I grew up watching Peter Falk, shaking my head at the murderers underestimating him on “Columbo” and feeling him light up the screen whenever he turned up in a terrific ensemble comedy, of which there were many (for example: It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; The Princess Bride; Murder by Death; The Great Race). He was a cagey performer, good at playing comically outraged, or seeming more dimwitted than, of course, he was. His everyman edge came from the comic exasperation all of us feel at some point during the week; it’s what made him so relevant.

Truly good comic actors transition well into drama. As Buster Keaton said, comedy is serious business. That’s because it’s harder. This is by way of saying that Falk gave powerful dramatic performances as well, most notably in Mikey and Nicky, in which he plays a man who has snitched to the mob about his lifelong friend who is in hiding from them. Late in the film when the moment has come when the mob is about to catch and kill his friend (played by John Cassavetes), Falk’s desperate conflicted anguish is palpable. It’s a great moment in a very good film filled with them. Even when I didn’t like the films Cassavetes himself wrote and directed — and, by and large, I didn’t — I always liked Falk in them.

It was exactly four years ago today that I had the great good luck to meet Peter Falk. He was the mystery guest on my friend J. Keith van Straaten’s show “What’s My Line? Live on Stage” in Hollywood. Falk was loose and funny and charming and hung around a very long time afterward to meet anyone who wanted to meet him and to take pictures and sign autographs. I’m glad I got to meet him, and I’m glad that somewhere on this hard drive I have a photo with him, a photo taken by the wife of Len Wein, Mr. Wein being someone else I “grew up with” who was also in attendance. These are the benefits of being in Hollywood:  getting to touch the hem of artists you admire.

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