Hollywood’s Most Tragic Love Story

Hollywood’s Most Tragic Love Story

Soon after John Cazal’s death, Dustin Hoffman approached his grieving girlfriend, Meryl Streep, and his proposition was absolutely twisted. In his brief career, John Cazal did one thing that no actor has ever done before. He only appeared in movies that received Best Picture Academy Award nominations. It certainly helped that Cazal worked with acclaimed directors and some of Hollywood’s greatest stars, but there was something about Cazal that turned his minor roles into unforgettable characters. Yet, for all that hard work, he ended up meeting a heartbreaking end.

John Cazal was born on August 12th, 1935, and raised in various places throughout the state of Massachusetts. From the time he was just a teen, Cazal knew he wanted to be an actor. New York was nearby and teeming with acting opportunities, but strangely, Cazal didn’t see it that way and made a surprising choice. Cazal decided on Ohio as the place to start his acting education, and he ended up at Oberlin College. It was worth the trek to Ohio, as its other notable graduates included Nobel Prize winners and Rhodes Scholars.

Once he’d gotten all he could from Ohio, Cazal went back to his home state and studied at Boston University. Finally, he was ready to start his career as an actor. While he was getting his career started, John Cazal did a stint driving cabs to support himself. At the same time, he began to get parts in the theater and received amazing reviews. Finally, it was time to hit the Big Apple. Cazal continued looking for acting jobs while working as a photographer, then he did something strange. Cazal walked away from acting and took a very non-theatrical job with Standard Oil as a messenger.

This may sound like the end of his career in show business, but it was actually the beginning. While working for Standard Oil, one of his co-workers was another struggling actor named Al Pacino. The two became fast friends while working as messengers by day, and they acted side by side in a play at night. Then, when the play moved from Waterford, Connecticut, to New York City, they got a huge surprise. There must have been just a little competition between Cazal and Pacino. After all, they were buddies acting together, and I’m sure they wanted to know which one had the edge over the other.

When award season came along, the answer would certainly present itself. As it turned out, they both won Obies for their performances. Cazal had conquered the New York stage scene, and he was ready for something completely different. In 1968, John Cazal got his first break off the stage. This was in the hard-hitting ABC show NYPD, where Cazal played opposite rising stars like Martin Sheen and Raul Julia. It seemed like an easy step up to acting success, but it left Cazal feeling empty. After the single episode, he went back to the stage and never returned to TV again.

Something even bigger was calling his name. Casting agent Fred Roos went to see an off-Broadway show in order to check out an actor he thought might be good for a role in a film he was working on. The actor was Richard Dreyfuss. As it turned out, Cazal was appearing alongside Dreyfuss, but he was the one who grabbed Roos’s attention. Sorry, Richard! Roos was about to make Cazal a stunning offer that he couldn’t refuse. It wasn’t a huge role, but it was going to be a very important movie. The film was the much-anticipated cinema adaptation of the best-selling novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo.

To add to the buzz, The Godfather had an up-and-coming director named Francis Ford Coppola. This was going to be Cazal’s big break. John Cazal got the call to play the role of Fredo Corleone in The Godfather. Cazal couldn’t believe his luck. Not only was he going to be acting alongside his buddy Pacino, but also someone he worshipped, Marlon Brando. Now, all he had to do was figure out a way to make his small role shine. The challenge with Cazal’s role in The Godfather was that his character, Fredo Corleone, is the loser of the family.

He’s clumsy and not nearly as cool as his brothers, Michael and Sonny, played by Pacino and James Caan. In the wrong hands, Fredo could come off as just a joke, but Cazal needed to make his character resonate with audiences. One of the ways he did this was unforgettable. One scene that got the audience’s attention was the moment when Brando’s character gets shot. Cazal valiantly tries to shelter him, but when he fails, Cazal bursts into tears. As we all know now, The Godfather was a colossal hit. It was the highest-grossing film of the year and received a whopping nine Academy Award nominations and seven more for the Golden Globes.

