February 26, 2025 • 33 mins
It was the fall of 1963, and Mario Puzo—a gambler, overeater, and dead-broke pulp fiction writer with outsize artistic ambitions—was glued to his television. Like the rest of America, he was captivated by the widely broadcasted Valachi hearings, in which a Mafia foot soldier publicly revealed the inner-workings of the Italian-American criminal underworld. Puzo also happened to be on the hunt for the subject of his next book, and what could be more appealing to a man who'd grown up surrounded by crooks and hustlers in Hell's Kitchen than a shadowy underworld filled with strongmen and wiseguys? In Episode Two, Mark and Nathan chronicle Mario Puzo's life before "The Godfather," and explain how the writer's chosen subject matter coincided with a growing public interest in the Mafia, resulting in Puzo becoming one of the best-selling authors of his time.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
How would you feel if you went back to prison.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'll have to protect myself again, Senatent. I'd have to
kill or.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Be killed again. September nineteenth, nineteen sixty three, A dead
broke writer is lying on his couch in suburban New York.
He's glued to his television set, but he's not watching
a mob movie. He's watching a Senate hearing.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is a special report from CBS News in Washington,
the Congress and Cozanostra.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
The testimony is from Cozonostra insider Joseph Wallachi, who would
become better known as the first man to rat on
the mob on national television.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
The sworn testimony you just heard came from the lips
of Joseph Vallachi, lips that supposedly were sealed thirty three
years ago when he joined America's underworld crime syndicate, Cozonostra.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
The world he describes has a name, name that's new
to most Americans, Mafia.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Would it be fair to say that you went back
to prison, that you'll be a dead man if they
got up me. I wouldn't be in the five minute Senator.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Meanwhile, the man watching his television set would say he
had never met a real gangster, but he knows enough
to see the story for what it is.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
As a senator put it before, what did I get
out of it?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Why'd you get out?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
But misery? Or you know, as you all understand, once
you're in, you're in. You can't get out.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
The man on the couch sees a true American story,
a web of family and brutality, loyalty and betrayal, fathers
and sons, immigration, and the American dream. The man doesn't
know it yet, but this inspiration will stay with him
for years to come. The man's name Mario Puzo. I'm
(02:02):
Mark Seal.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
And I'm Nathan King.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
And this is Leave the gun, Take the Canoli. In
today's episode, we're taking a closer look at the real
life mafia stories that influence Mario Puzo's.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Book and diving into the life and career of the
unlikely author who ascended from the depths of Hell's Kitchen
to the glitz and glam of Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
We'll also learn how Puzo's novel landed in the hands
of Paramount executive Robert Evans when he needed him most.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
So let's get started.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
Did you do anything for the family at all in
this time.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
Or did they just do things for you?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Just go out kill for them?
Speaker 4 (02:51):
You'd go out what kill mark? The Vallacci hearings are infamous.
Joseph Vallacci was a made man, a member of the
Genovese crime family and longtime henchmen for mob boss Vito Genovese.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yes, and it was absolutely shocking at the time, especially
since Joe Blacci knew exactly how the mob treated snitches.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Well, he had some first hand experience. He was intimately
familiar with the story of Alberto Aguici.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And it's a particularly gruesome story. When I was researching
for the book, it stood out as an incredible example
of the brutality of the mafia.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Aguici was a baker from Toronto. But Baker is sort
of in quotes, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Baker is definitely in quotes. He was really a heroin
smuggler and an associate of the Magadino crime family in Buffalo.
And in May of nineteen sixty one, he was indicted
along with nineteen others in one hundred and fifty million
dollar heroin smuggling ring.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
We're talking about the notorious French Connection heroin smuggling ring.
That started in the thirties and stretched from Indo, China
all the way to France, then to Canada in the US.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
And one of those nineteen others was our mobman turned informant,
Joseph Balacchi, and while in jail together, Billacchi listened as
Aguiici absolutely railed against Magadino, who he had expected to
raise money for his bail but instead was letting him
rot in jail.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
It's generally not a good idea to talk badly about
a crime boss as you're in prison.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Not at all. Aguici ended up having to sell his
house to make bail and was apparently threatening to flip
on Maganino.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
But it didn't last long because in October of nineteen
sixty one, Alberto left his wife and daughters in Toronto
to meet Magadino. He never made it, though he ended
up badly beaten, burned, really gruesomely disfigured in a cornfield.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I wrote in the book that it was like encountering
an animal or something the police couldn't even tell that
it was human. It was in the middle of a
circle that had been burned into the grass, like a
demented sign from hell.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
And no one really knows who did it, but people
suspect that Magadino had caught wind to the fact that
Aguichi was railing against him and speaking poorly and taking
his name in vain and had something done about it. Now,
the rest of the story is incredibly complicated, and we
don't have time to tell it here, but it's a
tale of brotherhood and betrayal and threats on people's lives,
(05:26):
and ultimately Joseph Vallacci ends up fearing for his life.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It was at this point, apparently, when Vallachi decided to
sing for protection and i FBI agent was assigned to
him full time, and the Justice Department began filling in
the blanks on its chart of Kzonostra. This is Vlachi's
great value, says the department. He is the first member
of Cozanostra publicly to confirm its existence.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
And this is how we get hours of televised senate
testimony about the inner workings of the mafia.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
And it's the first time the word mafia was ever
heard by most Americans.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
But Americans had some understanding of organized crime.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yes, in the nineteen fifties, there was something called the
Cupaver hearings, which were televised in fourteen cities across America,
and it was something else. It was a hit. It
was like a primetime reality show that people were glued
to their television sets to watch. It was a parade
of what one publication called six hundred gangsters, pimps, bookies,
(06:25):
and shady lawyers who testified about the activities of organized crime.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
Up until that point, this is something that had existed
in the shadows, and suddenly it's in living rooms across America.
You have these gangsters on screen talking about or in
some cases not talking about their crimes. This was pretty
electrifying stuff in its day.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yes, it sure was. Thirty million Americans tuned in. And
remember this is still in the early days of TV.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Was this the hearing where Frank Costello testified without showing
his face?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yes, Frank Costello, the all powerful leader of the Luciano
crime family, was shot only from the neck down, so
you couldn't see his space and he wouldn't really say anything.
But still, just to watch him in the hearings was
a huge hit. The New York Times headlined in his
article Costello TV's first headless star. Only his hands entertained audiences.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
You must have in your mind something you've done that
you can speak off to your credit as an American citizen.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
If so, what are they.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Paid by tax? This was like the Sopranos in real life.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
But nothing compared to the Ballacci hearings.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Ten years later, Yes, ten years later, Joseph Bolacchi did
what Costello would not. He told and showed everything.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
May I ask you this time, when did you become
a member of this organization nineteen taty what is the
name of it? Causing us?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
In Italian?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Our thing and our family in English?
