De Niro’s secret gesture sealed Deer Hunter’s role in history

THE film The Deer Hunter is best known for its on- and off-screen bustups, all-star cast and a production process shrouded in mystery.

Yet only now – 40 years after the five-time Oscar-winner was released – has a tragic and touching secret emerged that could have changed Hollywood history.

The 1978 film, starring Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep and John Savage, was set to be filmed without co-star John Cazale.

He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and was to be pulled from the production because the studio could not afford to cover his insurance.

De Niro “put his career on the line” and told EMI Films and Universal that “if Cazale’s not in the movie, I’m not in the movie” and he was kept on.

De Niro, 76, has only now confirmed that it was he who paid Cazale’s insurance premium so he could finish filming before his death months later “because that’s what friends do”.

The gesture was revealed in an interview between film and TV writer Jay Glennie and Meryl Streep, Cazale’s girlfriend at the time.

Mr Glennie, from Essex, was given unprecedented access to De Niro’s personal archive for a new book about the Vietnam War film, One Shot: The Making of the Deer Hunter, later this week.

“He wasn’t flown off the film because of Bob,” Mr Glennie told The Sunday Telegraph. “Meryl got quite choked as she was telling me as well and that was just wonderful. He’s never spoken about what he did for his friend.”