Abe Vigoda

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Abe Vigoda, born Abraham Charles Vigoda on February 24, 1921, in New York City, is an American movie and television actor. Born to a Jewish-Mexican father and an Italian mother,^{[citation needed]} Vigoda gained fame through his supporting character roles, notably as mobster Sal Tessio in the 1972 movie The Godfather. He later played Detective Sgt. Fish on the television series Barney Miller and its spinoff Fish. Before Barney Miller, he made a few appearances on the ABC-TV soap Dark Shadows.

He has been mentioned in popular works by artists such as the Beastie Boys. He makes regular appearances as himself on the television show Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

In 1982, Vigoda enjoyed a little extra publicity when People magazine erroneously declared him dead. Vigoda took the error with good humor, posing for a photograph showing him sitting up in a coffin, holding the magazine in question. Since then his erroneous death has remained a running joke for Vigoda; for example, a November 2006 Conan O'Brien sketch shows an audience member "summoning the dead." The "deceased person" turns out to be Vigoda. This rumor was nearly started again in 1987 when a reporter for Secaucus, New Jersey television station WWOR, Channel 9 erroneously referred to him as "the late Abe Vigoda." She corrected herself on the air the next day.

In 1999 Vigoda experienced a potentially life-threatening situation. While he was a passenger aboard American Airlines Flight 180 from San Diego to New York, the plane experienced a burst compressed air line in the passenger cabin. Oxygen masks were deployed, and the plane made an emergency descent and landing in Palm Springs. Vigoda and five other passengers were listed as "slightly injured."

In 2006, Vigoda reprised the role of Tessio in The Godfather: The Game.

1 Web humor
2 Filmography
3 Television work
4 External links

[edit] Web humor

Greg Galcik created the website abevigoda.com in May 2001, which was a single page displaying "Abe Vigoda's status" which reports whether Abe Vigoda is currently alive or dead. In 2002, Galcik recorded a gothic rock song Abe Vigoda's Dead, a parody of Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus.

In 2004, programmer Bob Vesterman released the Abe Vigoda Status extension for the Mozilla Firefox web browser, so the user's Firefox status bar would display whether Vigoda were alive or dead. The extension's humor made it a common pick as journalists described the new field of browser extensions and it became quite popular, especially after being posted on the website Fark.com. The ensuing traffic briefly crashed Vesterman's website. As of 2006, the extension is no longer available and does not work.

The website to the PC game They Came From Hollywood, a game known for its constant delays, uses Abe Vigoda's status as a way to tell fans whether development of the game has been cancelled or not.