F. Murray Abraham

A constant danger, when I schedule pieces for these columns, is the person’s own actions. I was blunt to my friends, for example, that I would not be writing about Sean Connery while he was still alive and only when he died because he was not a person I found worth celebrating, particularly. He was iconic, one of the biggest figures in film of the twentieth century, but he himself was a terrible human being who never walked back his stance that some women need someone to hit them. So there was that. F. Murray Abraham is nowhere near that toxic. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up that he was in fact fired from a show because of his actions, and I cannot find out exactly what those actions were.

It’s a damn shame, because Abraham is an incredibly talented actor. He was floating around Hollywood for years before most people knew who he was. His first movie was the cult classic They Might Be Giants, which has a cast that swings between Joanne Woodward and Al Lewis. He was in a few classics, a few turkeys, a handful of Standard ‘70s TV Career shows. Famously, he mostly paid the bills in Fruit of the Loom ads. Wikipedia says the leaf; IMDb says the bunch of grapes. There’s a 1976 commercial on YouTube that categorically proves Wikipedia right. In fact, it’s not the only old commercial of his you can find; you’ve got to keep the rent paid somehow.

In 1983, he was one of the many non-Cubans to play a Cuban in Scarface. (Abraham is Syrian on his father’s side and Italian on his mother’s.) It was his return to the screen after several years as a “house husband,” when he’d given up trying to make it and was taking care of the house and kids while his wife worked. He says he initially found it humiliating but now considers it one of the best things that ever happened to him. Scarface was not the biggest hit, making about three times its budget, but it has had an outsized pop culture legacy.

However, even greater was the legacy of Amadeus. It is historically dubious, true, but of course we’re hearing it all from Salieri’s perspective anyway, and why wouldn’t he be an unreliable narrator? The historical figure had dementia, and the suicide attempt is also real. Either way, Abraham played both the old and middle-aged Salieri to perfection. He regretted not sharing his Oscar with Tom Hulce, but Salieri is honestly the more challenging role. He is clear that he does not consider himself cursed by the Oscar—after all, even a series of minor roles is better than playing underwear-shilling vegetation.

Has he killed his own career? It seems unlikely. Leaving aside that there are very few people who have been permanently canceled by that sort of thing, his offense is relatively minor. Probably. From what has been disclosed. One hopes that his apology, and maybe some sensitivity training, will let him continue working, though any woman who doesn’t want to work with him is perfectly within her rights. If nothing else, he is another one of those people who’s done good work narrating for PBS, and that’s something where he’s limited in who he can bother. We’ll see, I suppose. And if he has, he’s 84, and retirement is also an option.