[TV orNotTV] Ben Gazzara Dead @81: Guess he squeezed more than thirty years of living into more than one or two...

[PGage]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/movies/ben-gazzara-actor-of-stage-and-screen-dies-at-81.html

I have dim memories of listing to my mother watch Run For Your Life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8xT2tW6-Rk) through my bedroom door when I was a kid, supposed to be asleep. Of course I dug his edgy films, and "An Early Frost" is one of the classics of the tv movie genre. I paste below the most tv-intenisve paragraph from his NYT Obit. I note again the omission of Columbo-related references in NYT Obits - Ben directed two of the better ones: "A Friend in Deed" (one of my all time favorites, where a guy who killed his wife goes for help from his police commissioner friend and is asked to perform a murder for him in kind)  and "Troubled Waters" (also a good one, with Columbo on a cruise).

"He was a familiar presence on television. “Run for Your Life,” in which he played a terminally ill man, was seen on NBC from 1965 to 1968, earning him two Emmy nominations. He was nominated again for his role as the father of a young man with AIDS in the 1985 television movie “An Early Frost”; his old friend Ms. Rowlands played his wife. He won a supporting-actor Emmy for his work in the 2002 HBO film “Hysterical Blindness,” playing the romantic interest of a character again played by Ms. Rowlands."

[Dave Sikula]

In recent years, when I heard Gazarra's name, I was always reminded of
the section in Elaine Stritch's show that dealt with him. Stritch and
Gazzara were an item until she broke up with him. "I dumped him for
Rock Hudson. And we know what a bum deal -that- turned out to be!"

RIP, Mr. Gazzara.

--Dave Sikula

On Feb 3, 8:31 pm, PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/movies/ben-gazzara-actor-of-stage-a...

>
> I have dim memories of listing to my mother watch Run For Your Life (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8xT2tW6-Rk) through my bedroom door when I
> was a kid, supposed to be asleep. Of course I dug his edgy films, and "An
> Early Frost" is one of the classics of the tv movie genre. I paste below
> the most tv-intenisve paragraph from his NYT Obit. I note again the
> omission of Columbo-related references in NYT Obits - Ben directed two of
> the better ones: "A Friend in Deed" (one of my all time favorites, where a
> guy who killed his wife goes for help from his police commissioner friend
> and is asked to perform a murder for him in kind)  and "Troubled Waters"
> (also a good one, with Columbo on a cruise).
>
> "He was a familiar presence on television. “Run for Your

> Life,”<http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/307081/Run-for-Your-Life/overview>in

> which he played a terminally ill man, was seen on NBC from 1965 to
> 1968,
> earning him two Emmy nominations. He was nominated again for his role as
> the father of a young man with AIDS in the 1985 television movie “An Early

> Frost” <http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/15094/An-Early-Frost/overview>; his

> old friend Ms. Rowlands played his wife. He won a supporting-actor Emmy for
> his work in the 2002 HBO film “Hysterical

> Blindness,”<http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/261171/Hysterical-Blindness/overview>playing

[Melissa P]

I discovered Ben Gazzara watching QB VIII, one of the few movies (or made-for-TV movies) that’s better than the book.

--
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