Failing Health and Death
Rumors of Falk's dementia plagued the actor in the final years of his life and exacerbated when, in late April 2008, Falk was photographed by paparazzi looking disheveled and acting animated in the streets of Beverly Hills. Although the actor said his behavior was due to his frustration over being unable to remember where he had parked his car, the images of his erratic appearance and behavior were published by the media, and Falk was seldom seen in public after the incident.
At a two-day conservatorship trial in Los Angeles in June 2009, one of Falk's personal physicians, Dr. Stephen Read, reported that Falk had rapidly slipped into dementia after a series of dental operations in 2007. Dr. Read said it was unclear whether Falk's condition had worsened as a result of anesthesia or some other reaction to the operations. He went on to add that Falk's condition was so bad he could no longer remember the character of Columbo. Shera Danese Falk was appointed as her husband's conservator.
The 83-year-old Falk died at his longtime Roxbury Drive Beverly Hills home on the evening of June 23, 2011. The cause of death was later revealed as cardiorespiratory arrest, with pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease as underlying causes. Falk was survived by his wife and two daughters. His daughters said they would remember his "wisdom and humor". Falk is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
Falk's death was greeted with tributes from many film celebrities. Steven Spielberg said, "I learned more about acting from him at that early stage of my career than I had from anyone else." Stephen Fry tweeted that Columbo was "TV’s greatest ever detective." Rob Reiner said, "He was a completely unique actor," and went on to say that Falk's work with Alan Arkin in The In-Laws was "one of the most brilliant comedy pairings we've seen on screen."
Read more about this topic: Peter Falk
Famous quotes containing the words failing, health and/or death:
“As he watched from windows in the failing light
For his world that was always just out of sight
Where weakness was part of the ordinary landscape
And the friendly road knew his footstep, his footstep.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“In the continual enterprise of trying to guide appropriately, renegotiate with, listen to and just generally coexist with our teenage children, we ourselves are changed. We learn even more clearly what our base-line virtues are. We listen to our teenagers and change our minds about some things, stretching our own limits. We learn our own capacity for flexibility, firmness and endurance.”
—Jean Jacobs Speizer. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Collective, ch. 4 (1978)
“Most of the folktales dealing with the Indians are lurid and romantic. The story of the Indian lovers who were refused permission to wed and committed suicide is common to many places. Local residents point out cliffs where Indian maidens leaped to their death until it would seem that the first duty of all Indian girls was to jump off cliffs.”
—For the State of Iowa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)