(3 of 3)
Matthau was a wildly enthusiastic gambler, but he is hedging the action a little since the heart attack. Lemmon remembers that "if you couldn't find Walter on the set you looked in the phone booth. He'd be placing a bet." He still visits the track for some immodest but not extravagant betting (he is part owner of nine race horses), and limits himself to an occasional game of cards. It is a high limit, however; he recently took $1,300 from Polly Bergen in a single hand of poker. To keep in decent shape, he runs five miles a day on the beach near his home in Pacific Palisades. Under the watchful eye of his wife Carol, he keeps his weight at about 180, munching on fruit and raw vegetables. He no longer smokes; friends say they have seen him walk up to strangers and deliver a lengthy and vehement antismoking lecture. Now he jokes about the heart attack, telling shaggy thrombosis stories which find him experiencing the first stabbing pain, snapping his fingers fatalistically and saying, "Shucks, it's a little coronary."
Attila the Hun. He professes to have more serious concerns. Elaine May, for one. "Have you ever worked for Attila the Hun?" he asks with feigned hurt. "Martin Bormann? Rudolf Hess? A New Leaf was two months late, two million bucks over budget, and when Paramount asked her why, she said 'It's all on account of Matthau. He keeps trying to grab me, and by the time he finally succeeds it's 4 o'clock and too late to do any work.' Now I'll admit I was certainly interested in grabbing Elaine, but making that the reason for the picture going so far over..."
Then there are the critics, a few of whom have experienced something less than rapture over a few recent Matthau performances. He retaliates with indignant but anonymous letters, condemning their shabby prose and shopworn aesthetics. When one critic dismissed him as "a good beer and undershirt comedian," Matthau fired off a reply saying "that's like calling Albert Einstein a good pinochle player."
Ultimate Luxury. Playwrights are not immune from the Matthau missives. When Neil Simon declined to change a line in The Odd Couple about doubleheaders that particularly bothered Matthau, the actor took to his typewriter and sent Simon a letter, signing it with the phony name of a "professor" at the University of Berlin. The letter took pedantic but persuasive exception to the line that had bugged Matthau. Impressed, Simon cut it out.
Matthau also allows himself a hint of self-mockery, the ultimate luxury of the secure man. He even pretends to be worried about work. "I figure I can go for a year and a half without a job, then I hit the unemployment line and it's all over," he says. In fact, he has just rejected one offer at his usual fee because he does not like the script and is haggling over a second assignment. "Let's face it, I really like all this money," he says. "It looks like I've been moving toward it all my life." ∙Stefan Kanfer