Columbo Actor Peter Falk Dies Aged 83

Peter Falk, the gravel-voiced actor who became an enduring television icon portraying Lt. Columbo, the rumpled raincoat-wearing Los Angeles police homicide detective who always had "just one more thing" to ask a suspect, died Thursday. He was 83.

Falk, who reportedly suffered from dementia, died at his home in Beverly Hills, according to a statement from family spokesman Larry Larson.

In a more than 50-year acting career that spanned Broadway, movies and television, Falk appeared in more than 50 feature films, including "A Woman Under the Influence," "Husbands," "Luv," "Mikey and Nicky," "The In-Laws," "Wings of Desire," "The Great Race," "The Cheap Detective," "Cookie" and "The Princess Bride."

He leaves a wife, Shera, and daughters Catherine and Jackie from a previous marriage.

In 1962, Falk won his first of five Emmys by playing a truck driver who befriends a lonely, pregnant girl in "The Price of Tomatoes," a segment of "The Dick Powell Show."

A decade later, he received raves on Broadway as the frazzled New York advertising account executive in Neil Simon's hit comedy "The Prisoner of Second Avenue."

But nothing Falk did came close to matching the acclaim and popularity he found playing the title role in "Columbo," the crime-drama for which he won four of his Emmys.

Launched with two TV-movies starring Falk — "Prescription: Murder" in 1968 and "Ransom for a Dead Man" in 1971 — "Columbo" began in the fall of 1971 as one of three 90-minute shows on the "NBC Sunday Mystery Movie," alternating with "McMillan and Wife," starring Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James, and "McCloud," starring Dennis Weaver.

"Columbo," however, became the stand-out show. "There isn't a detective on television who can touch him, either in style or ratings," one critic wrote of Falk.

The format of the series, created by Richard Levinson and William Link, inverted the classic detective formula: The TV audience already knew whodunit when Columbo arrived on the scene of the crime. The enjoyment for viewers was in seeing how Columbo doggedly pieced the clues together. As he said in one episode, "I have this bug about tying up loose ends."

Columbo, who was never given a first name, became one of the most memorable TV characters in television history — ranked No. 7 in TV Guide's 1999 list of "TV's Fifty Greatest Characters Ever."

With his tousled dark-brown hair, a cheap cigar wedged between his fingers and his lived-in tan raincoat, the endearingly likable lieutenant was as unprepossessing as the faded old Peugeot he drove.

Indeed, when Columbo brought up the subject of men's clothing and male vanity in one early episode, guest star Suzanne Pleshette, as the segment title's "Witness to a Murder," pointedly looked at the disheveled detective and remarked: "Some men, Lieutenant, do not want to look like an unmade bed."

The show often made light of Columbo's lack of fashion sense. Taking note of the detective's tatty attire, a suspect once asked him, "Are you undercover?" Replied Columbo, "No, underpaid."

In another episode, a nun at a soup kitchen where Columbo was interviewing a witness took one look at his worn raincoat, mistook him as a vagrant and insisted on finding him a better coat in the shelter's used-clothing collection.