Rest in Power, Abe Vigoda

Sad, if not exactly surprised, to hear that actor Abe Vigoda has passed away. He was always old. And always rumored to be dead. In fact there were at least two websites whose only purpose was to keep track of his life/death status. Well, with both isabevigodadead.com and abevigoda.com reporting, in addition to the New York Times, I guess we can believe it. Vigoda, as you may recall, was in the The Godfather. He also played the chief of the Waponis in the criminally underrated Joe Versus the Volcano. Abe Vigoda was awesome in that movie. On TV, he was a supporting actor on Barney Miller and starred in its spinoff, Fish.

Right now everybody’s trying to describe the man physically.

• ABC News calls him “leathery” and “sunken-eyed.”
• The New York Times describes him as “sad-faced” and also “tall and graying with a long face, sturdy jaw and deep-set eyes.”
• The IMDB refers to him as “tall, dour-faced and slouch-shouldered.”
• The Wall Street Journal calls him a “gangly, hideous man-monster whose grim visage summons epiphanies of the pointlessness of doing anything but laying down forever.” (JK)

Here’s a promo for Fish on Channel 17, aka The Great Entertainer.

And here’s Dave Letterman confirming that Abe Vigoda is actually alive.