Goodbye, Ben Gazzara.
We will miss you.
I’m all about 1) they all Laughed, wherein he engaged in a dangerous fling and had to give the girl up—amidst the most 1970s-yet-charming setting and storyline imaginable. and the crime television: he was friends with Peter Falk and Robert Vaughn, and traipsed in and out of their shows, and even directed a few of his own from that mid-seventies period that gave us Columbo.
But he was in everything, everything: the man was constantly working, and never afraid to take a chance on a new direction.
Mr. Gazzara was treated for oral cancer in 1999, but he said his bigger health battle was against depression, lasting on and off for decades. in a 2005 appearance before a group of mental health professionals, he recalled dealing with the condition 25 years earlier while shooting “They all Laughed.”
“I was in a depression during the whole shooting, and I was terrific in that film,” he said. “And I don’t remember doing it.”
But you did it, Baby: and now I have it in my hot little hands. I may watch it tonight.
