"With his distinctive lumbering form and droll delivery, Walsh was an ideal supporting player," states Chris Koseluk in an obituary at The Hollywood Reporter. "A master of off-kilter comic delivery and dogged edginess, he excelled at roles that dwelled in the darker corners of humanity. No matter whom he played, he made a colorful impact."

Here's a bit more from Koseluk:

Michael Emmet Walsh was born on March 22, 1935, in Ogdensburg, New York. His father was a customs agent.

Raised in Swanton, Vermont, Walsh attended Tilton School in New Hampshire before enrolling at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, where he roomed with future Knots Landing star William Devane. (In 1998, Clarkson honored Walsh with its esteemed Golden Knight Award.)

Walsh graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing in 1958 and moved to New York City. Three years later, he joined the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began plying his craft in summer stock and regional theater throughout the Northeast.

Walsh appeared on an episode of The Doctors in 1968 and made his Broadway debut a year later in the drama Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? in a cast that included Al Pacino and Hal Holbrook. In 1973, he replaced Charles Durning in the role of George Sikowski in the original production of Jason Miller’s That Championship Season.

After making his film debut as an uncredited extra in Midnight Cowboy (1969), Walsh popped up in such notable features as Serpico (1973), The Gambler (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Ordinary People (1980), Reds (1981), Cannery Row (1982) and Silkwood (1983).

Blood Simple marked a turning point.

Walsh was shooting a film in Texas when he got word of an indie project that two brothers in Austin were trying to pull together. He was intrigued by the private eye character, envisioning the role as a Sydney Greenstreet type with a Panama suit and hat. After watching a promo trailer they had shot to entice investors, he signed on.

With Joel Coen and Ethan Coen making heavy use of storyboarding and light on giving direction to their actors, Walsh wasn’t sure what to make of the fledgling filmmakers. He didn’t expect Blood Simple to have a big impact on his career.

“I didn’t hear from them for months after that. They didn’t have enough money to fly me in to New York for the opening of the film,” Walsh said. “I saw it three or four days later when it opened in L.A., and I was, like, ‘Wow!’ Suddenly my price went up five times. I was the guy everybody wanted.”

Walsh had a flair for comedy, as seen in Cold Turkey (1971), They Might Be Giants (1971), Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972), What’s Up, Doc? (1972), At Long Last Love (1975), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (1979), Fletch (1985), Back to School (1986), Wildcats (1986), Camp Nowhere (1994), My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997) and Christmas With the Kranks (2004). And he showed up in a curmudgeonly role in Knives Out (2019).

Following CBS' cancellation of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Get To Know Your Rabbit was to be a Hollywood star vehicle for Tom Smothers. De Palma, fresh off the counterculture success of independent films such as Greetings and Hi, Mom!, was hired by Warner Bros. to direct the film. However, De Palma had run afoul of the studio when he suggested a new ending which would see Smothers' tap-dancing magician superstar escape the dual traps of conformity and commodification by appearing to make a bloody mess of a live rabbit on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Smothers became unsure about De Palma's direction, and since the whole project was conceived as a vehicle for the star, De Palma was locked out. Despite the compromised vision, though, what remains in the bulk of the film is a comedy that flows with De Palma's sardonic sense of the absurd, as a continuation of the countercultural indifference on display in Greetings and Hi, Mom!. The film, made in 1971, sat on a shelf until Warner Bros. dumped it into theaters, of ten as part of a double bill, beginning in 1972 and into 1973.

In his commentary at Trailers From Hell, Larry Karaszewski states that at the time Get To Know Your Rabbit was made, "Tommy was one of the hippest people on Planet Earth."

Here's more from Mike Barnes' obituary at The Hollywood Reporter:

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour ran from February 1967 until April 1969, when the pair were fired after 72 episodes (and with their show in the top 10 and already renewed for a fourth season). Up against NBC powerhouse Bonanza at 9 p.m. on Sunday nights, their program succeeded by attracting younger, hipper, more rebellious viewers — while also launching the careers of Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, Bob Einstein, Mason Williams and many others.

Clean-cut and sporting closely cropped hair in an era of Easy Rider and acid trips, the former folk singers and makers of hit music-comedy records did not look like the kind of guys who would be lightning rods for controversy.

