James Caan, the masculine hothead in The Godfather

James Caan, who died in his sleep on Wednesday at the age of 82, remains on the retina as Sonny Corleone, Michael’s big brother who served as a stand-in don. The Godfather is much too hot-tempered; he lets himself be lured out of the tent and dies in a hail of bullets. For that famous death scene, his friend Francis Ford Coppola had 140 explosive fake blood capsules stuck to his skin – a painful thing.

The role felt like a relegation to Caan at the time. He was promised the lead role of Michael Corleone, Coppola was on the then obscure Al Pacino. Still, Caan landed on the part, hanging out with Carmine Persico and other Colombo mobsters to learn their mob jargon and gestures. It earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, his only. The strip club from TV series The Sopranos –’Bada Bing’ – is named after a statement by Sonny Corleone†

Hairy, sweaty and slightly desperate

When you think of James Caan, you also think of hairy, somewhat sweaty and slightly desperate masculinity. The Jewish son of a kosher butcher from Brooklyn, he studied economics and played football at Michigan University—his nickname was “The Jewish Cowboy.” Later, Caan liked to boast of his black belt karate. At Hofstra University athletics gradually gave way to acting. There he also met the young Francis Ford Coppola, who introduced him to him in 1969 The Rain People starred as ‘Killer’, a lost football player. After years on stage and in TV series, he penetrated the film world in 1965 through two Howard Hawks productions: racing film Red Line 7000 and the western El Dorado, alongside John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. With The Godfather he really seemed to be launched: ‘love interest’ by Barbra Streisand in funny lady, powerhouse in sf action movie rollerball and war epic A Bridge Too Far.

Although his virility was somewhat old-fashioned, James Caan is counted among the ‘New Hollywood’, actors with a rough, unstable and ethnically profiled edge who replaced the smooth boys of yesteryear. But in the 1970s, he took on the name of a party animal, married and divorced – the tally of four marriages and five children – and became addicted to cocaine. There was hassle on the set, there were dubious choices: James Caan let later top films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Apocalypse Now and Kramer vs Kramer pass, but he did sign for zeperds like Harry and Walter Go To New York and Comes a Horseman.

In recent years he ended up in the B-genre. He didn’t seem to mind at all

In the early eighties he took an acting break, to make a sober comeback in 1987 in Coppola’s gardens of stone, as an old sergeant who reluctantly serves as a “toy soldier” at Arlington Military Cemetery during the Vietnam War.

His true comeback was as a bestselling writer who died in an accident misery (1990) who ends up in the clutches of a mad fan, played by Kathy Bates. That’s how we liked him: as a macho cornered or – in comedies – as a semi-parody of the testosterone-filled Sonny Corleones of the past; lots of instinct and testosterone, little strategy. In recent years he ended up in the B-genre. He didn’t seem to mind at all.