Who's Almost Who In Knickerbocker Village History: Ben Gazzara

Joe Bruno also submitted Ben Gazzara for consideration of the Who's Almost Who Distinction. Above: Ben in Anatomy of A Murder

ALSO, BEN GAZARRA'S BROTHER TONY GAZARRA, HAD AN OFFICE AT 98 BAYARD STREET, RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO MY COUSIN JUNIOR'S PIZZA PALACE AT 96 BAYARD STREET. IT'S NOW THE PARKING LOT WHERE FAT ... WORKS. THE BUILDING WAS KNOCKED DOWN IN THE LATE 70'S OR 80'S. MY UNCLE JOHNNY LIVED ON THE TOP FLOOR.
I REMEMBER TONY GAZARRA WAS IN MY COUSIN'S PIZZERIA ALMOST EVERY DAY. EATING PIZZA AND DRINKING COFFEE. HIS BROTHER BEN CAME BY ONCE IN A WHILE TOO. TONY WAS EITHER A BAIL BONDSMAN OR AN ACCOUNTANT. I FORGET WHICH.

Ben's biography. He's a Stuyvesant HS grad. In the 1930 his family is living at 312 E. 39th Street. His brother tony was born in 1925.

Biagio Anthony “Ben” Gazzara (born August 28, 1930) is an American actor. Gazzara was born in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina (née Cusumano) and Antonio Gazzara, who was a laborer. Gazzara grew up on New York's tough Lower East Side. He attended New York City's famed Stuyvesant High School. He found relief from his bleak surroundings by joining a theater company at a very young age. Years later, he said that the discovery of his love for acting saved him from a life of crime during his teen years. Despite his obvious talent, he went to City College of New York to study electrical engineering. After two years, he relented, and after a short intermission joined the Actor's Studio.
In the 1950s, Gazzara starred in various Broadway productions, most notably Tennessee Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, directed by Elia Kazan. However, he lost out on the film role to Paul Newman. He was nominated three times for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play -- in 1956 for A Hatful of Rain, in 1975 for the paired short plays Hughie and Duet and in 1977 for a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opposite Colleen Dewhurst.
Gazzara has had a long and varied acting career, with spells as an accomplished director, mostly in television. He joined other Actors Studio members in the 1957 film The Strange One. Then came a high-profile performance as a soldier on trial for avenging his wife's rape in Otto Preminger's 1959 classic courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder.
Subsequent screen credits included The Young Doctors (1961), A Rage to Live (1965), The Bridge at Remagen (1969), Capone (1975), Voyage of the Damned (1976), and High Velocity (1976).
Gazzara became well-known in a couple of television series, beginning with Arrest and Trial, which ran from 1963-64 on ABC, and the more successful series Run for Your Life from 1965 to 1968 on NBC, in which he played a terminally ill man trying to get the most out of the last months of his life.
Some of the actor's most formidable characters were those he created with his friend John Cassavetes in the 1970s. They collaborated for the first time on Cassavetes' film Husbands (1970) where he appeared alongside Peter Falk and Cassavetes himself. In The Killing of a Chinese Bookie Gazzara took the leading role of the hapless strip joint owner, Cosmo Vitelli. A year later Gazzara starred in yet another Cassavetes-directed movie, Opening Night, as stage director Manny Victor, who struggles with the mentally unstable star of his show, played by Cassavetes' wife Gena Rowlands.
In the 1980s, he could be seen in a variety of movies, such as Saint Jack and They All Laughed (both directed by Peter Bogdanovich), and in a villainous role in the oft-televised Patrick Swayze film Road House that the actor jokes is probably his most-watched performance. He starred with Rowlands in a controversial and critically acclaimed AIDS-themed TV movie An Early Frost (1985).
Very much in demand for supporting parts, Gazzara appeared in thirty-eight films in the 1990s, many for TV. He worked with a number of renowned directors, such as the Coen Brothers (The Big Lebowski), Spike Lee (Summer of Sam), David Mamet (The Spanish Prisoner), Walter Hugo Khouri (Forever), Todd Solondz (Happiness), John Turturro (Illuminata), and John McTiernan (The Thomas Crown Affair).
Well into his seventies, Gazzara continues to be active. In 2003, he was in the ensemble cast of the experimental film Dogville, directed by Lars von Trier of Denmark and starring Nicole Kidman. Several other projects have recently been completed or are currently in production.
Gazzara contracted throat cancer in 1999. He lost more than 40 pounds during treatment.
He has been married three times, to Louise Erickson (1951-57), actress Janice Rule (1961-79) and Elke Krivat (sometimes listed as Elke Stuckmann) since 1982.
In his 2004 autobiography, "In the Moment: My Life as an Actor," the actor recounts his love affair with actress Audrey Hepburn. They co-starred in two of her final films, "Bloodline" (1979) and "They All Laughed" (1981).
Friend of Robert Vaughn (Napoleon Solo)( The Man From U.N.C.L.E.). During filming of ( in Czechoslovakia ) the big budget war movie The Bridge at Remagen with co-stars , Robert Vaughn ,Bradford Dillman and George Segal , was placed under house arrest during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia he and friend Robert Vaughn planned a daring escape of a Czechoslovakian translator who wanted to defect to the West and ultimatly the US , this adventure rivaled anything Napoleon Solo would have attempted on The Man From U.N.C.L.E.