2003 HONOREE - TONY RANDALL
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at the 2003 Festival
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Tony Randall was born on Feburary 26, 1920 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He studied
drama at Northwestern, then took further acting training at New York City's
Neighborhood Playhouse. He also found time to squeeze in modern dance lessons
with Martha Graham. Before he was 22, Randall had shared the stage with the
likes of Ethel Barrymore and Katherine Cornell. Randall put in time as a radio
actor, notably in the role of Reggie on the adventure serial I Love a Mystery.
Randall's encyclopedic knowledge of radio trivia, indeed, of every kind of
trivia, was one of the reasons that he was a much sought-after guest on TV game
shows. His Broadway starring appearances in the 1950s included the lead in Oh,
Captain, a musical version of the Alec Guinness film The Captain's Paradise, and
Mencken-like journalist E.K. Hornbeck in Inherit the Wind.
Active in several liberal and humanitarian causes, Randall was never afraid of
putting his career on the line to espouse his opinions: after delivering an
anti-Vietnam broadside on TV in the late '60s, Randall was yanked from his
weekly appearances as an expert on Opera Quiz, an intermission feature on the
Texaco Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. Many movie and TV fans will most remember
Tony Randall for roles in such cult classics as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
(1957), The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), as well as his star turn as Felix Unger
in the long running Odd Couple series. But his status is much broader than that
of a character player - he remains one of the few performers to gracefully build
a legacy for himself in the three "actor's mediums": film, TV, and most of all -
stage - where he became a consummate master of George Bernard Shaw and William
Shakespeare. His reputation will thus linger in the entertainment world for
decades, as a standard by which new generations of comic actors are judged. As a
long time vacationer to Fire Island throughout his illustrious career, it became
our honor in 2004, to award Tony Randall the first lifetime achievement award at
the Golden Wagon Film Festival. The award was then named in his honor the
following year, the Tony Randall Lifetime Achievement Award, when honoring actor
Harvey Keitel.
Website Cited: starpulse.com,
imdb.com