Columbo Laughs: Dog's Clown Makeup

 

 

So I'm reading this 1997 Cigar Aficionado interview with Peter Falk and he's talking about Dog the basset hound. 

 

And he says

"The problem with having a dog is they don't live long enough. The first dog we used was in '71, and he was very old. He passed away in '73 and his replacement was much younger. 

 

"I never took much time in makeup; a glance in the mirror on the way to the john--that's it. If you're playing Columbo, who cares what you look like, as long as you look bad. So I'm ready fast, but we couldn't shoot. We had to wait for the dog. He was in makeup--sitting in a chair, munching dog bones while they applied the clown white to make him look older. Thirty minutes shot to hell."

 

 

And then I looked at the photos of Dog I have from 1974 and I'll be darned, sure as hell the dog has white clown makeup all over his snout! 

 

 

This probably looked better in the days before HDTV