John Cazale¶
At a glance¶
- Born
- August 12, 1935, Revere, Massachusetts
- Died
- March 13, 1978, New York, aged 42 — lung cancer
- Films
- Five. All five nominated for Best Picture.
- Godfather role
- Fredo Corleone, films I and II
- Partner
- Meryl Streep
John Cazale was one of the great actors of our time — that time, any time. Al Pacino
The filmography¶
There is no other career like it, and there never will be:
| Year | Film | Best Picture |
|---|---|---|
| 1972 | The Godfather | Won |
| 1974 | The Conversation | Nominated |
| 1974 | The Godfather Part II | Won |
| 1975 | Dog Day Afternoon | Nominated |
| 1978 | The Deer Hunter | Won |
Five films in six years. Every one nominated for Best Picture; three won. He was never nominated for anything himself.
Before¶
A Boston-area Italian-American who studied at Oberlin and Boston University, then moved to New York and took a job as a messenger, where his colleague was Al Pacino. They became close friends and frequent stage partners; they appeared together in Off-Broadway work through the 1960s, and Cazale won two Obie Awards.
Coppola cast him as Fredo out of that theatre work, then liked him so much he wrote the part of Stan in The Conversation (1974) specifically for him. Sidney Lumet cast him opposite Pacino again in Dog Day Afternoon (1975), where his Sal — the quiet, terrifyingly literal accomplice who wants to be flown to Wyoming — is arguably as fine a piece of acting as Fredo.
Fredo¶
The reason the trilogy has a heart.
Cazale plays a man who has been told his whole life that he isn't much and has believed it — the wet eyes, the laugh that comes half a beat late, the hands that never know where to go. The Havana outburst (I'm smart! I'm not dumb like everybody says!) works because five hours of screen time have earned it and because Cazale never once plays for sympathy.
Bruce Fretts's summary is the best short one: he made his character's wounded pride hauntingly palpable.
See Fredo Corleone.
The end¶
He was diagnosed with lung cancer during pre-production on The Deer Hunter (1978).
The studio wanted him replaced and the insurers refused to cover him. Meryl Streep — his partner, whom he had met in a 1976 Shakespeare in the Park production of Measure for Measure — threatened to walk if he was cut. Robert De Niro reportedly paid the insurance himself. Michael Cimino rescheduled the production to shoot all of Cazale's scenes first.
He finished the film. He died on March 13, 1978, at 42, with Streep at his side. He never saw it released.
His performance in it is the one where you can see the illness, and it is not distracting; it is unbearable.
Legacy¶
The 2009 documentary I Knew It Was You — the title from Michael's line to Fredo — collects testimony from Pacino, Streep, De Niro, Gene Hackman, Sidney Lumet, Coppola, Israel Horovitz, Steve Buscemi, Sam Rockwell, and Philip Seymour Hoffman. It is short, and it is the best available account of what a character actor's actual influence looks like.
He appears posthumously in The Godfather Part II's 1941 flashback via existing footage, and in The Deer Hunter, released eight months after his death.