My dinner with Columbo, the character who shaped 'Poker Face' and 'Amsterdam'

It delights me no end that Peter Falk and “Columbo” are back on people’s lips these days. First Christian Bale based his “Amsterdam” character’s delivery on Falk’s iconic ‘80s detective along with a glass eye (Falk had one in reality). Then Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne cited “Columbo” as an influence on their new Netflix series “Poker Face.” (As with “Poker Face,” “Columbo” is available on NBC’s streaming service Peacock in beautiful prints.)

I have long had a professional and personal interest in Falk. When people cite dramatic series that transformed television, that turned the medium into an art form akin to movies, “The Sopranos” is of course mentioned. NBC’s quality dramas of the ‘80s and ‘90s are on the list — “Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere” for their writing; “Miami Vice” for Michael Mann’s cinematic direction and ear for music.

To me, it was “Columbo” in the ‘70s that was the first TV series that made television look more like the movies. Falk was a movie star of some accomplishment, both commercially and in his arthouse collaborations with director John Cassavetes. After a couple of pilot films, NBC brought “Columbo” on for its Sunday night experiment, “The NBC Mystery Movie.” Two other shows rotated, “McMillan and Wife” and “McCloud” in a featured slot that stretched to 90 minutes or two hours instead of the usually mandated one hour for dramatic shows. It was “Columbo,” though, that was appointment television.

Producers Richard Levinson and William Link were crime show specialists, but they came up with a unique formula for “Columbo” — the audience sees the murder in the first act and the episode became an exercise in how the charming detective would figure it out. Falk channeled many of his off-center film roles into Columbo’s charisma. The privileged murderers usually didn’t see the detective’s intelligence, only his ratty brown overcoat, green cigar, and 1959 Peugeot, always in need of a carwash, paintjob and mechanical service. He gave every indication to the rich murderers that he was a bumbler but we knew better.

Levinson and Link also gave the show a look like no other crime series on television. Every show was gorgeously photographed and smartly directed. They had a good eye for directors. The first episode was directed by a little-known director named Steven Spielberg. PJ Grisar  has an insightful piece in the Forward on how Spielberg established the visual grammar for “Columbo.”

Oh, one more thing, to quote Columbo. Levinson and Link also had an ear for writing that didn’t devolve into cliché. Steven Bochco was the writer for that first episode. Bochco went on to produce “Hill Street Blues,” another NBC series that raised the artistic bar for television.

It was Falk, though, who is mostly associated with the uniqueness of “Columbo.” While all the other cops and private eyes on television tried to out-macho each other, Columbo was a shambling, gentle soul, stressing his love of a simple life with Mrs. Columbo, his lack of a longing for the lifestyles of the rich and famous, an underdog who always won the game. And while Falk’s lines weren’t particularly funny, he was hilarious.

The show lasted from 1971 to 1978 and ABC brought it back with less than stellar results about 10 years later. In between, he starred in “The Brink’s Job,” “The In-Laws,” “The Princess Bride” and “Wings of Desire.”

Oh, just one more thing. He came to Boston in 1986 to co-star in the fine road company version of David Mamet’s best play, “Glengarry Glen Ross” as Shelley Levene, a Willy Loman-like real estate agent.

Boston Globe theater critic Kevin Kelly normally did a feature interview before downtown plays opened but as erudite as he was about plays from Shakespeare to Shepard, he didn’t know Columbo from Kojak and asked the television critic if he would do the preview. Me.

I was delighted.

Falk wanted to do it over dinner at the Four Seasons, where he was staying and which was then home to Boston’s best restaurant, Aujourd ‘hui, on a Sunday night.

I’m always a little tense that an interview with someone I don’t know could go south with just the wrong question and I was afraid that was the case with this one when I began by asking Falk about going from television to theater and he looked down seemingly in disgust. (Uh-oh.) It turned out that’s how he answered most questions, wanting to think about the question before answering. Not to avoid it. He was just as earthy and forthright as Frank Columbo, but less coy and more articulate.

