The enormous actress was at the beginning of her career the young girlfriend of the actor from The Godfather, whom she devotedly cared for when cancer took him away at the age of 42.
"I met the best actress in history, I work with her," John Cazale told Al Pacino one day. They had already been brothers of the Corleone family in "The Godfather" and partners in crime in "Dog Afternoon", but they were also great friends in real life, long before fame knocked on their doors. Al Pacino assumed that Cazale had fallen in love to make such a statement.
Although this was the case, over time the Hollywood actor recognized that Cazale had been right. He had his eye on a talented young Meryl Streep.
Cazale and Streep met in 1976 while performing Shakespeare's stage adaptation "Measure for Measure." The crush was such that she, 27 years old, soon after moved to the apartment that John had in the immense New York. He, 42, left the one-night stands behind and vowed that he would marry her. They were determined to be together forever.
The chemistry they had was transmitted on stage. The public's gaze was set on the show that the couple embodied. Even the press did not stop mentioning it in the criticism. They were living a honeymoon: they had the passion of a newfound love and the success of a prosperous career. What they would soon discover is that they lacked the time for a long life.
In late April 1977, John Cazale began to decline. After making his Broadway debut in the play Agamemnon, he felt so bad that he made an urgent appointment with the doctor. A steadfast partner, Streep stood by his side during the consultation. Concerned, they also went to the hospital, Joseph Papp, a theater producer and personal friend of Cazale, and his wife Gail. After several studies, grim faces, and more tests, the doctor gathered them together to give them the news: John had metastatic lung cancer. He wasn't going to live much longer.
The room was filled with a desolate silence. No one wanted to put into words what they had just heard. As the hands of the clock ticked by slowly, second by second, they kept their heads down, looking at the frigid hospital floor. Suddenly, unable to take it anymore, Meryl Streep looked at the rest and her voice cut through the prevailing tension. “Well, where are we going to have dinner then?” she asked, in an attempt to show calm and optimism.
The couple was secretive about the diagnosis, even in front of their own family. But with each passing day, the disease became more evident. One noon they met John's brother, Stephen, for lunch in Chinatown. As they walked through the rowdy streets of a crowded city, the actor stopped and began to cough. He spat blood into a drain and, after a few seconds of silence, he realized that it was impossible to keep hiding it. "I have lung cancer," he confessed to his brother.
Although the doctors warned him that he had three months to live, with Meryl they were hopeful that things would turn out well. When Al Pacino accompanied him to his chemotherapy sessions, Cazale repeated like a mantra: "We're going to get out of this." His friend was confident that it would be so. When the dreaded quarter passed and Cazale was still on earth, the illusion was renewed.
Despite dying, John took a role to participate in the war film "The Hunter", where Robert de Niro and his beloved Meryl Streep would also act. The director, Michael Cimino, had not found it easy to summon him. He knew that Cazale was the ideal actor, but he was also aware of his illness and had doubts about it.
"It was more serious than we thought," De Niro, John's close friend, later acknowledged. With each passing day, the disease got more into his body. And when Cazale started leaving blood trails on the set and his full diagnosis came to light, the production company tried to get rid of him at all costs. If he were to die mid-shoot, the costs of getting a replacement would be exorbitant. "They told me that unless I get rid of John, they would cancel the movie," Cimino acknowledged.
According to rumors, Robert de Niro appeared before the owners of the film studio. Completely furious and full of courage, he threatened to quit if his sick friend was fired. The executives knew that the film was ruined without him, he was the star character of the film. However, they were dry in his response: there was a lot of money at stake. So De Niro came up with another solution.
“Rob decided to back John. He didn't tell me clearly, because he is a very generous person. But I think he vouched for John's participation with his own money. He put money out of his pocket and put it in The Hunter ”, Meryl Streep recounted a few years ago, in the documentary ‘Discovering John Cazale ’. In the same short, the actor explained: "I wanted him to be in the movie."
Despite the setbacks, the shoot went on. They decided to film the scenes in which Cazale appeared first, to take advantage of the few forces he had left. As production wrapped, the couple discovered that medical bills were piling up and debts were mounting. So Meryl Streep, not without a little chagrin, accepted a role in the television series Holocaust to meet the costs of John's illness.
Streep had to travel to the Old Continent to film the miniseries. For two and a half months the actress settled in Austria, in the desolation of a real concentration camp. All the suffering that she carried inside her was channeled into her performance, which led her to be the winner of the Emmy Award, in the category of Best Actress in a TV Movie.
During those months, there was not a single day in which her thoughts were not in New York. “I was going crazy. John was sick and I wanted to be with him, ”Streep expressed many years later when she was finally able to tell everything she experienced at that time. After finishing filming her last scene, she even said goodbye to her co-stars. In a hurry to get home, she bolted for the airport.
When Meryl reached the arms of her lover, she discovered that she was worse than she imagined. At the beginning of the illness, she had been by her side day after day. His closeness to her had prevented him from noticing the gradual wear and tear of her health. But after a separation of several weeks, it was evident that Cazale was on his last legs. Her cancer had reached her bones.
With admirable devotion, Streep became her personal nurse. During the next five months, she accompanied him to her chemotherapy sessions, she read him the newspaper with different accents, and she prepared comedy routines that she performed solely and exclusively for him. She took care of him every day at every hour. She didn't want to waste a second with her.
“When I saw that girl there, with him… God, I thought there was nothing like it. That is what is important to me. As good as she is at her job as an actress, that's what I see when I think about her, at that moment. For me it is what defines it, ”said Al Pacino almost 40 years later.
Finally, John Cazale passed away in the early morning of March 13, 1978, at the Sloan Kettering Memorial. When the doctor broke the news to Meryl Streep, all the hopes that she had accumulated throughout the ten months that she, together with her partner, went through the disease were destroyed. When she had to break the news to her brother-in-law Steven about her through the phone line, she burst into tears and blurted out: "I tried."
