Abe Vigoda, 'Barney Miller' and 'Godfather' Star, Dies at 94

Abe Vigoda, the beloved actor known for playing Det. Fish on Barney Miller and mobster Sal Tessio in The Godfather, and for weathering years of mistaken reports about his death, died in his sleep in New Jersey on Tuesday, January 26, at the age of 94.

Audiences first got to know the actor in 1972’s The Godfather, when the then 51-year-old actor played Tessio, a longtime friend and associate of the Corleone family who’s killed when the Corleones find out he’s been working with a rival mob family.

Photos: Abe Vigoda: His Best TV and Film Roles

In 1975, Vigoda began playing Det. Phil Fish on the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning ABC sitcom Barney Miller. Fish was a cantankerous New York City detective whose advancing age had led to a lot of physical ailments, namely a persistent hemorrhoids issue that fed his grumpiness and made the squad’s bathroom one of his frequent hangouts.

The role earned Vigoda three Emmy nominations, and led to a spin-off, Fish, in which an eventually-retired Fish and his wife Bernice (Florence Stanley) raised a group of foster children (including one played by a pre-Diff’rent Strokes Todd Bridges). The series ran for two seasons on ABC.
In author Louis Zorich’s 2009 book What Have You Done?: The Inside Stories of Auditioning, from the Ridiculous to the Sublime, Vigoda recalled how he was cast on Miller. He had completed his daily five-mile jog when he got a call from his agent, who told him to head to the studio to audition right away. He said he needed to take a shower first and change out of his running shorts.

“’No, no, no, go right now to Studio City, you’re very right for it, they know you from The Godfather, they want to see you,’” he said his agent told him. Vigoda arrived, still wearing the shorts and looking tired, which Miller producers Danny Arnold and Ted Flicker pointed out to him.

“’Of course I’m tired,’” he said he told them. “’I jogged five miles this morning, I’m exhausted.’”

The producers: “Yeah, yeah, tell me, you look like you have hemorrhoids.”

Vigoda: “What are you, a doctor or a producer?”

The star, born in Brooklyn on Feb. 24, 1921 to parents who immigrated from Russia, began his acting career in 1947, and appeared in several Broadway productions before his breakout role in The Godfather.