Peter Falk, TV’s ’Columbo’; excelled in stage, film roles

WASHINGTON — Peter Falk, the raspy-voiced actor who won four Emmy Awards as the deceptively rumpled homicide detective Lieutenant Columbo, a character he played on television for more than 30 years, died Thursday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., according to a family statement. He was 83 and had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Starting with a 1968 made-for-television movie, Columbo became the role that cemented Mr. Falk’s place in popular culture and tended to overshadow his powerful dramatic portrayals and skillful comic work in film for directors including Frank Capra and John Cassavetes.

Few actors were as linked to one role for as long as Mr. Falk, whose cockeyed glare from a glass right eye and slightly disheveled appearance hid the compelling dramatic intelligence he brought to the part.

“Columbo’’ ran on NBC for most of the 1970s, and ABC revived the franchise for nearly two dozen television specials, the last of which aired in 2003.

Mr. Falk did not originate the role of Lieutenant Columbo of the Los Angeles police. Bert Freed first played Columbo in a 1960 teleplay. Nor was Mr. Falk the front-runner for the part when NBC wanted to revive the character in 1968 for a made-for-television movie, “Prescription: Murder.’’ The network had hoped to cast entertainer Bing Crosby for that program.

“An agent called and said that Crosby was scheduled to play golf and couldn’t turn it down to go over and talk’’ to the show’s creators, Mr. Falk told The Washington Post in 1990.

“He did love golf,’’ Mr. Falk said. “I play, too, but I went over and talked to them.’’

“Columbo’’ creators Richard Levinson and William Link modeled the detective after the crazy-like-a-fox sleuth in the French classic “Les Diaboliques’’ (1955).

Mr. Falk made the role his own in many ways. In addition to choosing the homicide detective’s car, a beat-up Peugeot, Mr. Falk plucked a raincoat from his closet as a prop device. Other running gags were based on things the audience never saw: Columbo’s first name (Mr. Falk joked that it was “Lieutenant’’) and his wife.

To catch suspects off guard, Columbo would often fish a shopping list out of his trench coat instead of a crucial piece of evidence.

He could procure an inadvertent confession by prefacing his question with a seemingly harmless, “Just one more thing.’’ The actor named his 2006 memoir after that catchphrase.

Mr. Falk took a circuitous route to acting, having been a merchant marine cook and government efficiency expert before rising to prominence as a stage actor in the mid-1950s.

He won his first Emmy as a kindhearted truck driver who picks up a pregnant hitchhiker in “The Price of Tomatoes’’ (1962), part of “The Dick Powell Show’’ anthology series.