Here's to Ben

As you may have read, Ben Gazzara, always a favorite here, died yesterday from pancreatic cancer. The acclaimed actor was 81.

Per the obit in the Times today:

He grew up in a building at 29th Street and First Avenue, where, he wrote in his autobiography, he slept on the fire escape in summer and occasionally heard screams from the patients at Bellevue psychiatric hospital.

Here's the trailer for "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie," the 1976 John Cassavetes mob drama.