The Godfather actor dies at 94

He said he wanted to be an actor after appearing in a school play at age 6, portraying an old man. In the early 1950s, he appeared as straight man for the Jimmy Durante and Ed Wynn TV comedies. Sgt. Phil Fish on Barney Miller and starred as Salvatore Tessio in The Godfather. How could they have turned him down after that, right?

After his success on “Barney Miller”, Mr. Vigoda had small roles in films including “The Cheap Detective” (1978), “Look Who’s Talking” (1989), “Joe Versus the Volcano” (1990) and “Sugar Hill” (1993).

“Then she said, ‘I hope your hemorrhoids aren’t bothering you too much.’ She was very serious”. His role as John of Gaunt in “Richard II” and Abraham Lincoln in a short-lived Broadway comedy “Tough to Get Help was highly appreciated”.

Insult comic Jeffrey Ross remembers Abe Vigoda as a friend and a comic foil who gave as good as he got.

The death has been confirmed by his family, something necessary in this case because Vigoda has been erroneously declared dead so many times in the past, including by People magazine, that a website has been alerting fans to his mortality since 2001. Tessio’s character betrays the Corleone family which seals his fate but Vigoda returned to reprise his role in the sequel.

“I was sitting in a restaurant”, he told the Washington Post in 1977, “when this young lady came up and asked for my autograph”. “Many are producers. I’m sure there are many who may have thought about me for a role but said, ‘No, he’s dead'”.

Mr. Vigoda’s daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs, said her father died Tuesday morning in his sleep at Fuchs’ home in Woodland Park, N.J. “I observed this to be a myth. My encounters have taught me that on the off chance that you profoundly have confidence in what you are doing, achievement can come at any age”. “But Francis said, ‘I want to look at the Mafia not as thugs and gangsters but like royalty in Rome.’ And he saw something in me that fit Tessio as one would look at the classics in Rome”, he shared to Vanity Fair. “I have the same companions, yet the distinction now is that I can purchase the things I never could bear”. Two years into Barney’s run, that popularity led to a spinoff, Fish, that even at the time was considered by many to be ill-advised. I have never had a house before, so now I would like a house with a nice garden and a pool. He had his daughter with his first wife, Sonja Gohlke, who has also died.

“Somehow it mentioned in the article that “the late Abe Vigoda” was not (there)”, Vigoda told CNN in 2008.

In addition to his daughter, Vigoda is survived by three grandchildren and a great-grandson, The Associated Press reported.

Other media outlets repeated the “late Abe Vigoda” error in later years.