2016 Deaths

[welcomechris]

What a terrible year so far, I'm losing count of our losses... So sad and I hope they're all enjoying themselves up in heaven

*Robert Stigwood: April 16, 1934 - January 4, 2016
*David Bowie: January 8, 1947 - January 10, 2016
*David Margulies: February 19, 1937 - January 11, 2016
*René Angélil: January 16, 1942 - January 14, 2016
*Alan Rickman: February 21, 1946 - January 14, 2016
*Dan Haggerty: November 19, 1941 - January 15, 2016
*Daniel Dion: November 29, 1956 - January 16, 2016
*Dale Griffin: October 24, 1948 - January 17, 2016
*Glenn Frey: November 6, 1948 - January 18, 2016
*Walt Williams: December 19, 1943 - January 23, 2016
*Abe Vigoda: February 24, 1921 - January 26, 2016
*Black: May 26, 1962 - January 26, 2016
*Vincent "Buddy" Cianci: April 30, 1941 – January 28, 2016
*Paul Kantner: March 17, 1941 – January 28, 2016

[Missy]

Just before the year started there was already Lemmy at 70 and Stevie Wright at 68.

It's been found that Lemmy died of prostate cancer. http://www.theguardian.com/music/201...th-certificate

Stevie Wright died December 27 2015. He may not be well known overseas outside of Australia, but he could easily have been the original lead singer of AC/DC if he hadn't been so messed up. He had close connections with the Young brothers and Bon Scott was a vety similar vocalist and performer. He was making waves, being noticed by Jagger and McCartney, and then it all fell apart.

So I was still reeling from that when the news came through about Bowie (who ironically had covered a song originally done by Stevie Wright) but it just continues. I feel like we're witnessing the closing of a chapter in music history.

[priestofnothing]

A lot of terminally ill people "hold on" for the holidays and then finally let go. This happened with my mother 12 years ago - she passed on Jan 20th. I am convinced she held on for so long in order to spend one last holiday season with us.

[Missy]

Not a musician himself, but very involved in the British music industry. Robert Stigwood 16 April 1934 - 4 January 2016 aged 81.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...05-glzkvf.html

I've heard his name mentioned quite a few times over the years. He had humble beginnings not far from where I live, but I think he spent most of his life in England.

[Macfanforever]

Not a musician but a great actor.Abe Vigoda gone at 94 .

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/27/ar...ies-at-94.html

Abe Vigoda, of ‘Godfather’ and ‘Barney Miller,’ Dies at 94

By STUART LAVIETESJAN. 26, 2016

Abe Vigoda in 1997. “I’m really not a Mafia person,” Mr. Vigoda said. Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times


Abe Vigoda, the sad-faced actor who emerged from a workmanlike stage career to find belated fame in the 1970s as the earnest mobster Tessio in “The Godfather” and the dyspeptic Detective Phil Fish on the hit sitcom “Barney Miller,” died on Tuesday morning in Woodland Park, N.J. He was 94, having outlived by about 34 years an erroneous report of his death that made him a cult figure.

His daughter Carol Vigoda Fuchs, told The Associated Press that Mr. Vigoda had died in his sleep at her home.

Mr. Vigoda, tall and graying with a long face, sturdy jaw and deep-set eyes, was a 50-year-old stage actor who had earned his stripes on and off Broadway performing Shakespeare, Strindberg and Shaw when he got his big Hollywood break, winning the role of Salvatore Tessio in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic adaptation of the Mario Puzo novel “The Godfather.”

“I’m really not a Mafia person,” Mr. Vigoda, who was of Russian-Jewish descent, 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.”
Photo
Abe Vigoda, center, Jack Soo and Hal Linden in an episode of “Barney Miller” in 1975. Credit ABC Photo Archives

To prepare himself for the role — a high-ranking mobster, or capo, who runs a crew of his own — Mr. Vigoda frequented the Lower East Side and other New York neighborhoods that are backdrops in the story. He “practically lived in Little Italy during the shoot,” he told Vanity Fair.

Mr. Vigoda’s Tessio is an old friend and ally of the Godfather, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando). But in a story that traces a classical tragic arc, he becomes a figure of disloyalty who pays a steep price for his betrayal.

