I remember the talk in the hallways at school the morning after ABC-TV reran “Brian’s Song” sometime in the mid-’70s. Every kid who watched it, or caught it the first time in 1971, said the same thing, more or less, the boys especially. Some variation on a theme of awkward, stupidly embarrassed admission:
Gotta admit, got kinda choked up there at the end.
That was James Caan’s doing. He made a nation choke up en masse, in his deathbed scene opposite Billy Dee Williams.
The stardom achieved by Caan, who died at 82 Wednesday, was ignited by “Brian’s Song,” in which he played Brian Piccolo of the Chicago Bears. It was cemented by “The Godfather” (1972), one of four collaborations the actor enjoyed with Francis Coppola, and exemplified, for many, in one of the sleekest Chicago crime films of any era: Michael Mann’s “Thief” (1981), Caan’s favorite starring role.
That’s the quick description of Caan’s benchmarks. But any good screen career, laden with disappointments and frustrations, actively fights against a quick description. With Caan the fight felt personal, and made particular sense. His tightly coiled physical presence, pugilistic, charismatic and alive, comes through in just about everything.
Seriously: Just watch what he does with his hands in “The Godfather.” Caan credited Sonny’s verbal swagger to insult comedian Don Rickles, of all people. The gestures, the jabs, his way of entering a room like the swinging hothead he played in “The Godfather” and elsewhere — that was all Caan, perfectly cast and off and running.
Caan played a fair amount of football, in life and in the movies. He played for Michigan State University and, later, Hofstra University. At Hofstra he caught the acting bug; he also had the excellent fortune to meet Coppola, who later cast him in “The Rain People” (1969), in which he played a troubled, damaged college football star; “The Godfather” and (briefly) “The Godfather: Part II”; and “Gardens of Stone” (1987), a war-at-home drama that came along when Caan’s career needed the boost, and audiences needed a refresher.
His so-called comeback showed up three years later, in “Misery.” Caan portrayed the painfully confined role of the writer contending with a psychopathic fan (Kathy Bates) looking for meaningful payback for her devotion. Plenty of A-listers turned that male lead down, including Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Richard Dreyfuss and William Hurt. Caan lent the part, and the character’s life-or-death predicament, a different, authentic brand of thwarted but triumphant machismo.
People under a certain age know Caan first, and maybe best, as Buddy’s grousy, distracted, finally loving father in “Elf.” It’s one of the few holiday charmers of the last generation or two that is actually charming. Caan enjoyed a new burst of popularity with that film’s success. He stayed busy until the end. In the wake of his death, we’ll likely see one last James Caan film, “Fast Charlie,” now in postproduction. It takes him back one more time to the underworld he inhabited so often for our entertainment.
Last year, speaking to Ben Mankiewicz on “CBS Sunday Morning,” Caan acknowledged a lifelong frustration, and a craving for respect from his peers. That respect, he thought, could only come from “a real character thing,” not the same old stuff.
In the ‘70s Caan was a huge movie star, and as long as the movie kept the actor in motion, as in “Rollerball,” audiences came. The ‘70s, happily, also made time and space for introspective, “difficult” material. Caan grabbed his share. A star could do so much then, whatever the quality: Caan and Elliott Gould even sang and danced, and well, in the big-budget caper film (a flop) ”Harry and Walter Go to New York.”
“Thief” did respectably well but it wasn’t enough for the suits at the studios. Things changed with Caan’s stardom, and meantime he fought with cocaine addiction, mourned the loss of a sister and stayed busy enough through the decades. He managed a long run, in the end.
There’s a deleted scene on YouTube featuring Caan and Al Pacino shot but cut from “The Godfather,” where Sonny and Michael debate methods and practicalities of revenge on the Corleone’s rivals. (Initially, Coppola wanted Caan for Michael; Caan wanted to play the more outwardly magnetic character.) In the spirit of their father, Michael advises restraint. Sonny prefers action, and when Caan spitfires the line “When it comes to the action, I’m as good as anybody — and don’t forget it!” it sounds like a distinctly personal declaration.
We won’t. Forget it, that is.
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