Enduring screen team Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau join Robert Osborne on the TCM set for a discussion of their respective careers, including the 11 films they made together, in Private Screenings: Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau (1998). It all began in 1966's The Fortune Cookie, when director Billy Wilder cast Matthau in his first truly comedic film role opposite Lemmon, who was already an Oscar® winner for Mister Roberts (1955). Matthau won the Oscar® for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Fortune Cookie as a crooked lawyer. It was the first of three movies the pair would make for Billy Wilder -- The Front Page (1974) and Buddy Buddy (1981) would follow.

Lemmon and Matthau cemented their partnership in Neil Simon's The Odd Couple (1968), with Lemmon playing neat freak Felix to Matthau's sloppy Oscar®. Thirty years later, a sequel, The Odd Couple II (1998) would again team Lemmon and Matthau in their final film pairing. In between, there were other memorable Lemmon-Matthau films, like Grumpy Old Men (1993) and its 1995 sequel.

BW & C-55m. Closed Captioning.

by Stephanie Thames