Along with The Godfather, Vigoda was well-known for his role as detective Phil Fish on the ’70s sitcom Barney Miller.
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Noted character actor Abe Vigoda passed away on January 26, 2016 at age 94 while staying the Woodland Park, New Jersey, home of his daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs.
“The Godfather” elevated Vigoda’s career, but he became a household name in 1975 with “Barney Miller”, the long-running ABC sitcom about a NY precinct house.
Vigoda was repeatedly the subject of false reports about his death, often making him the source of jokes online. In 1982, rumors of his death began to circulate due to an erroneous People Magazine article, and later a website was even created to track whether or not he was alive. The actor responded by appearing in a photo in Variety holding the People cover while sitting in a coffin. Hi was a good-natured participant in jokes about his “death” on David Letterman and Conan O’Brien’s shows. Titled “Abe Vigoda Status”, the page is hosted at the URL www.abevigoda.com and, according to Whois Lookup, has been registered to an anonymous user since 2001. He is also the author of “Raising a Beatle Baby: How John, Paul, George and Ringo Helped us Come Together as a Family”.
Although he was not Italian, Vigoda at times was mistaken for one.
His fellow Barney Miller star, Hal Linden, 84, isn’t on Twitter so he spoke out in more traditional fashion, in an interview with the New York Daily News about his old friend.
Born in Brooklyn, Vigoda was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants.
“So it does prove to me something: That if you don’t make it in your youth, you can make it in your middle age or even old age”, he said. “You know, you look like you might have hemorrhoids”, Arnold said.
He had his first role on stage at age 17 and had modest success in theatre and on television through the 1960s.
Many of his later roles were as gangsters, but in Barney Miller he became much-loved in the comedy role and in 1977 his character got his own series, focusing on domestic life. “I was jogging five miles and I was very exhausted”, Vigoda said in 2000 of his Barney Miller audition.
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He was seen in dozens of movies as well, including “Cannonball Run II” (1984), “Look Who’s Talking” (1989), “Joe Versus the Volcano” (1990), “Sugar Hill” (1993) and “Underworld” (1996).
