Career
In 1954, Klugman played Jim Hanson on the soap opera The Greatest Gift. Also in 1954 Klugman made multiple appearances on the NBC legal drama Justice, starring Gary Merrill and Dane Clark, that was based on cases of the Legal Aid Society of New York.
On September 4, 1955, Klugman and Tony Randall appeared together with Gena Rowlands in the episode entitled "The Pirate's House" of the CBS anthology series, Appointment with Adventure.
Klugman starred in several classic films including 12 Angry Men in 1957 (as Juror 5; he is the last surviving actor to play a juror in the movie), Days of Wine and Roses in 1962, and Goodbye, Columbus in 1969. He won an Emmy Award for his work on the television series The Defenders and appeared in four episodes of the acclaimed series The Twilight Zone (tied with Burgess Meredith for the most number of appearances). Klugman says his greatest thrill was appearing with Humphrey Bogart and Henry Fonda in a 1955 live television broadcast of The Petrified Forest. He also appeared in The Fugitive episode "Terror at High Point" in 1963.
Klugman also starred in the original Broadway production of The Odd Couple as a replacement for Walter Matthau. He won two Emmy Awards for the television version of The Odd Couple.
Klugman was nominated for a Tony Award in 1960 for Best Featured Actor (Musical) for his role in Gypsy, but lost to Tom Bosley in Fiorello!. During the pre-Broadway tryout tour in 1959, several of Klugman's songs were cut, including a song for his character Herbie called "Nice, She Ain't", due to Klugman's untrained singing voice.
In 1957, he appeared in the film 12 Angry Men as Juror #5. Of the twelve actors who portrayed the jurors, he is the last survivor. He was scheduled to appear in a stage production of 12 Angry Men at the George Street Playhouse in New Jersey in the spring of 2012, but on March 6 it was announced he had withdrawn from the production for health reasons.
Klugman was roasted on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast on NBC March 17, 1978.
Read more about this topic: Jack Klugman
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)