When the dust had settled, The Godfather had the Best Picture award of both the Oscars and the Globes. Even though Cazal didn’t get a nomination, he now had a huge hit under his belt. What he did next would determine his career. The Godfather was a groundbreaking film that accomplished several things. It transformed Cazal’s buddy Al Pacino into a huge bankable leading man, and it gave Marlon Brando’s career a much-needed reinvigoration. On top of all that, it made Coppola one of the most in-demand directors in Hollywood. Suddenly, he could have his choice of actors, and the fear was that he would forget all about Cazal.

However, Coppola was so taken with Cazal’s small part in The Godfather that he wrote a part just for him in his next movie. This was The Conversation, and it starred Gene Hackman. Again, this was not a starring role, but it was much bigger than the one he’d had in The Godfather. This film got three Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. Cazal was starting to look like some kind of cinematic good-luck charm. Surely, he could leverage this into a starring role when it was time for the sequel to The Godfather. John Cazal was ready and willing to play Fredo again.

Because he’d been such a success in the first film, Coppola decided to make his role much larger in The Godfather Part II. This was a bit risky because, as anyone will tell you, making a sequel to a much-loved movie can easily backfire. Cazal was still not a leading man, and now he was in a sequel that would likely pale in comparison to the original. This could end up being a disaster. In The Godfather Part II, Cazal’s character, Fredo, turns his back on his family, and in one scene, he has to tell his brother Michael, played by Pacino, why he did it.

It was going to be a very emotional scene, but Coppola made a strange choice. He wanted Cazal to deliver all his lines while seated in a chair. This scene between Cazal and Pacino in The Godfather Part II was so popular that it got its own name. Film buffs call it the “I was passed over” scene. The scene has been called big and brilliant, and film historians still look back at it as one of the most important in the film. They even use the word “genius” to talk about Cazal’s performance, but this wasn’t everything for Cazal.

Another unforgettable scene in The Godfather Part II is when Fredo receives a very important kiss from his brother Michael. When Michael kisses Fredo, he’s saying that they are going to have to kill him. Cazal’s performance is what made the scene unforgettable, as he tries to get out of Michael’s grip while showing an excruciating terror on his face. Cazal’s turn in The Godfather Part II haunted audiences, but was it an award-worthy performance? Cazal would have to wait and see. As it turned out, The Godfather Part II broke all the rules about a sequel.

It received nine nominations and won a very respectable six, including Best Picture and Best Director. For Cazal, there was just one problem. He didn’t get the nod from the Academy for his performance. But at the very least, this was the third film he’d been in that received a nomination for Best Picture from the Academy and the second that had won. Up until this point, Cazal had only worked for one director, Coppola. The question was, could he turn in unforgettable performances without Coppola’s stewardship? While John Cazal was riding high as a character actor in small roles, his buddy Al Pacino was doing the same, but in lead roles.

He’d received an Academy Award nomination for The Godfather Part II, which may have irked Cazal. When Pacino got an offer for his next big part, he wanted his pal with him. There was only one problem. The role that Pacino wanted for John Cazal was his sidekick in a bank heist gone wrong film called Dog Day Afternoon. That’s when they ran into a roadblock. The issue was that this story was based on true events, and Cazal was more than 20 years older than the real person. Director Sidney Lumet was not on board, but after just one meeting, he agreed that Cazal was the one for the role.

Now, Cazal had to prove he had what it took to make Dog Day Afternoon a hit. In one scene in Dog Day Afternoon, John Cazal decided to go off-script. The bank robbers wanted a plane to get them away from America and their problems. Someone asked them where they want the plane to take them, but the script didn’t provide an answer. As a joke, Cazal said “Wyoming,” and the director laughed so hard that he almost spoiled the take. Wyoming stayed in the film, and Cazal just had to hope that his work would please audiences and members of the Academy. Once again, a film featuring Cazal received a nomination for Best Picture and Best Director.

In all, Dog Day Afternoon got six nods from the Academy, but only one win. Cazal finally got his own nod, and it came from the Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actor. He was up against fellow Dog Day Afternoon actor Charles Durning, but they both lost to Richard Benjamin. Cazal’s reaction was heartbreaking. At that point, Cazal thought it was time to walk away from films. Of course, walking away from film doesn’t mean walking away from acting. Cazal returned to the stage and also stayed close to his buddy Pacino. The two appeared in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.

