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Ben Gazzara

Branded the toast of Broadway for his incendiary performances in such theatrical milestones of the 1950s as Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and Michael V. Gazzo's "A Hatful of Rain," Ben Gazzara came a long way from his upbringing in Manhattan's Gashouse District during the Great Depression, becoming in the course of only a few years of his burgeoning career, the nation's preeminent Italian-American actor, 20 years ahead of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. After making an indelible impression in Otto Preminger's "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959), he was resigned to the middling career of a jobbing actor through the Sixties, until the following decade, when his craft was revived through a partnership with filmmaker John Cassavetes on the controversial films "Husbands" (1970) and "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" (1976). He would go on to impress audiences with his roles in "Capone" (1975), "They All Laughed" (1981), "Buffalo '66" (1998) and "Dogville" (2003). Rediscovered at the turn of the century by a new generation of indie filmmakers, Gazzara remained an in-demand character actor and a surviving link to both the Golden Age of Broadway and live television and the birth of the American independent film movement.