Abe Vigoda
A lot of famous people live, or at least spend time, in New York City. I've had friends tell me they've run into everyone from Uma Thurman (hanging out in the Village) to Bill Clinton (coming out of Serendipity, not McDonald's).I've also seen a couple of celebrities, but there's one I keep running into - on the street, in the grocery store - Abe Vigoda. That's right, Abe Vigoda. You know, Detective Phil Fish from Barney Miller, Sal Tessio from The Godfather ("Tom, can you get me off the hook? For old times' sake?" "Can't do it Sally.").
Abe Vigoda
The first time I saw Abe, we were both doing our grocery shopping in Food Emporium. As soon as I left the store I called my father:
Dude, Abe Vigoda shops in my Food Emporium!
Aron, Abe Vigoda is dead.
My father was wrong then, and he's wrong as of 4:10pm EST today.
Abe Vigoda lives!
Labels: celebrity sighting, film
posted by Aron @ 5:17 PM
2 Comments:
If you keep running into him, have you said hi?
Mom
I thought Abe Vigoda was dead. I also was sure Burgess Meredith was dead long before he actually gave up the ghost (1997).
But the worst was in 1986, my sophomore year in high school. I was assigned to do an oral presentation on Kurt Vonnegut. I worked hard on it. Read 'Cat's Cradle,' 'Slaughterhouse-Five' and everything. I even pulled an obscure biographical piece from the local library, which reported that he suffered a fatal MI in his home state of Indiana in 1982. I reported this to the class without hesitation ... this was before the days of Google-based fact-checking.
The trouble was that the movie 'Back to School,' starring Rodney Dangerfield, Burt Young and the incomparable William Zabka, had just been released. Evidently every other person in the class (including the teacher) had seen it. Vonnegut has a nice cameo, playing himself. He even says, "I'm Kurt Vonnegut." As you probably know, he lived more than 20 more years, until last April.
Bottom line: Rodney Dangerfield movies are more reliable sources than biographical literature from the Aston Public Library.
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