Once described by a British critic as looking like "a bloodhound with a head cold", the magnificently rumpled Walter Matthau parlayed his marvelous character face, drooping posture, ungainly walk and growling voice into a prolific screen career, first as a villain, later as a comedic and sometimes romantic leading man, and finally as the quintessential (but adorable) grumpy old man. Despite making his professional stage debut at age 11 in the musical "The Dishwasher" (1931), he did not begin acting in earnest until after WWII in a 1946 summer stock production of "Ten Nights in a Bar Room" in
