If ever there were a character actor who had true and steadfast character, there was Ben Gazzara. Born Biaggo Anthony Gazzara at the end of a New York summer in 1930, a first generation Sicilian-American born into a struggling blue-collar family, who were aristocrats in spirit but just about got suppers on the table. Gazzara, already seasoned at twelve, learned himself how to carpe diem and that he did when his neighbor, Howard Sinclair who only just happened to be the impresario of young children's acting program, gave the young Ben an offer he couldn't refuse - a walk-on role as an old roue in a Edward Plunkett play. And that early venture offset a lifelong commitment to stage and ultimately screen.
Gazzara was an honor student in high school, collegiate and driven, yet was not about to give up on his pursuit of the actors life and made sure drama classes were firmly in his rota when he entered university during the post-war years. In just four years time he enlisted at the infamous place budding actors a la Brando and Dean honed their formidable ability - The Actors Studio. Gazzara got there right on clock and was fortunate to get the full on continental Strasberg and Kazan experience. And though Ben was chiefly a character actor when it came to the movies, in the theater circuit, he was a kahuna of epic proportion; securing a lead, when only first making a name for himself in the Tennesee Williams moneymaker Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, could no way equate with any such shabby business.
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| Three the hard way. (Husbands,1970) |
And television's regal Roy Huggins would have it no other way, and rightfully so, when he made sure it was Gazzara be the one to hit the ground running in the three-season NBC adventure drama, Run For Your Life. Earlier, Gazzara was featured as the no-nonsense, thinking-man's copper in the short-lived yet critically acclaimed ABC courtroom drama Arrest and Trial in 1963. Arrest and Trial was in a shameless and unwarrantable move, recreated in the year 1990, with the long and winding twenty- season series Law and Order.
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| Gazzara in the happenin' Huggins hurrah Run For Your Life |
And though Gazzara was acquainted with fellow local thespians Peter Falk and John Cassavetes, who often found themselves auditioning for the same parts in New York's incestuous acting community at the time, it was no surprise. They had a respective appreciation for one another, and in 1969, Cassavetes had a brainchild - to direct a transgressive tale of three close comrades following the loss of their fourth musketeer who make a foray into a collective midlife crisis in Husbands. The film was instrumental in uniting the three actors who would remain bosom buddies for years after post-production and who more than likely now have all reconvened in that studio set in the sky.