From the very beginning of his career, American actor John Casale was considered one of the main stars of Hollywood, starting with his role as the doomed, weak-willed and not too smart Fredo Corleone in the movie The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola and its continuation in 1974. Casale decided to continue to engage in acting, despite the fact that he was given a terrible diagnosis - lung cancer. It was he who caused the death of John Casale, and the most recent tape with his participation was the Oscar-winning military drama "The Deer Hunter." Theater producer Joseph Papp called Casale a surprisingly intelligent, extraordinary person and a wonderful, dedicated artist.
Biography of John Holland Casale
The future actor was born in Revire, Massachusetts. His mother, Cecilia Holland, was an American of Irish descent, while his father, John Casale Sr., had Italian roots. Casale had an older sister Katherine (May 28, 1931 - February 2, 2000) and a younger brother Stephen (born in 1937). He attended Buxton High School in Williamstown, Mass., Where he joined an acting club. He studied acting at Oberlin College in Ohio, later moving to Boston University, where he studied with Peter Kass.
Theatrical period
After leaving school, Casale worked as a taxi driver, and later began a theatrical career at Charles Playhouse, participating in productions of plays such as Hotel Paradiso and Our City in 1959. The critic Jean Pierre Frankenhuis, reviewing the game of Casale as George Gibbs in Our City, already noted his very powerful and expressive technique.
John Casale moved to New York and worked as a photographer, being in constant search of acting vacancies. But for a long time he failed and could not get out on the big screen.
For a while, John Casale worked at Standard Oil, where he met with Al Pacino, a similarly motivated actor. In 1966, they played in Israel’s Horowitz play Indians Need the Bronx at the Eugene O'Neal Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. They actively played in the theater until 1968 and even won Obie awards. In the same year, Casale won another similar award for the role of Dolan in Horowitz's Line.
Start a movie career
In 1968, John Casale flashed acting in his only television role, playing Tom Andrews in an episode of The Peep Freak in the NYPD police drama
In 1969, Casale joined the theater company Long Wharf, where he played over the next three seasons in a number of productions such as Tartuffe, People in the Country, Skin of Our Teeth, and Ice Sword.
Casale once again played in the "Lines" staged in 1971 at the Theater of Lilies (now the Theater of Lucille Lortel). His colleagues were Richard Dreyfus as Stephen, Barnard Hughes (Arnall), John Randolph (Fleming) and Anne Wedgworth as Molly. While working on this production, John was spotted by costume designer Fred Rouse, who then offered it to director Francis Ford Coppola for the role of Fredo Corleone in The Godfather (1972).
Appearance in The Godfather and Great Glory
"The Godfather" was a debut in the big movie for John Casale. Marlon Brando, who played Vito Corleone, was one of Casale's idols. The film broke all box office records and made John Casale and several other previously unknown actors real stars. Coppola, impressed by our hero’s abilities in a small role, especially for him introduced a character named Stan in the script of his next film “Conversation” (1974), in which John starred with Gene Hackman. He repeated his role as Fredo Corleone, now greatly expanded, in 1974 in the second part of The Godfather. Bruce Frett, editor of Entertainment Weekly, wrote that Casale's play lends a special touch to the emotional drama at the culmination of the film. A colleague of John Dominic Chianze believed that Casale makes his ability to open on the screen so special even when it hurts.
Further career
He again starred with Pacino in the films Dog Day and Sidney Lumet in 1975. For his role, a character named Sal Casale was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. The celebrated director Sidney Lumet, discussing John Casale’s films, said that his game looks so believable because John had the same sadness in his soul as his screen characters. This helped him to get used to the role more strongly.
Having achieved success in the cinema, Casale did not forget about his native theater. In addition to his work with the Long Wharf Theater, he appeared in several plays by Israel Horowitz. In May 1975, he returned to Charles Playhouse to support Pacino in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Ross Wetsston of The Village Voice in his review of this play called Casale the best actor in modern America. In 1976, ten years after their first collaboration, Casale and Pacino decided to found the joint theater company The Local Stigmatic. In the summer of that year, Casale signed a contract with the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, playing with Shakespeare in the play Measure for Measure with Sam Waterston.
John Casale and Meryl Streep
The main and only love of the actor’s life was Meryl Streep - at that time a recent graduate of the Yale School of Drama. During a joint work in the cinema, Casale and Streep suddenly began to get closer to everyone, confessed their feelings to each other and, in the end, came together. Streep was with the actor until his death in 1978 and continued to mourn her lover throughout her life. Later, she repeatedly stated that all her subsequent relationships were needed only to relieve the pain of losing John.
Illness and death
The last theatrical work of Casale was the production of "Agamemnon" on April 29, 1977 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. He appeared only on the first production of the play. After the performance, he fell ill and left the show. It was his only Broadway performance. Soon after, he was given a terrible diagnosis - lung cancer.
Despite the terminal diagnosis, Casale continued to work with his fiancée Meryl Streep, as well as Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and John Savage in the movie “Deer Hunter”. According to the author Andy Dugan, director Michael Cimino redesigned the filming schedule with the consent of Casale and Streep, so that all the scenes with their participation were shot first. Casale managed to star in all the scenes, but died before the film was finished.
Cazale learned of his illness in 1977. Despite having tried many treatments and medications, cancer metastasized to his bones. March 12, 1978, John Casale died. Meryl Streep was with him all the time and saw him fading away. His close friend and colleague Al Pacino later said that he had never seen people so devoted to the acting profession as John Casale.
Twelve years after his death, Casale appeared in the third film from the Godfather series (1990) due to editing work with archival personnel. The final part of the legendary trilogy was also nominated for an Oscar for the best picture. This nomination marked Casale's unique achievement in the world of cinema: every feature film in which he appeared was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.