Speaker 4 (08:06):
And he said a lot in those thirty one hours
of testimony.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, he gives almost everything. He tells about what the
initiation rights were, He tells the codes, He tells the hierarchy.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Well, this is a secret organization. How do you get
to know this member of the same family. He'll introduce
him to you, for instance, as a friend of oz
that means a member. Nah, happens to be with someone
that isn't a friend of ours. He would just simply
say met a friend of mine, which means nothing. That's
(08:38):
the code between us.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
The mob put out a hit on him, offering one
hundred grand to anyone who could take him out, but
it was too late. He had already spilled everything on
national television and he even used the word godfather.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
And on the other side of the television screen, Mario
Puzzo was so all of this in like a sponge.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, that's right. I mean, the testimony was authentic, it
was real. But Mario Puzo was a writer, an author,
who a great researcher. So he's sitting at home in
the suburbs of New York, lying on his couch, watching
these hearings like everybody else, but he did what nobody
else did. He was able to take these hearings and
fictionalize them and create a family that was even more romantic,
(09:27):
more dangerous, more influential than anything he's seen on television.
He created the Corleone family.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
You've described Puso as a white whale in your reporting
of the story because you never actually got to speak
to him. But how did you get to the heart
of his story and his background.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
To my eternal regret, Mario Puzo had passed away by
the time I started working on the magazine article and
of course later the book, But he would tell his
incredible story himself in numerous newspapers and magazine articles. Later
in interviews, and I was able to speak to his
eldest daughter, Dorothy Puso, who told me in an email
(10:07):
that she thought most likely her father had tossed all
of the research, all of the writing that he had
done on the movie and the book The Godfather. She said,
you know, he was a poor, aspiring writer who would
know to keep that stup. But to my astonishment and
amazement and good fortune, those things weren't tossed. They were saved,
(10:28):
and they're now on display at Dartmouth University in a library. There.
You can see his writing on the back of folders
which he liked to use with the red sharpie. You
can see his typewriter. You can read early drafts of
both the novel and the screenplay of The Godfather. And
then later in my research for the book, I was
(10:50):
able to speak with his son, Anthony Puso, who was
invaluable in telling me about his illustrious father, the frog
who became a prints of Hollywood and the true hero
of the Godfather.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Where did Puso come from? Because in a lot of ways,
he's the most unlikely character of all in this story.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Yes, his life was like an unlikely fairy tale, as
he wrote in various accounts, including his nineteen seventy two
memoir The Godfather Papers, and other confessions, Mario was born
into one of the worst sections of New York, whose
very name evokes this depravity, Hell's Kitchen. And he was
born into a family of immigrants, many of them illiterate,
(11:31):
including his mother, who he said could not even read
or sign her name, but who employed language like a weapon.
Many of the terms that Mario used in The Godfather,
he said, were straight out of his mama's mouth.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It's a man who doesn't spend time with his family
can never be a real man.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
He grew up in a large family in a tenement flat,
and Pusa claimed he never met an honest to god gangster,
even though they were all around him.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Was his mother worried that he would fall prey to
the back element in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Absolutely, his mother was very protective of Mario, but she
wasn't worried about guns so much as girls. Mario claimed
he never had that many dates.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Though, and he was one of thirteen kids.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Yes, and from the beginning he was different from the rest.
He loved gambling. He loved to pitch pennies and play cards,
and he liked to read, and early on he would
read Dostoyevski and go to the library.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
And for a long time he was sort of a
hopeless character. Fame and fortune eluded him, right.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Mark, Yeah, for a long long time. He grew up.
He was very impoverished. They were so poor that Mario
said that once his teacher asked all the students to
bring a can of food for the poor, and Mario
was saying, they didn't know we were the poor. And
he went out anyway with the other kids in his
neighborhood and they went out and stole cans of food
to be able to bring it to school.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
What did his mom think about his professionist writer.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Well, her greatest aspiration for Mario was that he would
become a railroad clerk and get a steady salary. He
liked to say, every family has a chooch, the Italian
word for donkey, and he goes in my family, the
chooch was me. College, he would later write, wasn't an option.
There were two high schools in his neighborhood, and his
(13:19):
mom and sister thought he should go to the one
that didn't prepare you for college. He asked, why didn't
you urge me to attend college, and his sister says,
because you were stupid.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
And he didn't become a writer right away, did he?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
No, Poor Mario, he suffered so much before finding his
future as a writer. Things were so grim for Mario
Puzo that when World War II broke out, he was
excited to get away from home. So he joined the military.
You know, it was a dream to him. He was
assigned to the fourth Armored Division, Private Puso. He's deployed
(13:53):
to Europe. He drove a jeep, He had affairs, He
found a wife, a German woman who he fell in
love with and brought back to America. And best of all,
he found material for his first novel.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
That sounds like World War Two was the best thing
that ever happened to him.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Well, not immediately. Typical to Mario is the suffering. He
had dreams of being a writer, but he didn't know
where to start. So he went to the City College
of New York on the GI Bill and he studied
literature and creative writing. And then he did what would
become his trademark. He struggled. His weight went up, his
bank account went down. He was broke all the time,
(14:33):
he was gambling. He was a drift. He got a
job as a clerk at the Manhattan Armory, but he
never had enough money to quit his day job to
become a writer. He wanted to write high art. He
wanted to be an artistic writer. He wanted to be
like Dostoyevsky or other writers he admired. But it was
all just a struggle for him. Some of his diaries
(14:54):
still exist, and it's just full of torment and loss
and the theme that money is just ruining everything.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
And does he sit down and write his war novel.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yes. All along he's writing his first novel, The Dark Arena,
which gets published by Random House in nineteen fifty four,
and he thinks, wow, this is it. You know, I'm
a published author. But the reviews were mixed. It didn't
do for him what he expected. And Mario got an
advance of thirty five hundred dollars which was quickly gone.
(15:26):
His weight was way up, his hopes were way down.
And then on Christmas Eve, something incredible happened. He was
at home and he suffered a severe gallbladder attack. He
called a taxi, which drove him to New York City
in excruciating pain. He arrived at the VA Hospital and
(15:47):
just then the attack worsen. He opened the door of
the taxi and he fell out, and he landed in
a gutter. And he wrote about it later in Time magazine.
Here I am a published author, and I'm lying in
a gutter, dying like a dog. At that moment, I decided,
I'm going to become rich and famous.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Wow. So he had really hit rock bottom. How long
did it take for him to pull himself up by
his bootstraps?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Well, a long time, because just because you say you
want something to happen doesn't mean it will. By nineteen sixty,
Mario's family had grown to five kids and his job
was in danger because the FBI was investigating his unit
for helping young soldiers obade the draft. Mario was never charged,
(16:34):
but he ended up quitting his job and pursuing the
most unusual path for a writer who aspired to high art.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
He decided to become a pulp fiction writer.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Exactly. It was a company called Magazine Management, and if
there was any man who was destined to write pulp fiction,
it was Mario Puzo. I was able to speak with
one of his colleagues, John Bowers, and he said Mario
was just able to use his research to invent whole worlds.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
But Mario had definite energy at writing. He just could
write nobody's business.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
So he walked into pulp fiction offices of magazine management.
