Oft-Cast character actor Val Bisoglio dies at 95

In 1986, after 30 years in the business, Val Bisoglio had made such an impression as a character actor that Danny Arnold, a cast producer of a new crime series called Joe Bash, wrote in a casting notice. for a particular role just that he was looking for a Val Bisoglio type.

Mr. Bisoglio saw the notice and figured he was probably as good of the Val Bisoglio genre as anyone else. He called Mr. Arnold and landed the role, an office sergeant.

Joe Bash was short lived, but the anecdote shows just how much Mr. Bisoglio was able to do with an Everyman-like face, distinctive voice, and versatility that allowed him to play cops, tough guys, bartenders. , judges, fathers.

He was perhaps best known for playing John Travoltas’ character’s father in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever (he kicks Mr. Travolta several times on the head in a memorable dinner scene) and the owner of a favorite restaurant by the main character, a medical examiner played by Jack Klugman, in the TV drama Quincy, ME from 1976 to 1983. But from the 1960s to the 80s, viewers were likely to encounter him in a seemingly endless list of guest roles. .

If it was a popular TV show, his wife, Bonnie (Ray) Bisoglio, said in a phone interview that he was on it.

Mr. Bisoglio died on October 18 at his home near Los Olivos, California. He was 95 years old.

His wife said the cause was late-onset Lewy body dementia, diagnosed a year ago.

In an interview with The Daily News from New York in 1977, when he was early in his run on Quincy (he eventually appeared in the vast majority of episodes of the 148 series), Mr. Bisoglio gave himself a sort of nickname that was a reference. to his role as Quincy, but could very well have applied to much of a career he majored in to make a memorable impression in a short span of time.

Whenever the writers find they are running out of time after finishing the deal, he explained, they write a little scene at the restaurant. It’s only a minute or two, at most. So I’m the one or two minute man.

Italo Valentino Bisoglio (pronounced bee-ZOL-yoh) was born on May 7, 1926 in Manhattan. His father, Mario, was a greengrocer during the Depression, then worked in construction, and his mother, Virginia (Gallina) Bisoglio, was piecework. Both had emigrated from the Piedmont region in northern Italy.

Growing up in New York City, he says, he was more interested in going to vaudeville and other theaters than going to school; he dropped out after 10th grade and at 16 he moved to Los Angeles, where he lived for a time, also spending time in Las Vegas. But he came to act late; first, he worked in a variety of jobs including, in his early twenties, selling water softeners, which earned him a large amount of money.

It went through my hands faster than water could soften it, he told The News, in large part because he developed a fondness for the game.

Ms Bisoglio said the migraines helped her husband take acting classes as a form of therapy to relieve tension. He studied with Jeff Corey, an actor who, after being blacklisted in the 1950s, became a highly regarded theater teacher. By the early 1960s, Mr. Bisoglio was back in New York City and established himself as a stage actor.

At the Off Broadway Sheridan Square Playhouse in 1965, it was part of an Arthur Millers production A View From the Bridge which also included Robert Duvall, Jon Voigt, Susan Anspach and Richard Castellano, all then still early in their careers. The following year he made his only Broadway appearance, in Frederick Knotts Wait Until Dark, playing a crook (Mr. Duvall played another).

He also began to find work on television, appearing in episodes of Bonanza and Mayberry RFD, among other shows, and in 1969 he landed a recurring role on the soap opera The Doctors. By the 1970s he had residences on both coasts to accommodate his increasingly busy careers on television and on stage.

Mr. Bisoglio tended to be offered gangster and other heavyweight roles that he held in charge of Archie Bunker and his family in a 1972 episode of All in the Family but, as was said his wife, he yearned for roles where he could show something else, and he turned down the thug parts when he could. Partly, he said, was because they stereotyped a particular type of Italian, unrepresentative of his family’s origins; his mother bristled whenever he took on such a role.

She doesn’t cook much pasta, he told United Press International in 1977. We Italians in the northern part of the Po Valley region eat mostly rice. Were of peasant origin.

But, he told the Daily News, he also didn’t like such roles because they reminded him of his days as a player.

When I was a New York player, I had to hang out with these tough guys, he says. God, they were tough. Their arms were like iron. Their necks were like iron. Now it’s embarrassing for me to play them.

That said, his final credits were in three episodes of The Sopranos in 2002, playing a character named Murf who was part of the Junior Sopranos team. But Mr Bisoglio said he always enjoys the chance to play comedic roles.

In the early 1980s, for example, he was in several episodes of M * A * S * H, playing a cook named Pernelli. In one, Alan Aldas Hawkeye explains at length how to delicately prepare the perfect French toast. Mr. Bisoglio then ignores him and throws all the ingredients, including the bread, into a giant pot.

Another role that took Mr. Bisoglio away from Italian stereotypes came in 1979, when he played a scholarly Indian chief named Gray Cloud in the comedic western The Frisco Kid, starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford. George American Horse, a true American Indian, was an advisor on the film, and in 1978 he told the New York Times that despite the uncomfortable cross-cultural cast, the portrayal of Mr. Bisoglios was a welcome change from the stoic Indian sitting on his pony with his arms crossed and wearing war paint.

Mr. Bisoglios’ marriage to Joyce Haden was brief and ended in divorce. He and Mrs. Bisoglio were married in 1996. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Joseph Bisoglio and Scott Chapman.