with David Letterman,” where he sat on the guest chair a record 70 times. After his death in 2004, the talk show host named Randall one of his favorite guests, along with Regis Philbin.
The actor also had a number of notable film roles that demonstrated his versatility, with dramatic performances as an alcoholic car salesman in “No Down Payment” (1957) and an Agatha Christie detective in “The Alphabet Murders” (1965). Most impressive of all, however, was his challenging role in “7 Faces of Dr. Lao” (1964) where he played multiple mythical characters, including Pan, Merlin, Medusa, and the Abominable Snowman. Randall continued to entertain moviegoers as the operator of sex organs in Woody Allen’s 1972 film “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid To Ask,” and even did some voice work in animation, including “My Little Pony: The Movie” (1986) and science fiction, “Gremlins 2: The New Batch” (1990).
Randall was married to Florence Gibbs for 50 years, until cancer took her life in 1992. He remarried in 1995 to a much younger Heather Harlan and had two children, Julia Laurette and Jefferson Salvini. He was politically outspoken against Republicans and even joked that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be barred from his funeral. Political jokes aside, Randall was also an anti-smoking advocate, launched the National Actors Theater in 1991, and donated $1 million of his own money to the theater in order to preserve and ensure the place of classical theater in everyday life. That same year, Randall and Klugman reunited in Broadway for a black tie benefit performance of “The Odd Couple” – despite Klugman’s issues with his recent throat cancer – and once again in a 1993 TV movie version, “The Odd Couple: Together Again” with guest stars Penny Marshall, Jerry Adler, and Dick Van Patten. In fact, when Randall died on May 17, 2004 of pneumonia following heart surgery, Klugman – who seemed to always to expect his own death before Randall’s, based on his throat cancer issues – was beyond devastated. He would go on to pen the 2005 memoir, Tony and Me: A Story of Friendship.