It's a smoke field office. It's full of men and women,
city over, clattering typewriters pumping out copy for like this
never ending flood of trash magazines with names like Mail
and Stag and for men only. They were called magazines,
(17:33):
but they were really sort of rags. And soon Mario
Puza was pumping out salacious stories of brave gis, of
damsels in distress.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
He even wrote a story that took place in Hawaii
where mobsters busted in a gambling parlor, right exactly.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, that was just one of the many stories. But
I think that was the first of all the ones
that I saw that really tackled some instance of the mafia.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
And of course most of it was just dreamed up,
not most of it, All of it was dreamed up.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I mean, he said once that he would take a
real life battle where seven thousand people got killed and
turn it into a bloody battle where one hundred thousand died.
I wish you could.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
Read some of those, imagine the stories. It was larger
than life. It didn't have to depend upon fact checking
at all.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
He'd amp up the action no matter what, and that
became his trademark. He became one of the top pulp
fiction writers of all time. Before you know, he was
aspiring to high art, he was spending these time on
these novels that didn't make him any money. He had
enormous expenses, not only the bookies that he owed money to,
but also you know, he had a family of five kids.
(18:47):
He had to make a living. He had to bring
money home, and he owed money to the irs. He
owed money to his family, he owed money to the bookkeepers,
and he kept gambling, he kept eating, he kept living
this life that was just way beyond his means.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
And as much as he aspired to high art, it
seems like he was almost destined to write pulp fiction.
I mean, after eight years doing it, he was pretty
much the most successful of any of them.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Well, yeah, but he was not making a huge amount
of money.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
Yeah, I believe we got something like one hundred and
fifty dollars something like that for the week.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
So he went back to his publisher and said, you know,
I'm ready for my third book, my third novel, and
his publisher said, forget about it, Mario. They weren't ready
to assign him a third book. And one of the
editors said, well, you know, if the Fortunate Pilgrim had
a little bit more of that mafia stuff in it,
(19:45):
maybe it would sell. And those words rang and Mario
Puzo's head a little bit more of that mafia stuff.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
And that's when it all clicked for him. He remembered
how he had been engrossed by the Volacci hearings.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
It's like a scene out of a movie. I mean,
here's this overweight, overwrought in debt writer. And he pays
ten bucks for the ten volume transcripts of the Kufaver hearings,
and he gets access to his friend Peter Mass's book
on the Bolacchi hearings, and he gets a lot of
other research, and he sits down in his basement and
(20:20):
he cranks out a ten page outline and he takes
it to his agent, the legendary Candido Dinadio, and she
sends it out to various publishers, and much to Mario's surprise,
one of them gives him five thousand dollars. And what
does he do? Of course, he spends the money. He
doesn't work on the book. God, seriously, Yes, he gambles.
(20:44):
He spends some money on his family, obviously, and soon
the money is all gone.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
But the important thing is that he has a fire
lit under him and he has to deliver the book.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Not so fascinate than there's one place a struggling writer
can turn to for some fast cash.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
This must be when he goes to Hollywood. Allegedly, Evan says,
Puzzo shows up at the gates of Paramount thirty five
pages under his arm, looking broke, and sells the option
of Paramount for twelve five.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
And Mario claims he sold the option through his agent
and the story editor at Paramount, and then he never
even went to California.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Well, regardless of what happened, he sold the option to Paramount.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
For big money for Mario too, twelve five hundred.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
So now he writes the book.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Yes, he goes home. He walks down the stairs to
his basement, and there between the pool table and the
constant racket of his five kids. A mafia family rises
up from his typewriter, and what a family it is.
He gets the name from a town in Sicily, one
of the most mafia invested towns in the country, Corleone.
(21:54):
There's Don Vito Corleone, the godfather. There's the eldest son
and heir apparent, Santino, known as Sonny. There's the middle son,
the poorest, suffering, subservient, Fredo. And there's the youngest, the future,
the college boy who chose to enlist in the military
instead of the mafia. Michael Mario, of course, claimed he
(22:18):
had never met an honest to goodness gangster, but he
looked for inspiration wherever he could. One story I just
loved from when he was writing the book was that
one night in nineteen sixty six, the author Gaytalise and
his wife Nan invited Mario to dinner at the home
of Talisea's aunt, Susan Peleggi. And Susan Pelegi, of course,
is the mother of the also famous writer Nick Poleggi,
(22:42):
who had gone to write the novel Wise.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Guy, which was the foundation for Goodfellas.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Exactly, and Gaytalse had written the organized crime classic Honor
Thy Father, and so here's a newcomer to the realm,
Mario Puzzo, the author of the Fourthcoming Godfather the same table.
So he takes one look at Nantelice, who'd grown up
on the you know, up pretty side, who was from
a different world, very genteel educated, and he immediately found
(23:11):
a model for the wife of Michael Corleone.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
Kay.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
So he was really pulling from all around him for inspiration.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
That was the brilliance of Mario Puzo that he would
find inspiration in unlikely places. So another thing I was
able to discover is that Mario, being Mario and loving
Las Vegas more than any other place on Earth, probably
would go to Las Vegas regularly and gamble at, among
other places, the Sands Hotel. And I was able to
(23:40):
interview ed Walters, who worked as a pit boss at
the Sands. Tell me when you first saw Mario Puzzoo.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
Came to Vegas. He has to play and he has
Vegas ARONI.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
He was a relint being he played a Roulin and
he said that Mario would come in and gamble and
the same time asked questions for his forthcoming book about the.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
Mob he was a little pudgy guy, and I met him.
So he was talking to this dealer on the roulette wheels,
and I was on the wheels at that time, and
I understanding, I'd listen to I'd answer question with all
he'd asked questions about.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Sinatra and a mob and honey and because of me.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
Then I opened up about because he had things wrong,
and I said, oh no, you got.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
To mix up. The mob and the mafia are not
the same thing.
Speaker 6 (24:30):
He got the mafia all Italians, the old blood guys
from a certain place of thing or the momb a difference,
and then I trained them.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
They outfit all his terms.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
And of course Ed Walters, who knew a bit about
the mob because he had come from New York City
where he had known a lot of people that were,
let's say, somehow connected, told Mario a bit, you know,
to keep him gambling there. And Mario would ask questions
about who who and what was what? And as long
as he kept gambling, Ed Walters kept talking.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Was he taking notes and everything while you were telling
him this? No, he didn't have first, but then he
started to.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
And pretty soon Mario had an insight into the Vegas
aspect of the mob, which figured into the Godfather quite
a bit.
