Abe Vigoda, who played the decrepit Detective Phil Fish in the television sitcom “Barney Miller” and Mafia lieutenant Sal Tessio in the original “Godfather” movie, died Tuesday.He was 94.Vigoda passed away at the New Jersey home.
A noted New York stage actor by the time Francis Ford Coppola came calling about “The Godfather,” Vigoda had not read the book and wasn’t thinking about mobster roles; he was Jewish, not Italian.
But Coppola liked him as a mobster, and he won the role of Tessio in the 1972 original and returned for the 1974 sequel.
@Agency report.
