Walter Matthau — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
Walter Matthau was born Walter John Matthow on New York's Lower East Side on 1 October 1920, the second son of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His father, Milton Matthow, also recorded as Melas, was a peddler and electrician from Kiev, now Kyiv in Ukraine. His mother, Rose, née Berolsky or Beransky, came from Lithuania, arriving in America at fourteen, and worked in a garment sweatshop. The couple married in New York in 1917, and their elder son, Henry, was born in 1918. The long surname Matuschanskayasky, sometimes given as his father's, was a joke Matthau spread himself.
His father left the family before Walter turned three and died about twelve years later. Rose raised the two boys alone in a succession of cold-water tenements, keeping them in a day nursery while she worked. Walter went to Public School 25, Junior High School 64 and Seward Park High School. At a Jewish summer camp he first acted in Saturday-night shows, and at eleven he began selling soft drinks in the theatres of the Yiddish Theatre District on Second Avenue, which led to bit parts in Yiddish productions.
In 1942 he enlisted in the US Army Air Forces and served in England with the Eighth Air Force as a radioman-gunner on B-24 Liberator bombers, in the same 453rd Bombardment Group as James Stewart, ending the war as a staff sergeant. On the GI Bill he studied acting at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School under Erwin Piscator, and around this time changed the spelling of his name to Matthau.
He built his reputation on Broadway, winning Tony Awards for A Shot in the Dark (1962) and The Odd Couple (1965), in which he created Oscar Madison. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie (1966), played Oscar again in the 1968 film of The Odd Couple opposite Jack Lemmon, and made ten films with Lemmon in all, through to Grumpy Old Men (1993). His other films include Charade (1963) and The Bad News Bears (1976), and his honours included a BAFTA and a Golden Globe.
He died in Santa Monica, California, on 1 July 2000, aged seventy-nine.
Tracing the roots — Kyiv (father); Lithuania (mother)
Born Walter John Matthow on New York's Lower East Side in 1920 to Milton Matthow, a peddler and electrician from Kyiv (Russian Empire, now Ukraine), and Rose Berolsky, an immigrant from Lithuania who worked in a garment factory. The name 'Matuschanskayasky' was a joke he spread himself.
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Kyiv (father); Lithuania (mother). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.