Character actor Abe Vigoda dead at age 94

Abe Vigoda, an actor best known for starring in 1972’s The Godfather, has sadly died.

Born in New York City on February 24, 1921, Vigoda, the son of a tailor, grew up on the Lower East Side.

The “Godfather” movies led to his successful run on “Barney Miller”, which ran from 1974-82 and starred Hal Linden as the title character.

While Abe Vigoda’s acting gigs slowed down in the years before his death, he continued to voice Tessio in various Godfather video games. In 1987, a WWOR television station reporter in Secaucus, NJ, referred to “the late Abe Vigoda” and corrected herself the next day.

Since the news of his death broke, fans have paid tribute to the legendary actor on Twitter. But he just had that demeanor that made him look exhausted and old and he played it so well that you believed he was actually old. He earned three consecutive Emmy Award nominations for the role, and later had his own spin-off show called Fish which ran for two seasons from 1977-78. Fish is one of the great sitcom characters, a perennially tired cop with a jaundiced view of life, and Vigoda played him to perfection.

Vigoda also had roles in Joe Versus the Volcano, Good Burger, and Witness to the Mob, among others. “Figured some of you might care to know”. Vigoda asked. He was cast on the spot.

[Vigoda] liked to tell the story of how he won the role of Detective Fish.

Vigoda remains best known as cranky Det.

He embraced the decades-long legend of his premature demise, which stemmed from the 1982 wrap party to commemorate the final episode of “Barney Miller”. “When I was a young man, I was told success had to come in my youth”. Fish was famous in the Miller squad-room for spending more time in the bathroom than he did on his beat; his complaints about various ailments, from sore feet to colds to hemorrhoids, became artful little arias of discontent.

Vigoda was married twice in his life, though his most recent wife, Beatrice Schy passed away in 1992. (Vigoda responded in jest by posing for a full-page ad in Variety while reading a copy of People inside a coffin.) David Letterman kept the is-Vigoda-alive-or-dead disinformation going with a desk segment on “Late Night” in 1988.