Speaker 6 (25:19):
He'd say, so, Eddie, tell me how keep this Saunder
in the mob? And I said, haul it all it hold,
I said, Sanra ain't in the bob.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
He said, guys told me in the mom I said,
out of shit, I SAIDs ran in the mob. He
worked for us, he said, fucking entertainer. And he thought, wow,
that's interesting. So Mario would be playing while he's talking
to him. Yeah, yeah, all the time. Oh, he couldn't
never just sit there and take notes.
Speaker 6 (25:45):
No, why they were Oh we weret a fucking guy
sitting in a n because he don't take a notes?
Speaker 5 (25:49):
So you let him do it because he was playing, Yes,
because he's playing. Oh so that was good for you,
they're yeah, of course I told some people I was
writing a book from shit on the fine the guy
that was sitting there takeing. What should we come down to?
(26:11):
What do you write a book? Ye? Get the front?
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Are So do you think Mario knew he had to
do something different here? I mean you mentioned his daughter
Dorothy saying that he couldn't have known this book would
be a success.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
No, of course, he didn't think it was going to
be a great success. While he was writing, he was
writing as he always did, he liked to say, for
a paycheck. But at the same time he had decided
to give up on high art and those aspirations to
be a Doustoyevski or something like that, you know, to
be a fine art writer. He was writing a sensational
(26:45):
story about a sensational family in a sensational world, and
he had no aspirations of writing high art. He wanted
to turn this book into bucks. He wanted to make
money on the god bother.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Funnily enough, with his back against the wall, he ends
up turning out the most dust of skiesque of all
of his novels.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Yeah, I know it. It became something of a masterpiece.
I mean, I wouldn't say it was, you know, incredible literature,
but at the same time it was a page turner,
a pot boiler. It had all the attributes of Valley
of the Dolls or something like that. But said in
the world of organized crime, I don't think he expected
(27:25):
it to do what it did. Though still I think
he thought he was going to, you know, write a
book for money, get his five thousand dollars advance and
maybe some royalties, pay off some debts, and then get
onto the next project. Instead, it took the world by storm.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Well, and when he was down in that basement and
the kids were screaming, he would shout, quiet, don't you
know I'm writing a bestseller here?
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah? But I think that was a joke. You know,
the kids would laugh, he would laugh. I think he
had no idea that he was writing a bestseller, And
I don't think he ever dreamed The Godfather would become
a national bestseller and a model for possibly the greatest
movie of all time.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
When he does eventually finish the book, what happens?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
So he leaves the pages with his agent, Candido di Nadio,
and in true Mario Puzo's fashion, he takes his money,
He takes his family, and he flies off to Europe
for a big vacation with lots of food and gambling.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
But isn't he still broke?
Speaker 3 (28:29):
He's broken than he ever has been. He doesn't have
the money to go to Europe. He finances the trip
by getting cash advances on his credit card. He and
his family have a great time, but when he returns
home he's eight grand in debt. Can you imagine eight
grand back then is a fortune. He goes straight to
his agent's office and hopes that she can, as he
(28:50):
would later write, pull a slick magazine assignment out of
her sleeve and bail him out. Instead, she informs him
that Putnam, his publisher, has offered money for the paperback
rights to the Godfather. And Mario goes how much? And
she goes three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars. Wow.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Even now, that's a really good offer. So does he
take it?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Well, he doesn't believe it. He says, this must be
some kind of Madison Avenue. Come on. He thinks they're joking.
After all, the biggest advance up to that point for
paperback rights had been four hundred thousand. So Candida Denaudio,
his agent, picks up the bone, calls his editor at Putlam,
Bill targ and the editor says the amount is not correct.
(29:39):
The offer had already gone up to four hundred thousand.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
And when the dust had settled and the deal was done,
Mario Puzo had sold the paperback rights to the Godfather
for four hundred and ten thousand dollars, setting a new record.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Does he get that all? At once, of course.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Coruse not. They give him one hundred thousand dollars and
he takes it to the bank where he said the
teller had always, you know, looked at him in a
skance when he needed money or you know, cash his
little checks, and he showed him one hundred thousand dollars
just to watch him grovel. He said. He quit his
job at magazine management, and he went home and promptly
(30:22):
spent the one hundred thousand. And he was back at
his publishers a few months later saying, could you give
me another hundred And they said, Mario, we just gave
you a hundred thousand, and he said, one hundred grand
doesn't last forever.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
Well, broke or not. The Godfather was published on March tenth,
nineteen sixty nine, and it shot to the top of
the best seller list.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Absolutely, it was an instant success.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
But Puzo is sort of the most critical about the
lack of artistic merit and The Godfather it's not as
good as the preceding two novels. He said, I wrote
it to make money.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, Puso said, if he knew it was going to
be such a hit, he would have written a lot better,
But The Godfather was a sensation. The reviews were ecstatic.
Even the New York Times gave it a rave pozo.
All of a sudden, this nobody writer begins living very large.
He's a superstar on his way to becoming one of
(31:18):
the best selling writers in the world. He's on the
Today Show, he's being courted in restaurants. All of a sudden,
Champagne would appear at his table from a certain interested
party across the room, which were made men who felt
sure that he would have some kind of insight information,
or maybe he was a man himself. He became a superstar.
(31:39):
The book spent sixty seven weeks on the bestseller list.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Miraculously, his vow in the gutter to become rich and
famous had suddenly become true.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
And in Hollywood too. All of a sudden, Bob Evans
remembered the dead broke writer who appeared in his office
with those thirty five pages under his arm.
Speaker 6 (31:56):
And the book came out and it became the biggest
book of the day.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
The only problem the distribution department at Paramount didn't want
to make the movie.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Nobody wanted to make it. As a matter of fact,
Paramount refused to make it for a while.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
They said, mafia films don't sell.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
We did the cover two years ago failed, so you're
going to make this. Apparently, the studio told Evans that
the only way it could be made was if he
could do it for under two million dollars. So Evans
turned to a producer at Paramount who is known for
getting stuff made on the cheap. The soon to be
(32:33):
legendary Already, I get a call worker. Do I want
to produce The Guard Father? I got of the Joe? Yeah,
of course, that was my favorite book. I never read it.
He'd went happy in New York, could be Jolie Budor.
So I go to New York. I read the book
on the Plane that Fell a Low, Leave the Gun,
(33:01):
Take the Canoli. As a production of Airmail and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
The podcast is based on the book of the same name,
written by our very own Mark Seal.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Our producer is Tina Mullen.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Research assistance by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are
Meet Nathan King, Mark Sieal, Doan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Special thanks to Bridget Arseno and everyone at CDM Studios.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found
in Mark Seal's book Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli,
published by Gallery Books. An imprint of Simon and Schuster
How would you feel if you went back to prison.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'll have to protect myself again, Senatent. I'd have to
kill or.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Be killed again. September nineteenth, nineteen sixty three, A dead
broke writer is lying on his couch in suburban New York.
