John Cazale

John Cazale (August 12, 1935 – March 12 1978) was a distinguished American film actor whose career was tragically brief. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and died March 12 1978 from bone cancer.

An Italian-American, Cazale studied drama at Oberlin College and Boston University, and was friends with Al Pacino when he was a teenager. Among his greatest achievements was that he helped the discovery of childhood friend Al Pacino, fellow, hungry theater actor Robert De Niro, and his fiancée at the time of his early death, Meryl Streep.

Cazale was cited as a "Distinguished Performance" by the Off-Broadway Obie Awards for the 1967-68 season for his performance in Israel Horovitz's play "The Indian Wants the Bronx". After working as an award-winning stage actor, Cazale's big screen debut, alongside his old friend Al Pacino, was as Fredo Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. The film broke box office records and made Pacino, Cazale and several of their previously unknown co-stars famous. Cazale would again star alongside Pacino in Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (for which he received a Golden Globe nomination), as well as reprising his role as Fredo in The Godfather Part II.

Despite being diagnosed with cancer, Cazale continued to work, his final appearance being alongside his then fianceé Meryl Streep, whom he met on the set, in his fifth film The Deer Hunter. When distributor Universal Studios first learned of Cazale's condition, they were reluctant to insure the actor but thanks to Streep and director Michael Cimino, both went to bat for the actor and they won out. Cazale never lived to see the release of the film and thus never learned that every single feature in which he had starred had received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. He is the only actor of those with multiple films to their credit who has such a distinction.

Today, Cazale is the only actor with multiple roles to have all of his films listed on the IMDB Top 250. In spite of the desperate, violent characters he played in a handful of films, he was by all accounts an enormously kind and gentle person off screen, having been a close personal friend of most of the actors he had worked with. Friend and frequent co-star Al Pacino collaborated with the actor on three films and various theater productions, referred to Cazale as "his acting partner", a guy he could've acted with for the rest of his life.

Years after his death he appeared in a sixth feature film, The Godfather: Part III (1990) in archive footage. The Godfather: Part III was also nominated for Best Picture. Has a theater named after him, the McGinn/Cazale Theatre, located at 2162 Broadway at 76th Street, above the Promenade Theatre on the fourth floor. The theater sits from 99 to 108 people.

Filmography

• The Godfather (1972)
• The Conversation (1974)
• The Godfather Part II (1974)
• Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
• The Deer Hunter (1978)
• The Godfather Part III (1990) (Archive footage)

External link

• John Cazale at IMDb