At any rate, he looked back and declared, “I’m a Russian, Virgo Jew.” (Uh-oh. Where was he going with this?) Everything was good, though, as he continued, “I tend to see a lot of sides to everything.”

For the next two hours or so, he expounded on everything from Mamet’s world view to shooting pool with Jack Lemmon and director Blake Edwards while shooting “The Great Race”; working with Spielberg and Cassavetes;  and whether he thought he’d been stereotyped by Columbo, saying “I would have to be a very sick human being to have any problem with Columbo. So what if there’s been some typecasting. People have real problems in this world. Who wants to hear that?”

Whenever Falk had trouble recalling names he would say, “I’ve got to eat more sardines.” At the time I thought the sardines reference was a bit of Columbo-like eccentricity. In fact, I was underestimating Falk the way murderers underestimated Columbo. It turns out that sardines are one of those foods that do lower the risk of Alzheimer’s. Sadly, Falk developed Alzheimer’s in 2008 and died three years later.

Falk playfully chastised me once during the interview. My faux pas was asking who won when he shot pool against Lemmon and Edwards. He shook his head and said, “That’s an embarrassing question. You gonna ask Larry Bird if he went out and played one-on-one with somebody who was the best?” Lemmon did get the last laugh, of sorts, when he got the role of Shelley Levene in the movie version of “Glengarry.”  (Falk was also an accomplished artist and chess player.)

There were also a fair amount of adult beverages as the interview, accompanied by a luscious lamb dinner, wore on. (The Globe was plush then.) As we were closing in on two hours, the show’s publicist joined us over dessert and sensing that things were winding down said, “Peter, tell Ed about your engagement.”

Falk jumped in, clearly loving the story. He had announced his engagement to his first wife over a big Jewish holiday family dinner at his grandparents’ house. His grandfather went upstairs and came down in his tuxedo and patent leather shoes. “No, not today,” his grandmother told him. “Peter’s not getting married today.” He went back upstairs and changed back. This was apparently a recurring event, but come the day of the wedding, Falk was standing at the altar with his best man and, having seated his grandparents in the front row so they could hear better, his grandfather turned to his wife and said, “Vich von is Peter?”

He laughed heartily, the publicist and I did, too. But when it came to family Jewish stories I knew I could beat him as easily as he took Lemmon at the pool table.

I let the laughter subside and then said, “My mother proposed to my college girlfriend for me without telling me first.”

As both his real eye and his glass eye looked like they were going to pop out of his head I told him the full story. I was living around Boston University and was visiting my parents in Mattapan, then the predominantly Jewish section of Boston where my girlfriend (let’s call her Ellie) and her family also lived. I was watching TV and my mother was nervously knitting.

She looked up and asked me what I was getting Ellie for her birthday, suggesting a ring. I was still young, naïve and stupid enough to think she meant something like a going steady ring so I said, “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” prompting my mother to say, “My mother had the most gorgeous ring you’ve ever seen.”

So I’m wondering, why would I give Ellie a used ring, particularly from my late grandmother whose taste in clothing and accessories did not run to the gorgeous.

“You mean a wedding ring? No.”

We argued for a while and then she said, “Well, I had Ellie over for dinner last week and I showed her the ring and told her you were going to give it to her for her birthday.”

Falk laughed uproariously and started pounding the table, saying, “She didn’t want you to leave the tribe! She didn’t want you to leave the tribe!”

He got it just right. Ellie and I broke up instead of getting married and while I’m still a proud Jew, I’m not much of a tribesman. Recently my wife, not a member of the tribe, and I were watching the Spielberg-directed “Columbo” after a New York Times piece mentioned the influence it had on Rian Johnson for “Poker Face.”

“Columbo” still holds up brilliantly, but watching Falk I couldn’t help reminisce about that dinner.  Maybe, like the angel he played in “Wings of Desire,” he’s still patrolling the earth and taking great pleasure in the influence he’s had on “Amsterdam” and “Poker Face.”

Now it’s me who has trouble summoning up names.

So, Peter, in lieu of a toast I’m gonna go out and buy some sardines.