He's glued to his television set, but he's not watching
a mob movie. He's watching a Senate hearing.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
This is a special report from CBS News in Washington,
the Congress and Cozanostra.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
The testimony is from Cozonostra insider Joseph Wallachi, who would
become better known as the first man to rat on
the mob on national television.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
The sworn testimony you just heard came from the lips
of Joseph Vallachi, lips that supposedly were sealed thirty three
years ago when he joined America's underworld crime syndicate, Cozonostra.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
The world he describes has a name, name that's new
to most Americans, Mafia.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Would it be fair to say that you went back
to prison, that you'll be a dead man if they
got up me. I wouldn't be in the five minute Senator.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Meanwhile, the man watching his television set would say he
had never met a real gangster, but he knows enough
to see the story for what it is.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
As a senator put it before, what did I get
out of it?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Why'd you get out?
Speaker 2 (01:25):
But misery? Or you know, as you all understand, once
you're in, you're in. You can't get out.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
The man on the couch sees a true American story,
a web of family and brutality, loyalty and betrayal, fathers
and sons, immigration, and the American dream. The man doesn't
know it yet, but this inspiration will stay with him
for years to come. The man's name Mario Puzo. I'm
(02:02):
Mark Seal.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
And I'm Nathan King.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
And this is Leave the gun, Take the Canoli. In
today's episode, we're taking a closer look at the real
life mafia stories that influence Mario Puzo's.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Book and diving into the life and career of the
unlikely author who ascended from the depths of Hell's Kitchen
to the glitz and glam of Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
We'll also learn how Puzo's novel landed in the hands
of Paramount executive Robert Evans when he needed him most.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
So let's get started.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
Did you do anything for the family at all in
this time.
Speaker 6 (02:47):
Or did they just do things for you?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Just go out kill for them?
Speaker 4 (02:51):
You'd go out what kill mark? The Vallacci hearings are infamous.
Joseph Vallacci was a made man, a member of the
Genovese crime family and longtime henchmen for mob boss Vito Genovese.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yes, and it was absolutely shocking at the time, especially
since Joe Blacci knew exactly how the mob treated snitches.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Well, he had some first hand experience. He was intimately
familiar with the story of Alberto Aguici.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
And it's a particularly gruesome story. When I was researching
for the book, it stood out as an incredible example
of the brutality of the mafia.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Aguici was a baker from Toronto. But Baker is sort
of in quotes, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Baker is definitely in quotes. He was really a heroin
smuggler and an associate of the Magadino crime family in Buffalo.
And in May of nineteen sixty one, he was indicted
along with nineteen others in one hundred and fifty million
dollar heroin smuggling ring.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
We're talking about the notorious French Connection heroin smuggling ring.
That started in the thirties and stretched from Indo, China
all the way to France, then to Canada in the US.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
And one of those nineteen others was our mobman turned informant,
Joseph Balacchi, and while in jail together, Billacchi listened as
Aguiici absolutely railed against Magadino, who he had expected to
raise money for his bail but instead was letting him
rot in jail.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
It's generally not a good idea to talk badly about
a crime boss as you're in prison.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
Not at all. Aguici ended up having to sell his
house to make bail and was apparently threatening to flip
on Maganino.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
But it didn't last long because in October of nineteen
sixty one, Alberto left his wife and daughters in Toronto
to meet Magadino. He never made it, though he ended
up badly beaten, burned, really gruesomely disfigured in a cornfield.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I wrote in the book that it was like encountering
an animal or something the police couldn't even tell that
it was human. It was in the middle of a
circle that had been burned into the grass, like a
demented sign from hell.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
And no one really knows who did it, but people
suspect that Magadino had caught wind to the fact that
Aguichi was railing against him and speaking poorly and taking
his name in vain and had something done about it. Now,
the rest of the story is incredibly complicated, and we
don't have time to tell it here, but it's a
tale of brotherhood and betrayal and threats on people's lives,
(05:26):
and ultimately Joseph Vallacci ends up fearing for his life.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
It was at this point, apparently, when Vallachi decided to
sing for protection and i FBI agent was assigned to
him full time, and the Justice Department began filling in
the blanks on its chart of Kzonostra. This is Vlachi's
great value, says the department. He is the first member
of Cozanostra publicly to confirm its existence.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
And this is how we get hours of televised senate
testimony about the inner workings of the mafia.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
And it's the first time the word mafia was ever
heard by most Americans.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
But Americans had some understanding of organized crime.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Yes, in the nineteen fifties, there was something called the
Cupaver hearings, which were televised in fourteen cities across America,
and it was something else. It was a hit. It
was like a primetime reality show that people were glued
to their television sets to watch. It was a parade
of what one publication called six hundred gangsters, pimps, bookies,
(06:25):
and shady lawyers who testified about the activities of organized crime.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
Up until that point, this is something that had existed
in the shadows, and suddenly it's in living rooms across America.
You have these gangsters on screen talking about or in
some cases not talking about their crimes. This was pretty
electrifying stuff in its day.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yes, it sure was. Thirty million Americans tuned in. And
remember this is still in the early days of TV.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Was this the hearing where Frank Costello testified without showing
his face?
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yes, Frank Costello, the all powerful leader of the Luciano
crime family, was shot only from the neck down, so
you couldn't see his space and he wouldn't really say anything.
But still, just to watch him in the hearings was
a huge hit. The New York Times headlined in his
article Costello TV's first headless star. Only his hands entertained audiences.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
You must have in your mind something you've done that
you can speak off to your credit as an American citizen.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
If so, what are they.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Paid by tax? This was like the Sopranos in real life.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
But nothing compared to the Ballacci hearings.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Ten years later, Yes, ten years later, Joseph Bolacchi did
what Costello would not. He told and showed everything.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
May I ask you this time, when did you become
a member of this organization nineteen taty what is the
name of it? Causing us?
Speaker 3 (08:01):
In Italian?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Our thing and our family in English?
Speaker 4 (08:06):
And he said a lot in those thirty one hours
of testimony.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, he gives almost everything. He tells about what the
initiation rights were, He tells the codes, He tells the hierarchy.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Well, this is a secret organization. How do you get
to know this member of the same family. He'll introduce
him to you, for instance, as a friend of oz
that means a member. Nah, happens to be with someone
that isn't a friend of ours. He would just simply
say met a friend of mine, which means nothing. That's
(08:38):
the code between us.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
The mob put out a hit on him, offering one
hundred grand to anyone who could take him out, but
it was too late. He had already spilled everything on
national television and he even used the word godfather.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
And on the other side of the television screen, Mario
Puzzo was so all of this in like a sponge.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Yeah, that's right. I mean, the testimony was authentic, it
was real. But Mario Puzo was a writer, an author,
who a great researcher. So he's sitting at home in
the suburbs of New York, lying on his couch, watching
these hearings like everybody else, but he did what nobody
else did. He was able to take these hearings and
fictionalize them and create a family that was even more romantic,
(09:27):
more dangerous, more influential than anything he's seen on television.
