Odd Couple of things

My sister's son and his wife were recently transferred from PA to South Carolina, and they leave this weekend.  The job is good, so it isn't all bad.  Naturally my sister will miss them dearly, but she will be able to visit and they will also come back here for visits, so they will see each other monthly (more or less).  That got me thinking about a line in the classic 1968 comedy, The Odd Couple.

In that movie, Jack Lemmon, as Felix Unger, was entertaining the Coo-Coo Pigeon sisters.  He was telling them about his marriage break up and his children.  He mentions how much he will miss them...but he will get to see them every weekend, and for a month in the summer, and take them to school every day, and pick them up, etc.  One of the sisters says, "Well, when is it that you will miss them?"

That was Monica Evans as Cecily Pigeon.  Evans was the only person in The Odd Couple to play in the Broadway production, the movie and the TV show.  She did a few other roles in voice overs and on TV, but she was only in two other movies.  A look at the Internet Broadway Database shows that she was only in two plays.  (Disclaimer: I can't say that the Internet Movie or Broadway Databases are accurate and up to date, but they are still good resources.)

The waitress was played by Iris Adrian, an actress who appeared in close to 160 roles.  She worked with Jerry Lewis, the Marx Brothers, Elvis Presley and many others in quite a career from 1928 to 1986.  Just think of someone named Sugar or Honey.

I mentioned Bill Baldwin in my Rocky post a few days ago.  He was in The Odd Couple as one of the sports announcers.  Type casting again.

My favorite characters in The Odd Couple were the card playing friends, played by Herb Edelman, John Fiedler, David Sheiner, and Larry Haines.  All of them can be seen in many other films and on TV, although none were big stars.  Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau were the stars here, and they surrounded themselves with bit actors and actresses who made this a classic that will be enjoyed forever.