While Pacino was certainly becoming more famous than Cazal, this play was a chance for the pair to figure out who was the better actor. After seeing Cazal and Pacino acting side by side in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a critic from The Village Voice had this to say. Cazal may be the finest actor in America today. Sure, he’d never received a nomination from the Academy, but those words bumped him one step higher than Pacino. Cazal was likely giddy from hearing such praise and headed off to tackle one of the English language’s most challenging playwrights. Cazal went to work on Shakespeare in Central Park.

This was Measure for Measure, and Cazal was about to meet up with a future superstar. The leading lady was a recent graduate from Yale School of Drama, and Cazal told Pacino that he had met the greatest actress in the history of the world. Cazal didn’t know it then, but this woman would play a huge role in his life. The woman John Cazal was acting with in Central Park was none other than Meryl Streep. But there was more to the meeting than just talent. Sparks flew between the two gifted actors, and they started dating while still working on Measure for Measure. Before long, this passionate affair soon turned into something much more serious.

They moved in together. Sadly, they didn’t have much time to be together. It seemed that John Cazal had done so much in a fairly short career, but one thing he hadn’t done was appear on Broadway. Finally, he got his chance as the lead in Agamemnon. The preview before opening night was on April 29th, 1977, and all seemed good, except it wasn’t. Out of nowhere, Cazal became sick and had to quit before opening night. This wasn’t just a cold or the flu. It was much more serious than that. After a visit to the doctor, John Cazal received a devastating diagnosis. He had lung cancer.

This was the worst news imaginable, and Cazal had to think about what to do. He’d already lined up his next film, and it was special, as he would be working with Robert De Niro, who he’d been with on The Godfather Part II. Everything was in place, except for one thing. Cazal would have to act in this gut-wrenching film while suffering from cancer. John Cazal really wanted to continue with The Deer Hunter, and Streep supported him. Even though her career was on the rise, she went above and beyond. She accepted a very minor role as a vague stock girlfriend to be near Cazal.

The director, Michael Cimino, was on board to get Cazal’s scenes done first before his cancer made it impossible to act. There was one thing, though. Cimino didn’t want to tell the studio about Cazal’s cancer, but they soon found out anyway. When Universal Pictures found out that John Cazal was suffering from lung cancer, their first thought was to replace him. When Streep got wind of this, she supported Cazal 100% by offering to quit. This made Universal sit up and take notice, but then they presented Cazal with yet another problem. Even if Universal agreed to keep John Cazal in the film, they still had to insure him.

With his diagnosis of lung cancer, this would be a huge expense, and Universal wasn’t about to pay out. Streep was still new to the business, so she likely didn’t have that kind of cash. That’s when Robert De Niro stepped in and offered to pay for the insurance. Cazal was back in the film, but now he had to prove that his cancer would not hold him back. Filming The Deer Hunter proved to be an intense experience, but not just for John Cazal. There’s a famous scene where Cazal and De Niro’s characters play Russian roulette. De Niro wanted the scene to have high stakes for both the characters and the actors, but he took it to a disturbing level.

He asked the director to put one live cartridge in the revolver. It seemed that making The Deer Hunter would end Cazal’s life one way or another. Cazal never saw The Deer Hunter. He spent his final days in a hospital with a stoic Streep by his side. In a version of the story, perhaps apocryphal, a doctor told Streep that Cazal was gone, and she began to weep. As the tale goes, Cazal then opened his eyes and said, “It’s all right, Meryl, it’s all right,” before dying. John Cazal died on March 13th, 1978. He was just 42 years old. While he didn’t get to see it, The Deer Hunter took home Academy Awards, including ones for Best Director and Best Picture.

Of course, winning awards wouldn’t bring Cazal back, but Streep found a unique way to deal with her loss. After Cazal’s passing, Dustin Hoffman lobbied to get a grieving Streep in his next film, all for a twisted reason. This was the divorce drama Kramer vs. Kramer, and Hoffman thought that Streep would be emotionally raw enough to give the role what it needed. Well, Hoffman may have been heartlessly using Streep’s grief, but it did win her her first Oscar. As it turned out, it wasn’t just losing Cazal that made Streep a better actor. In the short time that Streep was romantically linked to Cazal, she learned from him.

