Talk:Walter Matthau

message: Mr. Matthau is an American of Jewish decent.  His "Jewishness" belongs somewhere in the article but not in the first line listing him as a Jewish-American.Tom 20:44, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jewish

message: The link to the web page "Official Walter Matthau Website (run by his son, Charles)" is a non working link. I have no experience in editing and did not want to risk doing it incorrectly 13:02, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  outdated or otherwise non-working link 

message: :Image:Lemmon&matthau.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
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BetacommandBot (talk) 23:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:Lemmon&matthau.jpg

message: His remains are supposedly next to three different people in the current article. None of it is referenced, so who's to know what to delete? JesseRafe (talk) 04:55, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: 2 years and 4 months after - better late than never. The findagrave site shows him near George C. Scott. In any case, he has someonebody on one side and somebody on the other, and for all we know maybe somebody behind him on the other side of the hedge. So 3 is a possibility. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 04:57, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: It is claimed that the "unmarked" grave to the left of Matthau is Scott's. There's a stone there, so it's not exactly "unmarked", but there's no name carved into it. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→  —Preceding undated comment added 05:01, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The other adjacent grave is, of course, his wife Carol Marcus. Those are 2. There's no third one mentioned in the article that I can see. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:05, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Death Section 

message: If he didn't die from a heart attack, what did he die from? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:09, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind - looks like you've got that covered now. But your earlier logic seemed to be that no one actually dies from a heart attack. That's nuts. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:14, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Please see below.  There is no reason to start an edit war. Anne Maxight (talk) 16:23, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: People do die from heart attacks. It's just that heart attacks are NOT the same thing as cardiac arrest. That's where the confusion is stemming from. --Hnsampat (talk) 16:28, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Hopefully, Bugs understands that if he wants to add the information back in, that he needs to first provide a reliable source and develop consensus.  Anne Maxight (talk) 16:33, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Hopefully, the user Anne Maxight, who's impostoring the indef'd user Axmann8, is gone for good. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:12, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Heart attack? 

message: I'd like to first express my regret that this matter as to the cause of Walter Matthau's death has become a revert war. Rather than keeping it going, I've brought it here to this talk page in order to once and for all bring an end to this discussion -- as well as hopefully be able to use this discussion as a springboard for widespread correction across Wikipedia of a very common error.
As somebody who works in the medical profession, let me make a few things clear before we begin this discussion. First, some definitions: 
* "Cardiac arrest" is defined as the cessation of blood flow to the body. It's when the heart has stopped beating, usually because it has developed a life-threatening arrhythmia. If cardiac arrest is not immediately treated (usually by shocking the patient with a defibrillator) then the lack of blood flow will cause the patient's brain to die. At that point, the patient is dead.
* A "heart attack" is what is technically known as a myocardial infarction. This is when there is a blockage of some sort (usually a blood clot) in the coronary arteries, which are the blood vessels that feed the heart muscle itself. If this is not treated, then the heart muscle will die, which will cause the heart to go into cardiac arrest and eventually the patient will die. A heart attack and cardiac arrest are two VERY DIFFERENT things, even though people sometimes use them interchangeably.
Anytime anybody dies, the heart will go into cardiac arrest. It has to do this, since there are no dead people anywhere with heartbeats. Cardiac arrest is a necessary precursor to death. When we talk about a "cause of death," what we're really trying to figure out is what was the illness or event that set off the chain of events that led to somebody going into cardiac arrest and then dying. As such, in Walter Matthau's case, his "cause of death" was complications from colon cancer -- he had complications of colon cancer which led to other bad things happening which led to his heart stopping and him dying.
The popular press likes to often say that somebody "died of cardiac arrest." I don't know what exactly this means to the lay community, but it is a medically meaningless phrase. You're saying, "He died because his heart stopped." The heart doesn't just randomly stop; something CAUSES the heart to stop and THAT is what we call the "cause of death." (The only time you ever talk about the heart randomly stopping is if they simply cannot figure out why the heart stopped, in which case the phrase "sudden cardiac death" is used, but that wasn't the case with Matthau -- he died from complications of colon cancer.)
And, it is absolutely 100% meaningless to say that somebody died of "full" cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest is a binary state: either the heart is beating or it's not. How can somebody be in "full" cardiac arrest? Does that mean there's such a thing as a "partial" cardiac arrest? 
I hope this clarifies. Thanks for understanding! --Hnsampat (talk) 16:22, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your effort on this. Anne Maxight (talk) 16:24, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: So though the heart be attacked it is not necessarily arrested. Thanks! Rothorpe (talk) 16:38, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cause of death -- "full cardiac arrest"? 

message: Walter Matthausen  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.110.35.110 (talk) 01:24, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: You won't be able to find any reliable sources for that claim because it's nonsense. See http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/matthau.asp and the other sources in the article for rumors about other "original" names.  --Espoo (talk) 07:23, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Original Name

message: Early in the article it states that a tumour in Matthau's colon was benign. Later that colon cancer spread to his other organs. Granted, there could have been a a second tumour but perhaps some clarification is in order.
Secondly I found a reference to something on IMDB that may be worth following up on. In an unsourced trivia item for his 1980 film Hopscotch, IMDB reports 'Walter Matthau, who lost family and friends in the Holocaust, only agreed to travel to Germany to shoot the opening Oktoberfest scene on condition that his son, David Matthau, was cast as Ross.'  What the first item has to do with the second makes it seem like a garbled report but there may be something of interest in this nugget.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.157.172.231 (talk) 19:23, 26 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colon Cancer and filming in Germany. 

message: The article says George C Scott is interred in a grave to the left of Matthau's grave.  To the left, if Im facing which direction?  206.192.35.125 (talk) 13:22, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Interred next to George C Scott

message: Reference no. 1 says /ˈmataʊ/ instead of /ˈmæθaʊ/. This is obviously wrong.--Wikiraven65 (talk) 21:42, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correct pronunciation of “Matthau”?