Audrey E. Kupferberg

Funny yet down-to-earth, honest yet full of exaggeration, actor Walter Matthau (1920-2000) will always occupy a place in America's heart as one of the great comic talents of his generation. Born Walter Matuschanskayasky into Jewish tenements on New York's Lower East Side, he was a child actor in New York Yiddish theater, and later a World War II Air Force radioman-gunner. He paid dues for ten years on Broadway, in summer stock, and on television before...