He created the Corleone family.
Speaker 4 (09:34):
You've described Puso as a white whale in your reporting
of the story because you never actually got to speak
to him. But how did you get to the heart
of his story and his background.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
To my eternal regret, Mario Puzo had passed away by
the time I started working on the magazine article and
of course later the book, But he would tell his
incredible story himself in numerous newspapers and magazine articles. Later
in interviews, and I was able to speak to his
eldest daughter, Dorothy Puso, who told me in an email
(10:07):
that she thought most likely her father had tossed all
of the research, all of the writing that he had
done on the movie and the book The Godfather. She said,
you know, he was a poor, aspiring writer who would
know to keep that stup. But to my astonishment and
amazement and good fortune, those things weren't tossed. They were saved,
(10:28):
and they're now on display at Dartmouth University in a library. There.
You can see his writing on the back of folders
which he liked to use with the red sharpie. You
can see his typewriter. You can read early drafts of
both the novel and the screenplay of The Godfather. And
then later in my research for the book, I was
(10:50):
able to speak with his son, Anthony Puso, who was
invaluable in telling me about his illustrious father, the frog
who became a prints of Hollywood and the true hero
of the Godfather.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
Where did Puso come from? Because in a lot of ways,
he's the most unlikely character of all in this story.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Yes, his life was like an unlikely fairy tale, as
he wrote in various accounts, including his nineteen seventy two
memoir The Godfather Papers, and other confessions, Mario was born
into one of the worst sections of New York, whose
very name evokes this depravity, Hell's Kitchen. And he was
born into a family of immigrants, many of them illiterate,
(11:31):
including his mother, who he said could not even read
or sign her name, but who employed language like a weapon.
Many of the terms that Mario used in The Godfather,
he said, were straight out of his mama's mouth.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It's a man who doesn't spend time with his family
can never be a real man.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
He grew up in a large family in a tenement flat,
and Pusa claimed he never met an honest to god gangster,
even though they were all around him.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
Was his mother worried that he would fall prey to
the back element in the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Absolutely, his mother was very protective of Mario, but she
wasn't worried about guns so much as girls. Mario claimed
he never had that many dates.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Though, and he was one of thirteen kids.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Yes, and from the beginning he was different from the rest.
He loved gambling. He loved to pitch pennies and play cards,
and he liked to read, and early on he would
read Dostoyevski and go to the library.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
And for a long time he was sort of a
hopeless character. Fame and fortune eluded him, right.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
Mark, Yeah, for a long long time. He grew up.
He was very impoverished. They were so poor that Mario
said that once his teacher asked all the students to
bring a can of food for the poor, and Mario
was saying, they didn't know we were the poor. And
he went out anyway with the other kids in his
neighborhood and they went out and stole cans of food
to be able to bring it to school.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
What did his mom think about his professionist writer.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Well, her greatest aspiration for Mario was that he would
become a railroad clerk and get a steady salary. He
liked to say, every family has a chooch, the Italian
word for donkey, and he goes in my family, the
chooch was me. College, he would later write, wasn't an option.
There were two high schools in his neighborhood, and his
(13:19):
mom and sister thought he should go to the one
that didn't prepare you for college. He asked, why didn't
you urge me to attend college, and his sister says,
because you were stupid.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
And he didn't become a writer right away, did he?
Speaker 3 (13:32):
No, Poor Mario, he suffered so much before finding his
future as a writer. Things were so grim for Mario
Puzo that when World War II broke out, he was
excited to get away from home. So he joined the military.
You know, it was a dream to him. He was
assigned to the fourth Armored Division, Private Puso. He's deployed
(13:53):
to Europe. He drove a jeep, He had affairs, He
found a wife, a German woman who he fell in
love with and brought back to America. And best of all,
he found material for his first novel.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
That sounds like World War Two was the best thing
that ever happened to him.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Well, not immediately. Typical to Mario is the suffering. He
had dreams of being a writer, but he didn't know
where to start. So he went to the City College
of New York on the GI Bill and he studied
literature and creative writing. And then he did what would
become his trademark. He struggled. His weight went up, his
bank account went down. He was broke all the time,
(14:33):
he was gambling. He was a drift. He got a
job as a clerk at the Manhattan Armory, but he
never had enough money to quit his day job to
become a writer. He wanted to write high art. He
wanted to be an artistic writer. He wanted to be
like Dostoyevsky or other writers he admired. But it was
all just a struggle for him. Some of his diaries
(14:54):
still exist, and it's just full of torment and loss
and the theme that money is just ruining everything.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
And does he sit down and write his war novel.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Yes. All along he's writing his first novel, The Dark Arena,
which gets published by Random House in nineteen fifty four,
and he thinks, wow, this is it. You know, I'm
a published author. But the reviews were mixed. It didn't
do for him what he expected. And Mario got an
advance of thirty five hundred dollars which was quickly gone.
(15:26):
His weight was way up, his hopes were way down.
And then on Christmas Eve, something incredible happened. He was
at home and he suffered a severe gallbladder attack. He
called a taxi, which drove him to New York City
in excruciating pain. He arrived at the VA Hospital and
(15:47):
just then the attack worsen. He opened the door of
the taxi and he fell out, and he landed in
a gutter. And he wrote about it later in Time magazine.
Here I am a published author, and I'm lying in
a gutter, dying like a dog. At that moment, I decided,
I'm going to become rich and famous.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
Wow. So he had really hit rock bottom. How long
did it take for him to pull himself up by
his bootstraps?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Well, a long time, because just because you say you
want something to happen doesn't mean it will. By nineteen sixty,
Mario's family had grown to five kids and his job
was in danger because the FBI was investigating his unit
for helping young soldiers obade the draft. Mario was never charged,
(16:34):
but he ended up quitting his job and pursuing the
most unusual path for a writer who aspired to high art.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
He decided to become a pulp fiction writer.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Exactly. It was a company called Magazine Management, and if
there was any man who was destined to write pulp fiction,
it was Mario Puzo. I was able to speak with
one of his colleagues, John Bowers, and he said Mario
was just able to use his research to invent whole worlds.
Speaker 5 (17:03):
But Mario had definite energy at writing. He just could
write nobody's business.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
So he walked into pulp fiction offices of magazine management.
