'The Godfather' actor Alex Rocco (Moe Greene) dies at 79 - Washington Post
Alex Rocco once said when he went to meet director Francis Ford Coppola for a part in “The Godfather,” he was auditioning to play one of the Italians. ’ And I went, ‘Oh no, Mr. Coppola, I’m Italian,'” he said in an interview with the A. V. Club in 2012. “I wouldn’t know how to play a Jew. ’ And he goes, ‘Oh, shut up. ’. “He says, ‘The Italians do this,’ and he punches his fingers up. ‘And the Jews do this,’ and his hand’s extended, the palm flat. I’ve been playing Jews ever since. Rocco got the part playing Moe Greene, a Jewish Las Vegas casino owner who tried to put The Godfather in his place. “I leave for New York tomorrow,” Al Pacino said. “Think about a price. “Do you know who I am. I’m Moe Greene. Over his 50-year career, Rocco, a bold Bostonian with an unmistakable voice, appeared in dozens of films and TV shows and lent his voice to animated characters from a studio head named Roger Meyers Jr. in “The Simpsons” to an ant called Thorny in... He also popped up in TV episodes from “The Facts of Life,” “The George Carlin Show,” “Murphy Brown” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Walker Texas Ranger” and, of course, “The Famous Teddy Z,” for which he won an Emmy playing a talent agent. But Rocco always said his role as Moe Greene in “The Godfather” turned out to be his “biggest ticket. Source: www.washingtonpost.com