“Their antics turned television upside down, blending slapstick humor with political satire, making them comedic heroes who blazed the trail followed today by satirists such as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee,” Marc Freeman wrote in his introduction to an oral history of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour that was published in November 2017.

“It was the first show to deal with the White House, Congress, war, counterculture, drugs, civil rights,” Dick noted in the piece. “We were the first in and first out. We made comedy for TV relevant and not just escapism. We nailed it.”

Comedian David Steinberg did religious sermons that stirred up controversy. David Frye impersonated President Nixon as a buffoon. Censors killed many skits (including one about censors written by Elaine May) and changed the language in others, though clever references about drugs sometimes got through. Pat Paulsen, one of the show’s regulars, ran for president in 1968 in a spoof of national politics.

CBS also pre-empted one episode with a rerun and yanked performances of Pete Seeger’s anti-Vietnam War song “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” (he was allowed to sing it a year later) and Harry Belafonte‘s “Don’t Stop the Carnival,” which featured a video collage of the riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

“When we tried something and were told ‘no,’ I wanted to know why,” Tom said. “Why is content controversial, putting in something real, something with meaning? I couldn’t understand why that would be an issue. And when it became one, I became extra stubborn.”

At the time, the Nixon administration had put the FCC on notice to watch for content it deemed inappropriate. After CBS banished the brothers, they filed a lawsuit against the network for breach of contract and copyright infringement. They won a settlement of about $900,000 but never regained their clout.

“Dickie and I always get pissed off when people say we were canceled,” Tom said. “We were fired. Death can come in two ways, natural causes and murder. We were murdered.”

The show won an Emmy for writing after its demise, with Martin, Einstein, Williams, Lorenzo Music and Allan Blye among those sharing the honor. Tom and Dick, meanwhile, were nominated for outstanding variety or musical series but lost out to Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In.

At the 2008 Emmys, Martin presented Tom with a special award, and the pair entered the TV Academy Hall of Fame two years later. A 2002 documentary, Smothered, detailed their duel with CBS.

This zany film from Brian de Palma is not perfect but sure did stick with me.

It might be due to turning 39 years of age and my brain telling me its now or never, but 2022 really has turned out to be the year of contemplation for the old sport. This movie struck a lot of personal chords as it tells the story of a guy that leaves his silly, stuffy, nonsensical corporate job to pursue a life more serious, freeing and sensible as a tap dancing magician. Trained by the illustrious Orson Welles he sets out to achieve his dreams and escape the rat race. This is just one of several films I watched this year that I am taking as a sign to take the plunge.

Get to Know Your Rabbit is a mess – a mishmash of creative visuals rubbing awkward elbows with dry and slapstick comedy ideas. One reason for this disjointed quality, the film’s jumps around in rhythm and moods – Warner Brothers did a major re-edit after director Brian De Palma handed in his final cut. The result is that it feels as if you are watching pieces taken from different films that have been haphazardly thrown together. Improbably, that’s also what gives this movie its eccentric, shaggy charm.

Or maybe it’s because it has one hell of a cast: Tommy Smothers, Orson Welles, John Astin, Katharine Ross and, in cameo roles, Bob Einstein, Allen Garfield, and M. Emmet Walsh.

Hold on, it could be the story: Donald (Smothers), an overworked marketing analyst at a large corporation, fed up with the stress of the daily grind. He quits and enrolls in a school for tap-dancing magicians run by Mr. Delasandro (Welles). Donald’s feckless boss, Mr. Turnbull (Astin), realizing he’s helpless without Donald, hatches myriad underhanded schemes to get him back. Too late; Donald has graduated, been given his rabbit, and hopped a bus to begin “a 7-week swing through the second-rate bars and cocktail lounges in America’s heartland” as a tap-dancing magician.

His boss falls from grace but, because he was once a marketing man of merit, the guy comes up with a surefire publicity gimmick: an offer for burnt-out executives to quit their jobs, reinvent themselves as tap-dancing magicians, and “live life at the gut level!”

The film is uneven and goofy, but it features stand-alone segments that are brimming with heart. Of the actors, Smothers contributes a welcoming, natural delivery, Ross plays it slightly ditzy, Welles goes eloquently over the top in a self-deprecatory manner, and Astin comes up with a zany character who is smart, sympathetic, deceitful, ruthless and, most important, fun to watch.

