Ben Gazzara

Biagio Anthony Gazzara, known professionally as Ben Gazzara, was born on August 28, 1930, in New York City, and died on February 3, 2012. An actor and director who worked across stage, film, and television, he earned a Primetime Emmy Award, a Drama Desk Award, and received nominations for three Golden Globe Awards and three Tony Awards over the course of his career.

Gazzara grew up in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, on East 29th Street, and participated in the drama program at the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club located across the street from his home. He attended Stuyvesant High School before graduating from Saint Simon Stock in the Bronx. He later credited his discovery of acting with steering him away from a life of crime during his teenage years. He initially enrolled at City College of New York to study electrical engineering but left after two years to pursue acting, taking classes at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School under German director Erwin Piscator. He subsequently joined the Actors Studio and remained a lifelong member.

His professional career began in earnest with an off-Broadway performance in End as a Man in 1953, which transferred to Broadway and ran into 1954, earning him a Theatre World Award that year. In 1954, having modified his surname from the original spelling of Gazzarra, he made several appearances in the NBC legal drama Justice, based on case studies from the Legal Aid Society of New York. His Broadway career, which spanned from 1953 to 2006, included productions such as Awake and Sing!, Shimada, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Duet, and Traveller Without Luggage, among others.

Gazzara became a Broadway sensation when he was cast as Brick in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof during the 1955–56 season, opposite Barbara Bel Geddes and directed by Elia Kazan. He declined the role in the film adaptation, a part that eventually went to Paul Newman following the death of James Dean. He followed that success with another extended run in A Hatful of Rain in 1956 and later appeared in the 1963 Actors Studio production of Strange Interlude on Broadway. He appeared in Hughie on Broadway in 1975 and returned the following year for a production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? alongside Colleen Dewhurst. A short Broadway run in A Traveller without Luggage came in 1964. In 2006, he received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance.

His transition to film began with The Strange One in 1957, produced by Sam Spiegel alongside fellow Actors Studio members, followed by a high-profile turn in Otto Preminger's courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder in 1959, in which he played a soldier on trial for avenging his wife's rape. That performance established him as a significant screen presence. He subsequently traveled to Italy to make The Passionate Thief in 1960 with Anna Magnani and Totò, the first of many projects he would undertake in Europe, where he worked with directors including Giuseppe Tornatore, Giuliano Montaldo, Marco Ferreri, and Lars von Trier.

On television, Gazzara starred in the ABC series Arrest and Trial from 1963 to 1964, before gaining wider fame in the NBC series Run for Your Life, which ran from 1965 to 1968. In that series he played a terminally ill man attempting to make the most of his remaining time, a role that earned him two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and three Golden Globe nominations for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series – Drama. He starred in the television miniseries QB VII in 1974, a six-and-a-half-hour production based on Leon Uris's novel that co-starred Anthony Hopkins and won six Primetime Emmy Awards. His sole Emmy win came decades later, for the television film Hysterical Blindness in 2002.

Among the most significant creative relationships of Gazzara's career was his collaboration with director John Cassavetes. The two first worked together on Husbands in 1970, alongside Peter Falk and Cassavetes himself. Gazzara went on to star in Cassavetes's The Killing of a Chinese Bookie in 1976, taking the lead role of strip-joint owner Cosmo Vitelli, and appeared in Opening Night in 1977 as stage director Manny Victor. Director Peter Bogdanovich also played an important role in Gazzara's film career, casting him in the title role of Saint Jack in 1979, a performance that raised his profile and led to further prominent film roles.

His film work across several decades included The Bridge at Remagen in 1969, Capone in 1975, Voyage of the Damned in 1976, Road House in 1989, The Spanish Prisoner in 1997, and The Big Lebowski, Buffalo '66, and Happiness, all released in 1998. He also appeared in The Thomas Crown Affair and Summer of Sam in 1999, Dogville in 2003, and Paris, je t'aime in 2006.