The impressive career of this gifted, fiery character actor, adept at playing hysterics and losers, was cut short by cancer. Born and raised in the Boston area, John Cazale graduated from Boston University and embarked on a career in regional theater, appearing in such plays as "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window" and "The Contractor". During the 1967-68 theater season, he scored in two plays by Israel Horovitz, "Line" and "The Indian Wants the Bronx". In the latter, he was an East Indian tormented by two thugs, played by Matthew Cowles and Al Pacino, with whom Cazale would frequently work. Indeed, the following year, Pacino and Cazale co-starred in "The Local Stigmatic" and they traded on their screen personas in a Boston production of Brecht's gangster saga "Arturo Ui" in 1975. One of his final stage performances was as an imperious Angelo to Meryl Streep's headstrong Isabella in the New York Shakespeare Festival's Central Park production of "Measure for Measure" in 1976.
The dark-haired actor used his haunted, sullen appearance and expressive deep-set eyes to create finely etched characterizations in five of the most acclaimed films of the 1970s. Cazale was memorable in his screen debut as Don Corleone's weak second son, Fredo, in France Ford Coppola's epic "The Godfather" (1972). He again worked for Coppola as Gene Hackman's assistant in surveillance in "The Conversation" (1974). In reprising his role as Fredo, now a Vegas lounge player with ambition who eventually betrays his brother, in "The Godfather, Part II" (also 1974), Cazale justly earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Perhaps his finest screen performance, though, was as Pacino's dim-witted, trigger-happy sidekick Sidney Lumet's superior bank heist comedy-drama "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975). With his long hair lankly framing a somewhat sweet face and his dark fixed eyes, Cazale's odd-ball Sal seamlessly played off Pacino's intensity, marking a high point in their collaborations. In his final screen appearance, Cazale had begun to show the effects of the cancer that would kill him, yet the actor was able to muster the requisite craft to create another memorable performance as a tightly-wound neurotic in Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" (1978), which was released posthumously.