It's a smoke field office. It's full of men and women,
city over, clattering typewriters pumping out copy for like this
never ending flood of trash magazines with names like Mail
and Stag and for men only. They were called magazines,
(17:33):
but they were really sort of rags. And soon Mario
Puza was pumping out salacious stories of brave gis, of
damsels in distress.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
He even wrote a story that took place in Hawaii
where mobsters busted in a gambling parlor, right exactly.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah, that was just one of the many stories. But
I think that was the first of all the ones
that I saw that really tackled some instance of the mafia.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
And of course most of it was just dreamed up,
not most of it, All of it was dreamed up.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I mean, he said once that he would take a
real life battle where seven thousand people got killed and
turn it into a bloody battle where one hundred thousand died.
I wish you could.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
Read some of those, imagine the stories. It was larger
than life. It didn't have to depend upon fact checking
at all.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
He'd amp up the action no matter what, and that
became his trademark. He became one of the top pulp
fiction writers of all time. Before you know, he was
aspiring to high art, he was spending these time on
these novels that didn't make him any money. He had
enormous expenses, not only the bookies that he owed money to,
but also you know, he had a family of five kids.
(18:47):
He had to make a living. He had to bring
money home, and he owed money to the irs. He
owed money to his family, he owed money to the bookkeepers,
and he kept gambling, he kept eating, he kept living
this life that was just way beyond his means.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
And as much as he aspired to high art, it
seems like he was almost destined to write pulp fiction.
I mean, after eight years doing it, he was pretty
much the most successful of any of them.
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Well, yeah, but he was not making a huge amount
of money.
Speaker 5 (19:16):
Yeah, I believe we got something like one hundred and
fifty dollars something like that for the week.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
So he went back to his publisher and said, you know,
I'm ready for my third book, my third novel, and
his publisher said, forget about it, Mario. They weren't ready
to assign him a third book. And one of the
editors said, well, you know, if the Fortunate Pilgrim had
a little bit more of that mafia stuff in it,
(19:45):
maybe it would sell. And those words rang and Mario
Puzo's head a little bit more of that mafia stuff.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
And that's when it all clicked for him. He remembered
how he had been engrossed by the Volacci hearings.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
It's like a scene out of a movie. I mean,
here's this overweight, overwrought in debt writer. And he pays
ten bucks for the ten volume transcripts of the Kufaver hearings,
and he gets access to his friend Peter Mass's book
on the Bolacchi hearings, and he gets a lot of
other research, and he sits down in his basement and
(20:20):
he cranks out a ten page outline and he takes
it to his agent, the legendary Candido Dinadio, and she
sends it out to various publishers, and much to Mario's surprise,
one of them gives him five thousand dollars. And what
does he do? Of course, he spends the money. He
doesn't work on the book. God, seriously, Yes, he gambles.
(20:44):
He spends some money on his family, obviously, and soon
the money is all gone.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
But the important thing is that he has a fire
lit under him and he has to deliver the book.
Speaker 3 (20:55):
Not so fascinate than there's one place a struggling writer
can turn to for some fast cash.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
This must be when he goes to Hollywood. Allegedly, Evan says,
Puzzo shows up at the gates of Paramount thirty five
pages under his arm, looking broke, and sells the option
of Paramount for twelve five.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
And Mario claims he sold the option through his agent
and the story editor at Paramount, and then he never
even went to California.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Well, regardless of what happened, he sold the option to Paramount.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
For big money for Mario too, twelve five hundred.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
So now he writes the book.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Yes, he goes home. He walks down the stairs to
his basement, and there between the pool table and the
constant racket of his five kids. A mafia family rises
up from his typewriter, and what a family it is.
He gets the name from a town in Sicily, one
of the most mafia invested towns in the country, Corleone.
(21:54):
There's Don Vito Corleone, the godfather. There's the eldest son
and heir apparent, Santino, known as Sonny. There's the middle son,
the poorest, suffering, subservient, Fredo. And there's the youngest, the future,
the college boy who chose to enlist in the military
instead of the mafia. Michael Mario, of course, claimed he
(22:18):
had never met an honest to goodness gangster, but he
looked for inspiration wherever he could. One story I just
loved from when he was writing the book was that
one night in nineteen sixty six, the author Gaytalise and
his wife Nan invited Mario to dinner at the home
of Talisea's aunt, Susan Peleggi. And Susan Pelegi, of course,
is the mother of the also famous writer Nick Poleggi,
(22:42):
who had gone to write the novel Wise.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
Guy, which was the foundation for Goodfellas.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Exactly, and Gaytalse had written the organized crime classic Honor
Thy Father, and so here's a newcomer to the realm,
Mario Puzzo, the author of the Fourthcoming Godfather the same table.
So he takes one look at Nantelice, who'd grown up
on the you know, up pretty side, who was from
a different world, very genteel educated, and he immediately found
(23:11):
a model for the wife of Michael Corleone.
Speaker 5 (23:14):
Kay.
Speaker 4 (23:15):
So he was really pulling from all around him for inspiration.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
That was the brilliance of Mario Puzo that he would
find inspiration in unlikely places. So another thing I was
able to discover is that Mario, being Mario and loving
Las Vegas more than any other place on Earth, probably
would go to Las Vegas regularly and gamble at, among
other places, the Sands Hotel. And I was able to
(23:40):
interview ed Walters, who worked as a pit boss at
the Sands. Tell me when you first saw Mario Puzzoo.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
Came to Vegas. He has to play and he has
Vegas ARONI.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
He was a relint being he played a Roulin and
he said that Mario would come in and gamble and
the same time asked questions for his forthcoming book about the.
Speaker 6 (24:04):
Mob he was a little pudgy guy, and I met him.
So he was talking to this dealer on the roulette wheels,
and I was on the wheels at that time, and
I understanding, I'd listen to I'd answer question with all
he'd asked questions about.
Speaker 5 (24:16):
Sinatra and a mob and honey and because of me.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
Then I opened up about because he had things wrong,
and I said, oh no, you got.
Speaker 5 (24:27):
To mix up. The mob and the mafia are not
the same thing.
Speaker 6 (24:30):
He got the mafia all Italians, the old blood guys
from a certain place of thing or the momb a difference,
and then I trained them.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
They outfit all his terms.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
And of course Ed Walters, who knew a bit about
the mob because he had come from New York City
where he had known a lot of people that were,
let's say, somehow connected, told Mario a bit, you know,
to keep him gambling there. And Mario would ask questions
about who who and what was what? And as long
as he kept gambling, Ed Walters kept talking.
Speaker 5 (25:05):
Was he taking notes and everything while you were telling
him this? No, he didn't have first, but then he
started to.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
And pretty soon Mario had an insight into the Vegas
aspect of the mob, which figured into the Godfather quite
a bit.
Speaker 6 (25:19):
He'd say, so, Eddie, tell me how keep this Saunder
in the mob? And I said, haul it all it hold,
I said, Sanra ain't in the bob.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
He said, guys told me in the mom I said,
out of shit, I SAIDs ran in the mob. He
worked for us, he said, fucking entertainer. And he thought, wow,
that's interesting. So Mario would be playing while he's talking
to him. Yeah, yeah, all the time. Oh, he couldn't
never just sit there and take notes.
