| Net Worth: | $25 Million |
|---|---|
| Profession: | Professional Actor |
| Date of Birth: | February 26, 1920 |
| Country: | United States of America |
| Height: | 5′ 8″ |
About Tony Randall
Prior to attending the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, Randall spent a year as a student there at Northwestern University. Sanford Meisner and Martha Graham, a choreographer, were his teachers. At Worcester, Massachusetts’s WTAG radio station, Randall was an announcer. He co-starred as Anthony Randall in George Bernard Shaw’s Candida and Emlyn Williams’ The Corn Is Green alongside Jane Cowl and Ethel Barrymore.
Randall was chosen to play one of the brothers in Katharine Cornell’s revival of The Barretts of Wimpole Street’s touring production in 1946. Harvey Weskit, a history teacher, played Randall’s first significant television role in Mister Peepers (1952–1955).
Inherit the Wind (1955–57), starring Ed Begley and Paul Muni as newspaperman E. K. Hornbeck (based on real-life cynic H. L. Mencken), was Randall’s first significant performance in a Broadway smash.
As a result of his success in Inherit the Wind, Randall had several film offers and landed his first prominent role on a major motion picture in Oh, Men! Oh, Women! (1957) for 20th Century Fox. With Jayne Mansfield, this film helped 20th Century Fox launch Randall to prominence.
Debbie Reynolds and Randall co-starred in The Mating Game (1959) at MGM. He supported Doris Day and Rock Hudson in the popular movie Pillow Talk (1959); he would work with Day and Hudson again on two more occasions.
In 1964, he starred in The Brass Bottle, and alongside Hudson and Day, he made one final movie, Send Me No Flowers (1965). In the comedies Fluffy (1965), The Alphabet Murders (1965), Our Man in Marrakesh (1966), as a secret agent, and Hello Down There (1966), Randall portrayed Hercule Poirot (1969).
In The Odd Couple, opposite Jack Klugman, Randall made a comeback to television in 1970. His five-year stint as Felix Unger lasted until his death. The children of Felix on The Odd Couple were given the names Edna and Leonard, after Randall’s sister and Randall.
The Odd Couple Sings is an album by Randall and Klugman that was recorded for London Records in 1973. Additional vocals and musical accompaniment were given by Roland Shaw and the London Festival Orchestra and Chorus. Despite not being a chart-topper, the record is greatly prized by many Odd Couple fans.
Randall played a Philadelphia judge in The Tony Randall Show from 1976 to 1978. In the films Kate Bliss and the Ticker Tape Kid (1978), Scavenger Hunt (1979), and Foolin’ Around (1979), he played a minor role (1980).
Randall announced performers to the television audience as they entered the stage during curtain calls and provided brief summaries of scenes for a number of Metropolitan Opera video productions in the 1980s. Randall was an arts supporter. He hosted the New York Philharmonic Orchestra concerts in Central Park, New York City, during the summer of 1980.
He played the lead in the Disney television movies Sunday Drive (1986), Save the Dog! (1988), and The Man in the Brown Suit (1989). Randall was the host of HBO’s brief-lived premium channel Festival’s free preview, which ran from October 30 to November 2, 1987.
He occasionally appeared alongside Klugman in stage adaptations of The Odd Couple, including a run in London in 1996. Fatal Instinct (1994) and Down with Love were later roles. Randall’s final theatrical performances as an actor were in Right You Are (2002) and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (2001).
On September 4, 1955, Gena Rowlands and Randall and Klugman co-starred in the CBS anthology series Appointment with Adventure episode “The Pirate’s House.” From 1958 until 1967, Randall appeared as a panelist on What’s My Line?, Password, The Hollywood Squares, and the $10,000 and $20,000 Pyramids. In 1977, he mocked his haughty reputation by appearing as a “contestant” on The Gong Show.
Randall represented the National Actors Theatre on a celebrity episode of the quiz program Jeopardy! that aired on November 7, 1994. With a total of $9,900, he finished second behind General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. but ahead of the actress Stefanie Powers.
At the National Actors Theatre, where Randall was starring, on November 17, 1995, at the age of 75, he married Heather Harlan, a 25-year-old understudy from The School for Scandal, in a ceremony supervised by Rudy Giuliani.
They owned a holiday apartment in Key Biscayne, Florida, and lived in an apartment in Manhattan. Julia was born on April 11, 1997, and Jefferson was born on June 15, 1998. The pair was married till Randall passed away in May 2004.
On May 17, 2004, Randall passed away at NYU Medical Center in his sleep from pneumonia he had caught after undergoing coronary bypass surgery in December 2003.
