So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

(An epitaphany shared with Mike L)

Or

It Was Just Business. Nothing Personal. Tell Abe I Always Liked Him

Or 

It Messes Up My Arrangements

(Props to former participant Peter)

Abe Vigoda, best remembered as the Chief of natives of Waponi Woo on Joe vs. the Volcano, has died at the age of 94. No, seriously this time. Really. Check the website. Despite being born at the age of 72, Vigoda’s career spanned 6 decades, with his big break coming in The Godfather. As trusted capo Salvatore Tessio, he helped Michael Corleone assassinate Virgil Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey, and despite seeing Michael’s viciousness and being labeled as being smarter than Clemenza, he crossed the new Don anyway. 40-year-old spoiler alert: It did not go well. Vigoda parlayed this into his role as the perpetually exhausted and hemorrhoid-saddled Detective Sgt. Phil Fish in Greenwich Village on Barney Miller. After two years at the old 1-2, he became an early victim of McLean Stevenson Syndrome, and tried his hand in his own spin-off Fish. There he played the perpetually exhausted and hemorrhoid-saddled head of a foster home full of racially mixed preternaturally cute and tough children, or “Persons in Need of Supervision" aka PINS. It went only slightly better than crossing a Corleone. In 1982 when Vigoda was a sprightly 60, People magazine mistakenly mentioned that he had died when he didn’t participate in a Barney Miller reunion. They weren’t far off as he was appearing in a play in Calgary. Vigoda took the mistake in stride, appearing in an issue of Variety sitting up smiling in a coffin with the surprisingly poorly edited issue of People in hand. He would make regular appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman as “the late Abe Vigoda” and interrupted a séance with the ghost of Abe Vigoda by announcing, “I’m not dead yet, you pinhead.” In one of the many Letterman ideas he ripped off, Conan O’Brien continued the bit when he inherited Late Night. The Undead Abe Vigoda became a bit of a cottage industry, with a website dedicated solely to answering the question, “Is Abe Vigoda Still Alive?” and a Firefox extension with the sole purpose of telling the browser Vigoda’s status. At a New York Friars Club roast, Billy Crystal saw Vigoda in the audience and said, "I have nothing to say about Abe. I was always taught to speak well of the dead." At another roast, Jeff Ross said, “My one regret is that Abe Vigoda isn't alive to see this.” Vigoda’s post-Fish roles suggested his agent was the one who had died, with such notables as Vasectomy: A Delicate Matter, Prancer, Good Burger, and the aforementioned Joe vs. the Volcano. 

Squeezed

G.D. Spradlin, who learned how to be an evil, powerful, manipulative bastard as an Oklahoma oil man and put that skill set to use as a prolific heavy character actor, has died at the age of 90. Best remembered as Nevada Senator Pat Geary, who goes Jack Woltz one better and gets a whole hooker in his bed rather than just a head, Spradlin didn’t begin acting until he was in his 40s and still managed to compile more than 70 films on his resume. When not attending donkey shows with Fredo, Spradlin did his best Tom Landry impression in North Dallas Forty and sent Martin Sheen up river to kill Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. But his knack for the heavies was his stock in trade, including sadistic Sheriff Cyrus Buelton in Tank, deranged racist commandant of the of the Carolina Military Academy in The Lords of Discipline, Coach Moreland Smith, who made Bob Knight look cuddly in One on One, the guy pulling Johnny Depp’s strings on an assassination attempt in Nick of Time, and Lyndon Johnson in the 1985 TV mini-series Robert Kennedy & His Times.

You Can Die Like a Man

Al Martino, favorite performer of the Corleone family, has died at the age of 82. The singer produced a number of hits from the 1950s through the 1970s, but is remembered today largely for his portrayal of Johnny Fontane, the simpering singer/aspiring actor, whose blubbering about not getting a role in a war movie at Connie’s wedding earns a stern rebuke from the Godfather, who commanded, “you can act like a man.” The scene was reminiscent of his singing career, when he recorded “Here in My Heart,” then begged his childhood friend Mario Lanza not to record the same song, fearing it would overshadow his debut album.