“What are you - a doctor or a producer?” Vigoda asked. “You know, you look like you might have hemorrhoids,” Arnold said. An exercise enthusiast, Vigoda had just returned from a 5-mile jog when his agent called and told him to report immediately to the office of Danny Arnold, who was producing a pilot for a police station comedy.Īrnold remarked that Vigoda looked tired, and the actor explained about his jog. He liked to tell the story of how he won the role of Detective Fish. The great success of the film and The Godfather Part II made Vigoda’s face and voice, if not his name, recognizable to the general public and led to numerous roles, often as hoodlums.īut it was his comic turn in Barney Miller, which starred Hal Linden and ran from 1975 to 1982, that brought Vigoda’s greatest recognition. We had some great memories together and he will really be missed.” In a prepared statement, Duvall said Tuesday it was “great working with Abe in The Godfather and wonderful to have him among us. “Tell Mike it was only business,” Sal mutters to consigliere Tom Hagen, played by Robert Duvall, as he’s led away. But Michael anticipates that Sal’s suggestion for a “peace summit” among crime families is a setup and the escorts Sal thought were taking him to the meeting turn out to be his executioners. Vigoda played Sal Tessio, an old friend of Vito Corleone’s (Marlon Brando) who hopes to take over the family after Vito’s death by killing his son Michael Corleone (Al Pacino). Vigoda worked in relative obscurity as a supporting actor in the New York theater and in television until Francis Ford Coppola cast him in the 1972 Oscar-winning The Godfather. Though Vigoda took it in stride, the question of whether he was dead or alive became something of a running joke: There was even a website devoted to answering the much-Googled question, “Is Abe Vigoda dead?” (On Tuesday, it had been updated with “Yes,” with the date of his death.) His death brought to an end years of questions on whether he was still alive - sparked by a false report of his death more than three decades ago. Vigoda’s daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs, told the Associated Press that Vigoda died Tuesday morning in his sleep at Fuchs’ home in Woodland Park, N.J. NEW YORK: Character actor Abe Vigoda, whose leathery, sad-eyed face made him ideal for playing the over-the-hill detective Phil Fish in the 1970s TV series Barney Miller and the doomed Mafia soldier in The Godfather, died Tuesday at age 94.
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