by James Harvey

Created on: July 24, 2011   Last Updated: August 06, 2011

Recently, the entertainment world lost a man whom many television viewers considered to be a living institution, especially for those old enough to vividly remember the 1970s.  He was depicted as a detective in a rumpled-up raincoat and who often appeared somewhat shabby in appearance.  From the looks of him, some might have mistaken him for a derelict; he didn't appear to be too bright, at least by the estimate of his criminal suspects and from even some of his fellow policemen. But that was all part of his foil; this seemingly naive, shabby-looking detective always caught his man-or woman, often unawares.

Yes, Peter Falk brought alive his Columbo character in many Americans' living room, he demonstrated that one doesn't have to follow social conventions to be accepted and that looks can be deceiving; the man was a lieutenant, after all, that should have told people something about his keen detective intelligence and wit.

Peter Falk,  was a New Yorker,  having been born on the Lower East Side on September 16, 1927, to Peter Michael Falk,  who was the owner of a clothing and dry goods business and Madeline Hochauser Falk, who was an accountant and buyer.  Peter was of various extractions, being of Czech, Hungarian, Russian and Polish roots. He and his family eventually moved to Upstate New York during his early childhood.  This is where he would spend his formative years.

When Peter was three years old, he had an eye operation that resulted in its removal, being replaced with a glass eye.  This didn't stop Peter from enjoying the normal activities of youth; in fact he played on his school baseball and basketball.  When Peter was 12 years old, he had his first taste of acting when he appeared in a production of  "The Pirates of Penzance",  One of his camp counselors was Ross Martin, who himself would become an acclaimed actor, perhaps being best-remembered for his role of Artemus Gordon to Robert Conrad's  Jim West character in the 1960s western classic, "The Wild, Wild West."  He would rejoin with Falk years later in the 1971 Columbo classic, "Suitable for Framing" in which Martin played a greedy, murderous artist intent on getting his aunt's money by making it appear that she murdered her husband when in fact he was the murderer.

Falk graduated from high school in 1945, after which he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army, but was rejected for his glass eye.  Instead, he joined the Merchant Marines,

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