Speaker 6 (25:45):
No, why they were Oh we weret a fucking guy
sitting in a n because he don't take a notes?
Speaker 5 (25:49):
So you let him do it because he was playing, Yes,
because he's playing. Oh so that was good for you,
they're yeah, of course I told some people I was
writing a book from shit on the fine the guy
that was sitting there takeing. What should we come down to?
(26:11):
What do you write a book? Ye? Get the front?
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Are So do you think Mario knew he had to
do something different here? I mean you mentioned his daughter
Dorothy saying that he couldn't have known this book would
be a success.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
No, of course, he didn't think it was going to
be a great success. While he was writing, he was
writing as he always did, he liked to say, for
a paycheck. But at the same time he had decided
to give up on high art and those aspirations to
be a Doustoyevski or something like that, you know, to
be a fine art writer. He was writing a sensational
(26:45):
story about a sensational family in a sensational world, and
he had no aspirations of writing high art. He wanted
to turn this book into bucks. He wanted to make
money on the god bother.
Speaker 4 (26:57):
Funnily enough, with his back against the wall, he ends
up turning out the most dust of skiesque of all
of his novels.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Yeah, I know it. It became something of a masterpiece.
I mean, I wouldn't say it was, you know, incredible literature,
but at the same time it was a page turner,
a pot boiler. It had all the attributes of Valley
of the Dolls or something like that. But said in
the world of organized crime, I don't think he expected
(27:25):
it to do what it did. Though still I think
he thought he was going to, you know, write a
book for money, get his five thousand dollars advance and
maybe some royalties, pay off some debts, and then get
onto the next project. Instead, it took the world by storm.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
Well, and when he was down in that basement and
the kids were screaming, he would shout, quiet, don't you
know I'm writing a bestseller here?
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Yeah? But I think that was a joke. You know,
the kids would laugh, he would laugh. I think he
had no idea that he was writing a bestseller, And
I don't think he ever dreamed The Godfather would become
a national bestseller and a model for possibly the greatest
movie of all time.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
When he does eventually finish the book, what happens?
Speaker 3 (28:10):
So he leaves the pages with his agent, Candido di Nadio,
and in true Mario Puzo's fashion, he takes his money,
He takes his family, and he flies off to Europe
for a big vacation with lots of food and gambling.
Speaker 4 (28:27):
But isn't he still broke?
Speaker 3 (28:29):
He's broken than he ever has been. He doesn't have
the money to go to Europe. He finances the trip
by getting cash advances on his credit card. He and
his family have a great time, but when he returns
home he's eight grand in debt. Can you imagine eight
grand back then is a fortune. He goes straight to
his agent's office and hopes that she can, as he
(28:50):
would later write, pull a slick magazine assignment out of
her sleeve and bail him out. Instead, she informs him
that Putnam, his publisher, has offered money for the paperback
rights to the Godfather. And Mario goes how much? And
she goes three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars. Wow.
Speaker 4 (29:14):
Even now, that's a really good offer. So does he
take it?
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Well, he doesn't believe it. He says, this must be
some kind of Madison Avenue. Come on. He thinks they're joking.
After all, the biggest advance up to that point for
paperback rights had been four hundred thousand. So Candida Denaudio,
his agent, picks up the bone, calls his editor at Putlam,
Bill targ and the editor says the amount is not correct.
(29:39):
The offer had already gone up to four hundred thousand.
Speaker 4 (29:43):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
And when the dust had settled and the deal was done,
Mario Puzo had sold the paperback rights to the Godfather
for four hundred and ten thousand dollars, setting a new record.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
Does he get that all? At once, of course.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Coruse not. They give him one hundred thousand dollars and
he takes it to the bank where he said the
teller had always, you know, looked at him in a
skance when he needed money or you know, cash his
little checks, and he showed him one hundred thousand dollars
just to watch him grovel. He said. He quit his
job at magazine management, and he went home and promptly
(30:22):
spent the one hundred thousand. And he was back at
his publishers a few months later saying, could you give
me another hundred And they said, Mario, we just gave
you a hundred thousand, and he said, one hundred grand
doesn't last forever.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
Well, broke or not. The Godfather was published on March tenth,
nineteen sixty nine, and it shot to the top of
the best seller list.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Absolutely, it was an instant success.
Speaker 4 (30:46):
But Puzo is sort of the most critical about the
lack of artistic merit and The Godfather it's not as
good as the preceding two novels. He said, I wrote
it to make money.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, Puso said, if he knew it was going to
be such a hit, he would have written a lot better,
But The Godfather was a sensation. The reviews were ecstatic.
Even the New York Times gave it a rave pozo.
All of a sudden, this nobody writer begins living very large.
He's a superstar on his way to becoming one of
(31:18):
the best selling writers in the world. He's on the
Today Show, he's being courted in restaurants. All of a sudden,
Champagne would appear at his table from a certain interested
party across the room, which were made men who felt
sure that he would have some kind of insight information,
or maybe he was a man himself. He became a superstar.
(31:39):
The book spent sixty seven weeks on the bestseller list.
Speaker 4 (31:43):
Miraculously, his vow in the gutter to become rich and
famous had suddenly become true.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
And in Hollywood too. All of a sudden, Bob Evans
remembered the dead broke writer who appeared in his office
with those thirty five pages under his arm.
Speaker 6 (31:56):
And the book came out and it became the biggest
book of the day.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
The only problem the distribution department at Paramount didn't want
to make the movie.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Nobody wanted to make it. As a matter of fact,
Paramount refused to make it for a while.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
They said, mafia films don't sell.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
We did the cover two years ago failed, so you're
going to make this. Apparently, the studio told Evans that
the only way it could be made was if he
could do it for under two million dollars. So Evans
turned to a producer at Paramount who is known for
getting stuff made on the cheap. The soon to be
(32:33):
legendary Already, I get a call worker. Do I want
to produce The Guard Father? I got of the Joe? Yeah,
of course, that was my favorite book. I never read it.
He'd went happy in New York, could be Jolie Budor.
So I go to New York. I read the book
on the Plane that Fell a Low, Leave the Gun,
(33:01):
Take the Canoli. As a production of Airmail and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
The podcast is based on the book of the same name,
written by our very own Mark Seal.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Our producer is Tina Mullen.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
Research assistance by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.
Speaker 4 (33:19):
Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are
Meet Nathan King, Mark Sieal, Doan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Special thanks to Bridget Arseno and everyone at CDM Studios.
Speaker 4 (33:33):
A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found
in Mark Seal's book Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli,
published by Gallery Books. An imprint of Simon and Schuster
Hosts And Creators
Mark Seal
Nathan King
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