Peter Falk, 83, who created one of TV's greatest detectives, died Thursday at his home in Beverly Hills. He had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for several years. A family representative said he died in his sleep.Mr. Falk won four Emmys for the title role in Columbo, which was one of three rotating NBC Sunday mystery movies from 1971 to '77. Eleven years after it ended, he reprised the role with new films for ABC.
They may never have heard Lt. Columbo's first name, but fans around the world thought of him as a friend. In his rumpled raincoat and baggy brown suit, he spoke in a voice that no cough-drop manufacturer would ever sponsor, inspiring the contempt of all the villains he encountered.
Every rich and snotty one of them thought the squinting and shambling Columbo was a boob, and spent almost all of each episode putting him down - until he snapped on the cuffs just in time for the closing credits.
Mr. Falk appeared in nearly 50 feature films and worked on the stage. But for millions of viewers, he will always be Columbo, driving a wheezing 1959 Peugeot, lighting a cheap cigar, and interrupting his exit from a mansion to rattle a suspect with, "Oh, just one more thing."
Peter Michael Falk was born Sept. 16, 1927, in New York City and grew up in upstate Ossining, where his parents owned a clothing and dry-goods store.
He lost his right eye at 3 in an operation to remove a tumor. Paradoxically, his glass eye became an asset in his acting, lending a tinge of warm goofiness to his positive portrayals and a hint of oddball menace to his bad guys.
Mr. Falk moved to New York City in 1955 to try acting, and in 1955-56 he appeared as Rocky the bartender in an Off-Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.
Mr. Falk married Alyce Mayo, a designer, in 1960. They adopted two daughters, Jacqueline and Catherine.
Before Mr. Falk won his first of five Emmys, for playing a Greek truck driver who picked up a pregnant hitchhiker in a teleplay, "The Price of Tomatoes," on The Dick Powell Show during the 1961-62 season, he received consecutive supporting-actor Oscar nominations for bad-boy roles: as real-life mobster Abe "Kid Twist" Reles in Murder, Inc. (1960) and as Joy Boy, a gangster's bodyguard, in Pocketful of Miracles (1961), based on a Damon Runyon story. In 1971 he performed in Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue.
Three of Mr. Falk's most notable movie roles came in Husbands (1970), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), and Mikey and Nicky (1976), directed by his friend John Cassavetes. He played the narrator and grandfather in The Princess Bride (1987) and listed as his favorite role the part of Vincent J. Ricardo in The In-Laws (1979), opposite Alan Arkin.
Producers Richard Levinson and William Link first considered Bing Crosby and Lee J. Cobb for Columbo, but both demurred. Then came Mr. Falk.
He brought his own clothes to the role, including the tatterdemalion raincoat, which he bought during a Manhattan rainstorm four years before Columbo premiered on Sept. 15, 1971.
According to Levinson and Link, he wore the same suit and shoes for every episode during Columbo's seven seasons on NBC.
Mr. Falk brought insight as well as haberdashery to the role. Describing Columbo, he said:
"He's a man secure enough in himself not to care about the label on his suit. You love him because he isn't pretentious and is good at his job. By nature insatiably curious, he's both very shrewd and genuinely naive."
Mr. Falk was divorced from his first wife in 1976. The following year, he married Shera Danese, an actress and model. They met while he was filming Mikey and Nicky in Philadelphia, her hometown.
Mr. Falk is survived by his wife and two daughters from his first marriage.