The character actor best known for roles in “The Godfather” and “Barney Miller” died Tuesday at the age of 94.
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The actor’s daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs, confirmed his death to the Associated Press, and said her father died in his sleep at her home in New Jersey.
As he experienced success quite late in life, Abe once said, “When I was a young man, I was told success had to come in my youth”. For his portrayal of Detective Fish, Vigoda received Emmy nominations three years in a row (1976-1978). He appeared everything from Joe Versus the Volcano and Look Whos Talking, to soap opera Santa Barbara, a live production of Arsenic and Old Lace, and countless other TV, movie, and stage roles.
“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.
Vigoda (born on February 24, 1921, in New York City) was 94. This is an especially great moment, as it features multiple Abe Vigodas performing an a capella rendition of the Barney Miller theme song. David Letterman and Conan O’Brien invited him on their talk shows just to prove that the actor was still alive.
“Drew, you’re a big gambler, what’s the over-under on Abe Vigoda?”.
From there, Vigoda moved to the Barney Miller series. The TV host told the audience the actor had been a huge part of his show in NY as he was often invited to do the silliest things.
The Godfather was shortlisted for four Academy Awards in the acting categories, but Vigoda was bypassed: Brando won – and refused – the Best Actor Oscar; Al Pacino (actually the film’s lead), James Caan, and Robert Duvall were nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category. You know, you look like you might have hemorrhoids, Arnold said.
In 1982, People magazine reported that Abe Vigoda had died. As the disheveled, grumbling, slow-moving, old-school Detective Phil Fish, he offered deadpan ripostes to his bewildering arrests, and tired resignation to his unseen wife Bernice’s many phone calls.
In addition to appearing on screen, he worked in theatre for 30 years. In 1997 he was shopping in Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan when a salesman remarked: “You look like Abe Vigoda”.
The show lasted a season and a half.
If Betty White became a revered figure in her later years, her peer Vigoda inspired a more mordant following as he aged, with the death-rumor mill finding new life on the Internet.
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His first marriage, to Sonja Gohlke, ended in divorce. Vigoda is made due by his little girl, grandchildren Jamie, Paul and Steven, and an incredible grandson. “When I was in first grade in NY, a teacher came into the room and told us she was casting a play titled ‘Candlelight, ‘ ” he told the St. Petersburg Times in 1996.
