Although this gangster flick received only middling reviews, Falk won heavy praise for his vicious portrayal of Abe Reles, the leader of the titular Brooklyn gang who was believed to be responsible for more than 30 murders. Although it was Falk's first major film role, he earned an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. Falk described the role in his 2006 autobiography as the role that "made my career."

Falk donned the gangster garb again, although he put a comedic twist on it this time. He earned his second Oscar nomination for his supporting role as Joy Boy, the right-hand man to New York City gangster Dave the Dude (Glenn Ford). Director Frank Capra once said, "The entire production was agony ... except for Peter Falk. He was my joy, my anchor to reality."

In this madcap ensemble caper in which a colorful group of strangers pursue $350,000 in stolen cash, Falk played a cop-hating cab driver who shuttled around the dentist Melville Crump (Sid Caesar) and his wife (Edie Adams).

After that detour, Falk returned to his gangster persona, this time as Guy Gisborne. The 1930s-era crime boss battles for control of Chicago against rival gangster Robbo (Frank Sinatra) and his men, who are played by the other Rat Pack members. The musical comedy that played homage to the Robin Hood legend also introduced the Academy Award-nominated song, "My Kind of Town."

Falk takes to the races again, but this time for a heavily fictionalized tribute to the around-the-world automobile race of 1908. In the Blake Edwards comedy — which uses every silent movie-era slapstick and visual gag, including a pie fight that took three days to film — Falk plays Maximilian Meen, a sidekick to the devious Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon), who is the nemesis of dashing daredevil The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis). Throughout the course of the film, sabotage, kidnapping and even an iceberg interfere with the enemies' race from New York to Paris.

For the actor's first starring television role, Falk played a seedy Shakespeare-quoting lawyer whose secretary was played by Elaine Stritch. Falk often commented that he actually preferred this short-lived series to his signature series Columbo.

This was Falk's first collaboration with his friend, filmmaker and actor John Cassavetes. In the film, they, along with Ben Gazzara, play three professional New York men in the throes of a midlife crisis following the sudden death of a mutual friend by heart attack. Filmed cinema verite style with much of the dialogue improvised, the movie was alternately hailed and criticized.

Lieutenant Frank Columbo was without a doubt Falk's career-defining role. He won four Emmys for his portrayal of the shabby-but-shrewd, trench coat-wearing Los Angeles detective whose disjointed interview style famously ended with Columbo saying, "There's just one more thing…." Falk first played the character in the 1968 TV movie Prescription: Murder and reprised the role on the NBC series from 1971 to 1978. Falk also starred as the character in several TV movies and specials on ABC between 1989 and 2003.

Falk teamed up again with writer-director John Cassavettes for this examination of social and sexual politics. Falk played Nick, a man who has his wife (Gena Rowlands) committed after her behavior becomes increasingly psychotic. While she undergoes psychiatric treatment for six months, the family becomes even more dysfunctional as Nick tries to raise the couple's three children alone.

In this '70s-era buddy comedy, mild-mannered dentist Sheldon "Shelly" Kornpett (Alan Arkin) gets pulled into an international adventure thanks to his future in-law Vince Ricardo (Falk), who happens to be a somewhat shady ex-CIA agent. Although the film was remade in 2003 with Albert Brooks and Michael Douglas in the leads, film critic Roger Ebert preferred the original, stating, "The chemistry is better in the earlier film. Falk goes into his deadpan lecturer mode, slowly and patiently explaining things that sound like utter nonsense. Arkin develops good reasons for suspecting he is in the hands of a madman."

Based on the Brinks armored car depot robbery in Boston in 1950, the film starred Falk as real-life career criminal Tony Pino, who masterminded the heist. Along with 10 other men, he staked out the headquarters, put an intricate plan into motion and made off with nearly $3 million. This was the fourth Hollywood film to re-create what was considered the "crime of the century" at the time. Of Falk's role, the film's director William Friedkin said, "Peter has a great range from comedy to drama. He could break your heart or he could make you laugh."

Falk again teamed with Arkin and Cassavettes on this comedy, the director's last film. A spoof of Double Indemnity, the film centers on an insurance agent (Arkin) who, faced with the cost of sending three sons to Yale, agrees to help a woman (Beverly D'Angelo) murder her husband (Falk). Despite what many critics called an inconsistent script, Falk and Arkin's comedic chemistry earned high marks.

Falk played a fictionalized version of himself in this German romantic fantasy about invisible angels who populate Berlin and listen in on humans' lives. Through the course of the movie, Falk, who arrives in Berlin to make a film about the city's Nazi past, reveals that he was once an angel who agreed to become a mortal in order to experience the world instead of just observing it. Falk also appeared in the film's sequel, Faraway, So Close.

In this beloved Rob Reiner film, Falk narrates the story as a grandfather reading to his sick grandson (Fred Savage). And even when he finishes reading the fairy tale, which tells of the kidnap and rescue of Buttercup (Robin Wright), Falk's character lovingly agrees to read it all over again the next day.

In this Lifetime movie about a child who writes to Santa that he no longer wants to be a burden to his divorcing parents, Falk plays an unlikely angel named Max who helps a reporter (Patricia Heaton) find the child before it's too late.

This film, written by Paul Reiser, examines the effect a terminal illness has on an aging couple's relationship as well as their children. Falk stars as Sam Kleinman, whose wife Muriel (Olypmia Dukakis) leaves him unexpectedly until she is diagnosed with cancer. Falk's character bonds with his son (Reiser) before ultimately reconciling with his wife in her final months.