Who turned down the role of "Columbo" before Peter Falk was signed up for the American TV detective series?

"Columbo" is an American television series starring Peter Falk as Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.

In 1968, the stage play "Prescription: Murder", was made into a two-hour television movie aired on NBC. The writers suggested Lee J. Cobb and Bing Crosby for the role of Columbo, but Cobb was unavailable and Crosby turned it down because he felt it would take too much time away from the golf links. Director Richard Irving convinced Levinson and Link that Peter Falk, who wanted the role, could pull it off even though he was much younger than the writers had in mind.

The character and show, created by Richard Levinson and William Link, popularized the inverted detective story format, which begins by showing the commission of the crime and its perpetrator; the plot therefore usually has no "whodunit" element, and instead revolves around how a perpetrator known to the audience will finally be caught and exposed (often referred to as a "howcatchem").