Saddened to hear it. He was a fine actor, versatile, respected and if anything, underrated. My one conversation with him (an hour long live radio interview a few years back) showed me he was also a witty, accessible gentleman. That interview is a fond memory. Learned a lot about the movie and TV businesses from him, how they work, and how they can affect a man's career.
And I learned one previously undisclosed secret about the television series for which he's remembered by many. "Run For Your Life."
Lots of people wondered about the central question of the show--whether Paul Bryan, Gazzara's character, would live or die from his illness, and if that would have been revealed if the show hadn't been cancelled at the start of the summer of 1968, after the last episode of the 1967-68 season was filmed and before a finale could be made.
The answer? There was NEVER going to be an answer. There would never be a finale.
No matter how long the show ran--and especially if it ran long enough to build up an episode library long enough for rerun syndication--Universal had decided that Paul Bryan was going to continue to live on the run, never knowing what his final fate would be. That way, the show would be able to continue to run, and attract viewers, through not only an extended first run play on NBC (if it got one) but repeated syndication cycles--sustained by the drama within each episode. Bring the show to a conclusion, resolve if he either gets cured or dies, and it's over, no one tunes in for the rerun any more and stations don't buy it. Became a moot question because the three year run left the show about one season short of the 100 episodes a series needed then (and still needs now) for syndication.
Gazzara was fine with the idea of continuing on without a finale. He liked the show and playing the characterand would have liked it to continue. Once it did end, with no actual "ending", the rerun syndication would have yielded some nice residuals for years afterward. It almost did--it was the last show "on the Bubble" and last to be cancelled before NBC made its picks for the 1968-69 season.
