LOS ANGELES –
James Caan, the curly-haired tough guy known to movie fans as the hot Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, to TV audiences as the dying football player in the weepy classic Brian’s Song and as the casino boss in Las Vegas, has died. He was 82.
His manager, Matt DelPiano, said he died Wednesday. No reason was given and Kaan’s family, who requested privacy, said no further details would be released at this time.
Many of his associates posted condolences on Twitter on Thursday.
Adam Sandler, who starred with him in Bulletproof and That’s My Boy, wrote that he “loved him so much. I always wanted to be like him. So happy to have met him. I never stopped laughing when I was around this guy. His films were the best of the best.”
A football player at Michigan State University and a practical joker on set, Caan was a grinning, handsome performer with an athletic poise and muscular build. He managed a long career despite drug problems, temper tantrums and minor infractions with the law.
Caan had been a favorite of Francis Ford Coppola since the 1960s when Coppola cast him as the lead in Rain People. He was groomed to star in The Godfather as Sonny, the number one thug and eldest son of mob boss Vito Corleone.
Sonny Corleone, a cruel and reckless man who committed many murders, met his end in one of the most shocking film scenes in history. On his way to another job, Corleone stops at a tollbooth, which he finds disturbingly empty of customers. Before he can escape, he is felled by a seemingly endless barrage of machine gun fire. Decades later, he once said that strangers would approach him on the street and jokingly warn him to stay off the toll roads.
Caan bonded with Brando, Robert Duvall and other cast members and made it a point to make everyone laugh during an otherwise tense production, sometimes taking off his pants and “high-fiving” another actor or crew member. Despite Coppola’s concerns that he had made a flop, the 1972 release was a huge critical and commercial success and earned supporting actor Oscar nominations for Caan, Duvall and Al Pacino.
Caan was already a TV star, breaking through in the 1971 TV movie “Brian’s Song,” an emotional drama about Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo, who had died of cancer the previous year at age 26. It was among the most popular and harrowing made-for-TV movies in history, and Caan and co-star Billy Dee Williams, who played Piccolo’s teammate and best friend Gale Sayers, were nominated for a Best Actor Emmy.
After Brian’s Song and The Godfather, he was one of the busiest actors in Hollywood, appearing in Hide in Plain Sight (which he also directed), Funny Lady (opposite Barbra Streisand), The Killer Elite ” and Neil Simon’s “Chapter Two,” among others. He also appeared briefly in a flashback in The Godfather Part II.
But in the early 1980s he began to resent films, although Michael Mann’s 1981 neo-noir The Thief, in which he played a professional safe-cracker looking for a way out, was among the most beloved his movies.
“The fun was taken out of it,” he told an interviewer in 1981. “I’ve been making pictures where I’d rather spend time. I just got off a picture at the Paramount. I said you don’t have enough money to make me go to work every day with a principal I don’t like.”
He began to struggle with drug use and was devastated by the death of his sister Barbara from leukemia in 1981, who had until then been a driving force in his career. For most of the 1980s, he stayed out of movies, telling people he preferred to coach his son Scott’s Little League games.
Cash-strapped, Caan was hired by Coppola for the lead role in the 1987 film Stone Gardens. The film about life at Arlington National Cemetery proved too dark for most viewers, but it revived Caan’s acting career.
He returned to his full stardom with Kathy Bates in Misery in 1990. In the film, based on Stephen King’s novel, Caan is an author captured by an obsessed fan who breaks his ankles to keep him from leaving. Bates won an Oscar for the role.
In demand again, Caan starred in “For the Boys” with Bette Midler in 1991 as part of a song and dance team entertaining American soldiers during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. The following year, he played a witty version of Sonny Corleone in the comedy Honeymoon in Vegas, tricking Nicolas Cage into betting his girlfriend, Sarah Jessica Parker, in a high-stakes poker game so he could keep her away and try to convince her to marry him.
Other later films include “Flesh and Bone”, “Bottle Rocket” and “Mickey Blue Eyes”. He introduced himself to a new generation as Walter, the workaholic, stone-faced father of Will Ferrell’s Buddy in “Elf.”
Caan didn’t star in a TV series until 2003, but his first film, Las Vegas, was an instant hit. When the series debuted, he was the head of casino surveillance, dealing with scammers and competitors at the fictional Montecito Resort and Casino.
His character rises to be the boss of Montecito, but remains a tough guy who learned judo in a secret department of the US government. Caan left the show during the fourth season and it was later cancelled.
Born on March 26, 1939, in New York City, Caan was the son of a kosher meat merchant. He was a star athlete and class president at Rhodes High School and, after attending Michigan State and Hofstra University, studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater under Sanford Meissner.
After a brief stage career, he moved to Hollywood. He made his film debut in a brief uncredited role in 1963 in Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce, then landed a role as a young thug who terrorized Olivia de Havilland in Lady in a Cage. He also appeared opposite John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in the 1966 western El Dorado and Harrison Ford in the 1968 western Trip to Shiloh.
Married and divorced four times, Caan has a daughter, Tara, and sons, Scott, Alexander, James and Jacob.
It is with great sadness that we announce Jimmy’s passing on the evening of July 6th.
The family appreciates the outpouring of love and sincere condolences and asks that you continue to respect their privacy at this difficult time.
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— James Caan (@James_Caan) July 7, 2022
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