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USA Today; NY Times; EW; YouTube

Alex Rocco, an Emmy Winner Who Most Memorably Played Moe Greene in ‘The Godfather,’ Has Died at 79

Jul 20, 2015  •  Post A Comment

“Alex Rocco, who famously played mobster Moe Greene in ‘The Godfather,’ has died at age 79,” reports USA Today.

“Daughter Jennifer Rocco posted the news on her Facebook page late Saturday night,” the report notes. Rocco died of “cancer, his manager, Susan Zachary,” told The New York Times.

According to Entertainment Weekly, “Born Alexander Federico Petricone in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Rocco moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting, taking classes with Leonard Nimoy (who taught him how to drop his heavy Boston accent) before making his film debut with a small part in 1965’s ‘Motorpsycho.’ His career really took off when he landed the role of Moe Greene, and in a 2012 interview with The AV Club, Rocco called ‘The Godfather’ “my biggest ticket anywhere.”

Rocco won an Emmy in 1990 “for his role as a larger-than-life old-school talent agent in the well-reviewed but short-lived Jon Cryer sitcom ‘The Famous Teddy Z,”’ the Times notes.

But it was as Moe Greene in “The Godfather” that Rocco will always be remembered.

Here, from a clip we found on YouTube, is Greene’s famous confrontation with Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) from “The Godfather.”

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