Tony Randall, RIP

Sorry to learn of the passing of Tony Randall. I grew up watching and enjoying his work in "The Odd Couple", knew of his ties to Tulsa, and more recently enjoyed his cameos on Letterman and marveled at his late-in-life virility.

There are some intriguing details in the obituaries. He was married to his first wife for 54 years (although some sources say 50). That's remarkable for anyone, much less for a famous actor. She died in 1992, so if the first number is right, he married at age 18, in 1938. Three years after his first wife's death, he, at age 75, married a 25-year-old and became a father for the first time, siring a boy and a girl.

He was born Arthur Leonard Rosenberg in Tulsa in 1920. The obits say his father was an art dealer. I wonder where they lived. He was growing up in the midst of Tulsa's first boom -- what must that have been like! And what was it like to grow up Jewish in Oklahoma in those days?

I found this brief reminiscence about Tulsa's cultural life.

Tulsa TV Memories has his Central High School yearbook photo.

I found this quote from a 1997 commencement speech he gave at Centenary College:

"You must find-each and every one of you - something in life to do that you love, that you love blindly. And you must work yourself to death at that," he said to applause.

MORE: Tony Randall's father, Moescha Rosenberg, made the news in 1921 for a lawsuit involving his jewelry store in the Sinclair Building. More details at that entry about the Rosenberg family's homes in Tulsa and elsewhere.

(UPDATED May 31, 2022, to redirect dead links to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and to add a link to my 2021 piece on Randall's parents.)