From Open Call to Icon: How Abe Vigoda Landed the Role of Tessio in ‘The Godfather
According to director Francis Ford Coppola, Abe Vigoda was cast for the role of Tessio in “The Godfather” (1972) from an open casting call. He was selected from a pool of 500 unknown actors who auditioned for that role.
Jewish actors James Caan and Vigoda portray Italian characters (Sonny and Tessio), while Italian Alex Rocco portrays a Jewish character (Moe Greene). Visitors to the set often assumed Vigoda was a Mafioso.
“I’m really not a Mafia person,” Vigoda told Vanity Fair magazine in 2009. “I’m an actor who spent his life in the theater. 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.” To prepare himself for the role, a high-ranking mobster, or capo, who runs a crew of his own, Vigoda frequented the Lower East Side and other New York neighborhoods that are backdrops in the story. He told Vanity Fair that he “practically lived in Little Italy during the shoot.”
Vigoda had roles in a few nondescript TV films before landing the plum part of Sgt. Phil Fish on the sitcom “Barney Miller”. Perhaps his best known role, Sgt. Fish proved popular enough to be spun off to his own (short-lived) series, “Fish”.
“I got the role because the producer thought I looked tired. But I looked tired because I had been jogging earlier that day. He said to me, ‘You look tired, Abe.’ I said, ‘I am. I was just jogging five miles.’ He said, ‘You also look like you have hemorrhoids.’ I said, ‘What are you? A doctor or a producer?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’m a producer and you know what? You’ve got the role.’ Just like that.” (IMDb/Wikipedia/NY Times)
Happy Birthday, Abe Vigoda!
