Abe Vigoda Dies at 94

Actor Abe Vigoda, whose career took off with his role as the forlorn mobtser Sal Tessio in “The Godfather” and peaked as the lovably cranky NYPD Detective Phil Fish in the 1970s TV series “Barney Miller,” died Tuesday at his daughter’s home in New Jersey. He was 94.

His daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs, told the AP he died at her New Jersey home in his sleep Tuesday morning. She said, “The man was never sick,” and his cause of death was old age.

Vigoda’s death was erroneously reported by People Magazine in 1982 — and dozens of times since then. The magazine reported the “late Abe Vigoda was not present at a Barney Miller ”wrap party” in Los Angeles. Since then, the status of whether Vigoda was dead or alive turned into a pop culture phenomenon. In 1997, a salesman at Bloomingdales said to Vigoda, ”You look like Abe Vigoda. But you can’t be Abe Vigoda because he’s dead,” the AP reports.

Born in 1921 in New York City, he attended the Theater School for Dramatic Arts at Carnegie Hall working in theater for nearly 30 years before being cast in ”The Godfather” in 1972 and subsequently as Detective Fish on the TV comedy, “Barney Miller.”

Vigoda played the role of Sal Tessio in the Oscar-winning film, a longtime friend of Vito Corleone’s (played by Marlin Brando), who plans on killing Vito’s son Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino) after Vito’s death. Because of his father’s warning before he died, the betrayal is anticipated by Michael and Sal is taken to be executed.

He was cast as Detective Fish at the age of 53 after being told to rush to the audition by his agent. He recalled the story of how he was cast in the book, “What Have You Done?: The Inside Stories of Auditioning--from the Ridiculous to the Sublime.”

An athlete and a champion handball player when he was younger, Vigoda had just jogged five miles and had not showered. When he arrived at the audition, the producers, Danny Arnold and Ted Flicker, looked at him and Vigoda recalled one of them saying “You look tired.” He explained that of course he was tired since he had just jogged five miles.

The producer then said to Vigoda, “Yeah, yeah, tell me, you look like you have hemorrhoids,” to which he replied, “What are you, a doctor or a producer?”

He was cast in the sitcom starring Hal Linden in the fictional 12th Precinct of the NYPD located in Greenwich Village. He was a regular on the series for two of its eight seasons and after his character retired from the show he appeared in the spinoff, “Fish” in 1977. The show lasted two seasons. He appeared in other movies such as “Look Who’s Talking” (1989), ”Good Burger” (1997) and “Jury Duty” (1998).

More recently, in 2010, Vigoda appeared in the Snickers Super Bowl commercial along with Betty White. In the commerical, a group of men are playing football, when two of them transform into Vigoda and White and require a Snickers bar before they feel like themselves again.

“Our thoughts are with Abe Vigoda’s family, friends, and fans,” Snickers wrote on Twitter.

Vigoda is survived by his daughter, grandchildren and a great-grandson.

This report will be updated.

Image via WikiMedia Commons