That Wonderful What's-His-Name

Playwright Neil Simon (Barefoot in the Park)-- at a cocktail party two years ago when he spotted just the guy he had been looking for. He walked over and announced: "You're gonna be in my next play." "Who are you? replied Walter Matthau. Coming from Matthau, those were brave words. Usually it's the other way round.

No one knows Walter Matthau. Oh, the name (properly pronounced,

Math-ow) may sound familiar, but, despite 21 movies, 21 Broadway plays and 158 TV shows, it is mostly just something dimly recalled from the grey of the co-credits. But no more. Because Playwright Neil Simon knew him, ad mired his work, and wrote the role specifically for him, Matthau, 44 is now starring in Broadway's new smash comedy The Odd Couple (TIME, March 19) and he is so belly achingly funny as a loutish sportswriter that no one will ever forget him again.

Sardonic or Phrase-Chomping. On second thought, they probably will. Its just that they shouldn't. "The problem," as Matthau accurately puts it, "is that I'm too good." Each of his character creations has a fine-tuned completeness that leaves no room for Matthau the personality to peek through. A gimmick a trademark, an image, Matthau does not have: "People either ask me, 'Are you a television actor? or else, 'Are you from Erie, Pa.?' " Playwright Simon says Matthau is "the greatest instinctive actor I ve ever seen " He has turned in impeccable, widely varied performances as a sardonic sheriff in Lonely Are the Brave, a show-stopping jealous Hungarian husband in Goodbye Charlie, the heavy in Charade, and a phrase-chomping gangster in Who's Got the Action, and he picked up a 1962 Tony Award as Broadwav's best supporting actor his haughty portrayal of a French aristokrat in A Shot in the Dark But until Odd Couple, the lead role had always escaped him. Instead, he has done everything else, maybe as Matthau says, "because I don't look like an actor. I could be anyone from a toilet attendant to a business executive."

After 15 Lbs. In 1946 the born-and-bred New Yorker chose acting as the easiest thing to do on the G.I. Bill sides the Dramatic Workshop was then near Madison Square Garden, and "I didn't want to miss too many events." At the moment, having lost bringing in Odd Couple, Matthau considers acting "the hardest job known to mankind," and he works and worries his craft to unusual perfection.

But in the Odd Couple part of the tough, sprawling sportswriter, Matthau for once has a role that, without strain fits him like an old pair of pants. In fact he wears a pair of his own on stage, marvelously purple dungarees that cost him 12-c- in Chinatown. Like Oscar in the play, Matthau is a natural-born lounger, poker fan and sports butt.

He is just the sort who would spray beer as he opened a can, and when he die it onstage one night accidentally, it was quickly incorporated into the play.

When he felt that one of the lines for Art Carney, who plays opposite him, was out of character and in bad taste, he kept dinning away at Simon, finally, while the show was on the road, wrote a letter (signed with a pseudonym) to get it taken out.

Not that Matthau always gets his way One of his ideas is to exchange roles, play the part of the puttering fusspot husband "because it would more of a challenge," and let Carney roar throuah the role of Oscar. But with a hit it might be dangerous to switch.

Matthau has by now become the perfect Oscar, and besides it would only start the trouble all over again: Who was that wonderful what's-his-name who was on first?

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