Columbo Star Peter Falk’s Nightmare Filming War Movie with Robert Mitchum!

Tonight at 8:55 PM, Arte will broadcast “The Battle for Anzio” directed by Edward Dmytryk, a war film featuring Peter Falk (future Columbo) and Robert Mitchum (The Night of the Hunter) which depicts an Allied landing in central Italy. Did you know that during the filming, Peter Falk found it difficult to get along with Robert Mitchum?

Dialogue That Needed Rewriting

It’s hoped that H.A.L. Craig, the screenwriter for “The Battle for Anzio”, never heard Peter Falk’s criticisms of his work on the film. In his autobiography “Just One More Thing”, Falk discusses the project’s inception, which he initially did not want to join due to the poor quality of the script.

Falk, primarily a stage actor and occasional film actor, had a keen sense for what dialogue worked and what didn’t. On “Anzio”, he decided to completely overhaul all the lines for his character and rewrite them. Concurrently, to get him on board, producer Dino de Laurentiis agreed to offer him the lead role in the movie and top billing, a privilege usually reserved for major stars.

“Mitchum turns to Peter Falk and says…”

The atmosphere on set was far from cheerful, as Robert Mitchum wouldn’t speak to Falk, according to Joseph Walsh, who played Doyle in the film, speaking to the Los Angeles Review of Books:

“From what I saw, [Mitchum] never spoke to Peter Falk. I’ve known Peter Falk for a thousand years, I talk to him all the time. In the middle of the scene, I’m there, Mitchum’s there, Falk’s there, Mitchum turns to Peter Falk and says: ‘Do you eat mice?'”

“That was the only time he spoke to Peter Falk. And later, Peter told me: ‘What the hell? Do I eat mice? What’s that about? This guy never says a damn word to me and then he asks: ‘Do you eat mice?’ I never found out what Bob meant. I should have asked him.”

One would have hoped for better filming conditions for Peter Falk, who, in the same year as “Anzio”, filmed a “Columbo” TV movie that would lead to the first season of the series three years later, making his face famous around the world.