De Palma is already dealing with stylistic elements that would become hallmarks in his later films: dissolves, wipe edits, split screens, and film-within-film.

Highlights include Welles joyously conjuring a cocktail from a handkerchief; a tracking shot of Smothers walking (from the viewpoint of an overhead camera) through his maze of an apartment, and every single scene featuring Astin.

The negative for Detective Belli was to be made in a lab in L.A. from materials supplied by the Italian distributor, and I was dispatched there in late 1971 to make sure everything was copacetic. Brian De Palma was also in Hollywood then, editing his picture Get To Know Your Rabbit. It was Brian's first studio picture, and he hadn't been able to hire me to work on it because I wasn't even in the New York union, not to mention L.A.'s.

I called him to say I was in town. He invited me to come see a rough cut of his movie, which he was screening that afternoon out at Warner Bros. I went and watched the picture with Brian, his editor, and his producer. When the house lights went up, all eyes turned to me, since mine were the only fresh eyes in the room. The producer asked me what I thought, and I tentatively offered that there was one scene in particular I thought they could do without, a scene in which Tommy Smothers is up in a tree.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, a silence fell on the room, and I could feel a kind of tension. Brian thanked me, and we made a date to get together for dinner later. He explained to me that night that the scene I had mentioned had in fact been the subject of a bitter struggle between Brian and the producers, Brian wanting it out, them wanting it in. They wrongly assumed that Brian had told me what to say. I went on to give Brian a more detailed list of suggestions, which hadn't seemed appropriate to offer in front of anyone else.

I returned to New York and shortly thereafter left Sig Shore's employ.

"On Smothers Brothers, Einstein crafted the humorless, helmet-wearing motorcycle cop Officer Judy who would perpetually ride in to sketches to 'bust' other characters," according to an obituary by Variety's Cynthia Littleton. "During his tenure on the groundbreaking and controversial CBS series, Einstein was a writing partner and roommates with future comedy superstar Steve Martin."

Einstein reprised the Officer Judy role in Get To Know Your Rabbit, pictured above, which was Brian De Palma's first major studio picture. In an interview from the early 1990s, Einstein described the creation of Officer Judy:

The first time I did Officer Judy was... we had Judy Collins on the show, and we were trying to come up with a way to have fun with one of her records. And she just, you know, she sings beautifully, so it was kind of difficult. So we came up with an idea... "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today" was the song. Absolutely beautiful. And Judy Collins had been on once in the show, and then in the second half of the show, Tom says, "Ladies and gentlemen, once again, here's Judy." And the music started in front of the audience, "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today." Curtains open, and I'm there with my motorcycle, lip-synching "I Think It's Gonna Rain Today," her voice. Finish, and we cut over to Tom and Dick, and Dick says, "What was that, Tommy?" He says, "That was, uh, that was Officer Judy." That's how the name happened. And he said, "What was going--" He says, "Well, I got stopped. I was speeding coming over here. And I got stopped." And Dick said, "And you promised this cop he could be on the show?" And he said, "Well, not just once, I think it was six." And at that point, I came in, back to the camera, blocked the whole thing and said, "How did I do, Tom?" He said, "You were great." That was the frst time he was ever on. It was just kind of a fun idea because it was a show with a policeman. And any time things-- you know, we were always in the news about, we've gone too far, or we're stretching this or we're pushing that, and we had our own policeman now to come on and be very straight and to make sure the show would keep at a certain level. And then I arrested Liberace on the Emmy show, which was a lot of fun.

"Brian De Palma's Get To Know Your Rabbit was made three years ago," Canby begins in his review, "yet it did not arrive in New York until Wednesday, and then with less advance word than usually accompanies the opening of a Broadway shoe store. This casual treatment is unfortunate since De Palma (Greetings, Hi, Mom) is a very funny filmmaker. He's most funny, so far, anyway, when he's most anarchic, and Get To Know Your Rabbit, though somewhat inhibited by conventional form, has enough hilarious loose ends and sidetracks to liberate the film from its form."

TFH's Joe Dante, meanwhile, posted his own tweet today: "Have you gotten to know #GetToKnowYourRabbit lately? Director #BrianDePalma’s surreal comedy, starring #TomSmothers and #OrsonWelles, was his first studio film. TFH Guru @Karaszewski has your full primer on the flick as Brian De Palma Week concludes!"

(Thanks to Matthew!)