He reprised the role in a flashback scene in “The Godfather: Part II” in 1974.

A year after that, Mr. Vigoda was cast as the worn-out Detective Fish on the station-house sitcom “Barney Miller,” opposite Hal Linden in the title role. Mr. Vigoda stayed with the series for two seasons, 1975-76 and 1976-77, and the opening episodes of a third, earning three Emmy nominations for best supporting actor in a comedy series. (The show continued without him until 1982.)

He was so successful that he achieved a rare television feat: appearing in his own spinoff, “Fish,” while still in the cast of the original show. “Fish” centered on the detective’s home life as the foster parent of five children of various racial and ethnic backgrounds. It ran from February 1977 to May 1978.

Mr. Vigoda’s days as a television star seemed to be behind him in 1982 when People magazine reported that he had died. Mr. Vigoda responded by placing an ad in Variety with a photo showing him sitting up in a coffin and holding a copy of the offending issue of the magazine.

His “death” became a running joke. “I have nothing to say about Abe,” Billy Crystal said at a roast of Rob Reiner at the Friars Club, where Mr. Vigoda was a regular. “I was always taught to speak well of the dead.”

David Letterman and Conan O’Brien invited him onto their late-night shows to prove he was still alive. A website, abevigoda.com, continued to give updates on his status.

His name was kept alive in other ways as well. A punk-rock group appropriated his name as its own. And the Beastie Boys rapped about him in their 1986 album, “Licensed to Ill”: I got a girl in the castle and one in the pagoda/You know I got rhymes like Abe Vigoda.

Abraham Charles Vigoda was born in New York City on Feb. 24, 1921, to Samuel Vigoda, a tailor, and the former Lena Moses, immigrants from Russia. Abe, one of three brothers, began acting as a teenager and turned professional in 1947, performing almost entirely onstage for the next 20 or more years.

In 1960 he starred in an Off Broadway production of the Strindberg drama “The Dance of Death,” and he appeared frequently at the New York Shakespeare Festival in the early ’60s, as John of Gaunt in “Richard II” and King Alonzo in “The Tempest,” among other roles.

In 1963 he had the lead in an Off Broadway production of Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” Five years later he was on Broadway in Peter Weiss’s “Marat/Sade.”

Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.

After his successes in “The Godfather” and “Barney Miller,” Mr. Vigoda was seen on the prime-time sitcom “Soap” in 1978 and later on daytime soap operas like “As the World Turns” in 1985 and “Santa Barbara” in 1989. He also appeared in several television movies and on many prime-time series, including “Law & Order,” “Mad About You” and “Touched by an Angel.”
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Recent Comments
mike fitz 30 minutes ago

The other day I was in an architectural salvage place and they had a remote-elevated tank toilet. I thought of Abe Vigoda as the character...
Peter R. 30 minutes ago

nothing about his date of birth, parents, education, early life, early career? Disappointing obit from the NYT.
Mr. Pants 30 minutes ago

I will always remember spotting Mr. Vigoda eating a sandwich at the Food Emporium on the Upper West Side. I told my friend, "Don't stare......

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He was seen in dozens of movies as well, including “Cannonball Run II” (1984), “Look Who’s Talking” (1989), “Joe Versus the Volcano” (1990), “Sugar Hill” (1993) and “Underworld” (1996). His last movie role was in 2007, in the short “Frankie the Squirrel.”

But it was the first film that mattered the most to him.

“‘The Godfather’ changed my life,” he told The New York Times in 2001.

Probably his most indelible scene from the film was his last, in which Tessio is confronted by the family lawyer, the consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), and four henchmen outside the Corleone compound after they discover that he had been in on a plot to kill the Godfather’s son and successor, Michael (Al Pacino).

Tessio’s face drops; he doesn’t have to be told what will happen next.

“Tell Mike it was only business,” he says to Hagen resignedly. “I always liked him.”

Tessio makes a final plea.

“Tom, can you get me off the hook? For old times’ sake?”

Hagen shakes his head; the code must be honored.

“Can’t do it, Sally.”

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[mylittledemon]

Lost David Margulies too!