The actor Abe Vigoda, who played a doomed Mafia soldier in The Godfather, has died aged 94, BBC News reports.
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The death of 94-year-old actor has put a full stop on the rumours about Abe’s death that sparked almost three decades ago.
The death has been confirmed by his family, something necessary in this case because Vigoda has been erroneously declared dead so many times in the past, including by People magazine, that a website has been alerting fans to his mortality since 2001. “I don’t think Abe was ever sick”, Craig added.
“He took it in good humour and so on, and so I went and met him and chatted with him and took a picture of him jogging down the street denying he was dead”, said Geddes, now senior digital producer at CBC Edmonton.
Tuesday’s night’s “Conan” opened with a touching tribute to actor Abe Vigoda, who died earlier that day. “They kept looking at me, as if to say, ‘What family is he from?’ ” the actor recalled years later on CNN.
In 2009, he said to Vanity Fair magazine: “I’m really not a Mafia person”.
His most famous role was as the grumpy and deadpan Detective Sergeant Phil Fish in the Barney Miller police comedy series. He earned three Emmy nominations as part of the “Barney Miller” cast for best supporting actor.
The actor took out an ad in Variety, shortly after the false report of his demise, which showed him sitting up in a coffin holding the offending issue of People, the New York Times reported.
Vigoda was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrant parents.
Among his last performances prior to his death was in a Snickers commercial, which was first shown during the 2010 Super Bowl, featuring his fellow octogenarian Betty White. Vigoda is made due by his little girl, grandchildren Jamie, Paul and Steven, and an incredible grandson.
Reflecting on his delayed success, Vigoda once remarked: When I was a young man, I was told success had to come in my youth.
He was married twice, most recently to Beatrice Shy for 24 years, until her death in 1992.
Meredith Vieira had her own sweet moments with Vigoda, who’d grinned and fashioned a bright-orange “Abe [loves] Meredith” T-shirt as part of her TODAY sendoff in June 2011.
Such jokes marked Vigoda’s later career. In 1987, a reporter for New Jersey television station WWOR mistakenly called him “the late Abe Vigoda”.
He acted 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). You know, you look like you might have hemorrhoids, Arnold said.
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But it was his comic turn in Barney Miller, which starred Hal Linden and ran from 1975 to 1982, that brought Vigoda’s greatest recognition.
