Godfather actor Abe Vigoda dies, aged 94

If the nickname “Honest Abe” weren’t already taken by America’s 16th president, it would have fit actor Abe Vigoda – certainly better than any of the baggy suits the baggy-eyed actor wore as Detective Phil Fish on the 1970s cop sitcom “Barney Miller”.

Iconic film and television actor Abe Vigoda died Tuesday morning in Woodland Park, New Jersey. “Abe Vigoda was one of the nicest guys in the business…talent with a capital T, self deprecating and so sweet”, she said. In 1972, he played Salvatore “Sal” Tessio in The Godfather, a low-level hoodlum who befriends Vito Corleone before Corleone rose to power in the Mafia underworld.

Vigoda was a regular for two seasons of Barney Miller and received Emmy supporting actor comedy noms in 1976, 1977 and 1978.

In any case, he remained a prevalent character performing artist in movies, including “Cannonball Run II”, “Look Who’s Talking”, “Joe Versus the Fountain of liquid magma” and “North”.

Probably his most indelible scene from the film was his last, in which Tessio is confronted by the family lawyer, the consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), and four henchmen outside the Corleone compound after they discover that he had been in on a plot to kill the Godfather’s son and successor, Michael (Al Pacino).

Vigoda (born on February 24, 1921, in New York City) was 94. “I told him I loved his work and he said, ‘right now?’ His portrayal of Sal Tessio!” 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. “Abe was responsible for as much of the success of “Barney Miller” as I was – easily”. Instead, Vigoda became a pop celebrity in the US, leading to talk show guest appearances, countless D.O.A. jokes, and a Beastie Boys mention in their 1986 album “Licensed to Ill”.

“Barney Miller” brought Vigoda a comfortable income for the first time in his life, and he splurged on a Cadillac. Old, tired, constantly complaining about his feet, his hemorrhoids, and his wife Bernice, Fish was Barney Miller’s everyman elder statesman, a representative of a NY that seemed to be vanishing in the ’70s but may have been more tenacious than we imagined.

His first marriage, to Sonja Gohlke, ended in divorce.

In another roast at the club, this time of television star Drew Carey, comedian Jeff Ross joked, “My one regret is that Abe Vigoda isn’t alive to see this”.

Vigoda was married twice in his life, though his most recent wife, Beatrice Schy passed away in 1992. There a salesman told the actor he looked like Abe Vigoda, which couldn’t be “because Abe Vigoda is dead”.