Best Known As: Detective Fish on TV's Barney Miller
With hangdog face and rumpled suits, actor Abe Vigoda was a hit as Detective Sgt. Phil Fish on the 1970's TV sitcom Barney Miller. The show featured a ragtag band of New York City cops, with Vigoda as the comically world-weary grouch. Vigoda starred on the show from 1975-77, then left to star in the spinoff show Fish (1977-78). Vigoda wasn't always a specialist in curmudgeonly comedy -- his best-known film role is that of the treacherous Tessio in Francis Ford Coppola's film The Godfather (1972, with Marlon Brando). Vigoda's fame was renewed when he made frequent guest appearances on Conan O'Brien's Late Night show in the 1990s. He also earned a measure of ironic fame for persistent, and eventually humorous, rumors of his death, sparked by an erroneous People magazine story from the 1980s.
Career Highlights: Look Who's Talking, Joe Versus the Volcano, Prancer
First Major Screen Credit: Death Car on the Freeway (1979)
Biography
Slouch-shouldered, basset-faced character actor Abe Vigoda was the son of a Lower East Side tailor. Making his first stage appearance at 17, Vigoda used his GI Bill allotment to study at the American Theatre Wing. He then toiled away in obscurity for nearly 20 years before he was "discovered" by the public in the role of John the Gaunt in Joseph Papp's 1961 staging of Richard II. Another decade would pass before Vigoda attained worldwide fame as the treacherous Tessio in The Godfather. In 1974, he was tested for the minor role of Grimaldi in the upcoming TV sitcom Barney Miller; instead, he landed the role of dour, droopy-eyed Inspector Fish (and a good thing, too; the Grimaldi character was written out after only a few weeks). Vigoda remained with Barney Miller from 1975 to 1977, then was spun off into his own Fish series, which lasted until 1978. Bedeviled with legal problems during the early 1980s, Vigoda nonetheless was able to keep busy as a supporting actor in films (Joe vs. the Volcano, Look Who's Talking) and television; he also periodically returned to the stage, frequently in the Boris Karloff role in Arsenic and Old Lace. Abe Vigoda's 1990s projects have included such roles as Gus Molino in Harlem (1993) and Alaskan Grandpa in North (1994), a voice over stint in the 1994 animated feature Batman: Mask of the Phantom, and a recurring role in the 1991 weekly-TV revival of Dark Shadows. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
He made regular appearances as himself (usually in skits relating to his "advanced age") on the television show Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and was honored with a cameo appearance on that show's final episode.
Vigoda was born in New York City, the son of Lena (née Moses) and Samuel Vigoda, Jewish immigrants from Russia.[1][2] His father was a tailor and his brother Bill Vigoda was a comic-bookartist who drew for the "Archie" comics franchise and others in the 1940s.[3]
Career
Vigoda gained fame through his supporting character roles, notably as elder mobster Salvatore Tessio in The Godfather (1972). He gained further fame playing Detective Sgt. Phil Fish on Barney Miller, and then led its brief spinoff Fish until it was cancelled in 1978. Before Barney Miller, he made a few appearances on the ABC-TV soap Dark Shadows. He has also appeared in several Broadway productions, including Marat/Sade (1967), The Man in the Glass Booth (1968), Inquest (1970), Tough to Get Help (1972), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1987). His trademark hunched posture and slow delivery of lines made him appear older than he really was.
On January 23, 2009, Abe Vigoda appeared live on The Today Show. He said he was doing well, joked about previous reports of his death and in fact announced he had just completed a voice-over for an H&R Block commercial to air during the Super Bowl.