Streep, now considered one of Hollywood’s finest actors, said that before she worked with Cazal, she often rushed into character choices. Cazal taught her to look for other possibilities. Streep certainly took his advice and made an impressive career out of it. There were others besides Streep who benefited from Cazal’s wisdom. While they may not have had a close relationship with Cazal, other actors also said that he was a huge influence. Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon, Academy Award winners Philip Seymour Hoffman and Sam Rockwell, and Emmy Award winner Steve Buscemi all cite Cazal as an influence. It’s not surprising that this group have all done great work as supporting characters, just like Cazal himself.

The Cinema Archives website decided to put together a collection of the top performances by a male actor. In spite of being in only five films in his lifetime, never being a leading man, and sometimes having only a few minutes of screen time, Cazal came out at a very respectable place. He was number 83 out of 100. And there was even more recognition coming his way. In 1984, a theater in New York City received his name. This is the McGinn/Cazale Theater, and he shares the honor with actor Walter McGinn, who also passed at a young age. Still, you have to imagine that Cazal must have been a little heartbroken over never getting an Oscar, but that may not have been true.

When asked how he dealt with this omission in his career, Cazal showed his precocious wisdom. He said he just had to ask himself how much that or any award really mattered. What mattered to Cazal was doing the work and resonating with audiences. As it turned out, Cazal had his own secret weapon. A lot of Cazal’s roles seemed to be people who were losers. Film writer Jackson Arn said that Cazal was the master of playing people who are weak, weird, unprincipled, and visibly uncomfortable in their own skins. Maybe Cazal was just playing ordinary people, and that’s what sparked audiences’ attention.

But there was something else that made Cazal instantly relatable to his audience. Steve Buscemi, who is arguably one of the oddest-looking men to grace Hollywood screens, had his own comments about Cazal. He said that he’s so strangely looking. It’s true that Cazal had an odd look, but some say it was this look that made him fit in anywhere. Arn said that Cazal’s eyes were “black holes from which no light ever returned.” Of course, what people really want to know was who Cazal was as a person. In his few film roles, John Cazal often played violent characters, but the reality was quite the opposite.

According to the people he worked with, Cazal was nothing like his characters. They described him as gentle and kind, and he became close to many of his co-stars. In fact, if you look closely at Cazal’s film and theater history, you’ll notice something odd about the people he worked with. Few people seem to be able to stop after just one dose of Cazal. Theater directors like Joseph Papp kept coming back for more. Francis Ford Coppola used him in three of his films. Meryl Streep was in a relationship with him and worked with him twice. The big one was Pacino, who worked with Cazal in three films and three stage productions.

Pacino’s love of Cazal seemed to be on the brink of obsession. The most profound words about Cazal came from Pacino. Previously, he’d said that he wanted to work with Cazal for the rest of his life. He’d also called Cazal his acting partner. After Cazal’s passing, Pacino called him one of the greatest actors of our time, that time, anytime. Cazal had touched so many lives, and people just couldn’t seem to forget him. With such a short career, it was unlikely that there would be a whole film about Cazal’s life, or so you’d think. Tower Heist director Brett Ratner made a documentary about Cazal’s life called I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazal.

The film took its title from Cazal’s most famous scene in The Godfather Part II. It seems fitting that the line wasn’t his. Pacino said it with Cazal standing by. There’s another line from one of Cazal’s films that stands out for all the wrong reasons. There was one story from Dog Day Afternoon that had an eerie ring to it. Once John Cazal had passed, in the film Cazal tells one of the bank employees that she should stop smoking. He mentions the risk of lung cancer as the primary reason not to. Sadly, Cazal did not take his own advice. He was gone at such a young age.

We can only hope that he ended up in a good place. Cazal’s eulogy came from Israel Horovitz, who Cazal collaborated with on many theatrical productions. The eulogy appeared in The Village Voice, and Horovitz called Cazal a “small perfection.” He then sent him off to a place where he could make friends with other greats in the acting industry, people like James Dean, Sarah Bernhardt, and even Groucho Marx. They probably loved him there too.