Columbo actor Peter Falk dies at his home, aged 83

PETER FALK, the stage and film actor who became identified as the squinty, rumpled detective in Columbo, which spanned 30 years of prime-time television, died at the age of 83 on Thursday night at his Beverly Hills home.

Columbo began its history in 1971 as part of the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie series, appearing every third week. It became by far the most popular of the three mysteries, the others being McCloud and McMillan and Wife.

Falk was reportedly paid $250,000 a movie and could have made much more if he had accepted an offer to convert Columbo into a weekly series. However, he declined, saying that carrying a weekly detective series would be too great a burden.