What did it take to lure a major movie star like Walter Matthau into his first made-for-television movie?
Piles of money? "If I don't have enough money I'll do a show for the money," Matthau told TV critics in Los Angeles recently. "But right now I have enough money."A promise of a future TV series? "I did a series in the late 1950s called `Tallahassee 7000,"' he recalled. "We did 14 episodes. Hated every minute of it. I don't like the idea of playing the same character over and over again."
A chance to follow in the footsteps of his good buddy Jack Lemmon, who made his made-for-TV debut a couple of years ago in "The Murder of Mary Phagan"? "Anything Jack Lemmon does has a tremendous influence on me," Matthau allowed. "It doesn't necessarily mean that I'll do what he does, but it does make an impression."
OK - then what?
"This role," he said, referring to the character he plays in The Incident, which airs Sunday at 8 p.m. on Ch. 5. "This is a fascinating story of how personal integrity triumphs over personal prejudice. I thought the story should be told, and I figured I might as well be the one to tell it."
Matthau's character is Harmon Cobb, a mediocre lawyer in a small Colorado town in 1944. Despite his protests, Cobb is assigned to defend a German POW, who is being tried for killing a local doctor during one of his visits to the nearby prisoner of war encampment. His half-hearted defense becomes complicated when he stumbles on some information that indicates the German soldier may, in fact, be innocent.
"It's not specifically a true story," Matthau said. Asked what he meant by that, he explained: "It didn't really happen, but it should have."
"The Incident," which was filmed on location in Colorado Springs, also features Harry Morgan, Barnard Hughes, Susan Blakely, Robert Carradine, Peter Firth and William Schallert.
But the real drawing card, of course, is Matthau. Although he appeared in numerous series and specials during the early years of his career, his television appearances have become less frequent.
"I got quite a few offers to do television," he said, "but I was sticking with features because they had better scripts."
That, however, may be changing. "It seems to have turned around," Matthau observed. "Most of the good stuff - stories about interesting people and personal relationships - is on these TV-movies."
In "The Incident" Matthau plays a man who is torn between his personal and professional ethics and the anti-Nazi sentiment that gripped America during World War II. Matthau clearly understands both sides of the coin. His strong sense of right and wrong professionally has led to a reputation of being somewhat "difficult" to work with ("I used to have lots of fights with directors," he admitted. "But now I've gone the other way. Actually, I'm quite pleasant to work with.").
And his personal history includes a number of relatives - cousins, uncles and aunts - who were killed by Nazis. So he has a sense of how Cobb must feel when he must defend a German soldier while mourning the death of his own son at the hands of the Germans. And he finds great satisfaction in believing that he accurately portraying how Cobb reacted to the situation - and how he would have reacted under similar circumstances.
"I've asked myself if I would have been able to do this," he said. "I like to think I would have."
Pretty heroic stuff coming from a man who says of himself: "I like to take the path of least resistance."
But according to Matthau, that doesn't have anything to do with courage.
"Basically, I'm lazy," he said. "As long as I have enough money I don't want to work unless I see something I really like. My goal in life now is to just stay alive and stay healthy. I do a lot of walking. I answer correspondence. I go to the track. I watch sports on TV. I go to dinner parties. I talk a lot. And that's about it - if I can help it."
As you might expect, however, his way of doing things is often different than other people. His betting exploits at the race track are legendary ("The amount of work I have to do is directly proportional to my success at the track," he said), and his deft storytelling style makes him a favorite at Hollywood dinner parties. Even the way he watches sports on TV is unique.
"I love games, hate the commentary," he told the appreciative TV critics. "So I turn the sound down and listen to Mozart while I watch the games. You ought to try that sometime. It's really quite thrilling - especially if your team is winning."
And if your team is losing? "You can forget the game," he said, "and just listen to the Mozart.'