April 8, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in honor of Coppola's birthday, we tell the story of how The Godfather came to be—against all odds. At the time, Coppola was just a renegade filmmaker who had never made a profitable picture. The producer was hired because he could stay under budget. The star had a reputation for being difficult. A formula for disaster? No—the makings of one of the greatest films of all time. Here to tell the story is Harlan Lebo, author of The Godfather Legacy.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story of The Godfather and its unlikely journey to the screen.
The director of Francis Ford Coppola, was a renegade filmmaker
who never made a profitable picture. The producer already was
hired because it could stay below budget. The star Marlon
Brando had a reputation for being difficult, a formula for disaster. Nope,
(00:34):
not quite. It was the makings of one of the
greatest films of all time. Here to tell the story
is Harln Liebow, author of The Godfather Legacy.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
The Godfather really is very much a family story. It's
certainly not a family picture by any means in the
traditional sense of a rated G film, but it is
a movie about a family there. Of course, there are
many things about the mafia and violence in the film,
but at the heart of the story are the struggles
within a family a very powerful man, his three sons,
(01:05):
and his daughter, and in particular the struggles of Michael,
his youngest son, who wanted to stay out of the
family business as they call it, but winds up, of course,
at the end of The Godfather of the film and
the book, both as powerful and as ruthless as his
father could have ever imagined. So it's very much a
family picture. I mean, it's the same way as looking
(01:26):
at Gone with the Wind. It's Gone with the Wind
isn't a movie about the Civil War. It just has
the Civil War as a backdrop. It's about the struggles
of a woman during the Civil War. But The Godfather
is the same way. The whole issue of family and
trust and love are very much a part of the Godfather.
In fact, they are integral to The Godfather. Michael, the
youngest son played by al Pacino, never would have done
(01:48):
what he did, which has become part of the family business,
if it was not for his love of his father,
and that's a real torment for him, but it doesn't
stop him from becoming the ruthless killer that he does become.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
He spent time with their family, sure I do, but
that's a man who doesn't spent time with his family
could never.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Be a real man.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
If you look at Hell's Kitchen or other parts of
New York, for example, where they filmed The Godfather Part two,
they were not good parts of New York then. But
the city has changed and continues to change, and it's
much nicer now, but Hell's Kitchen was the classic tenements
section of New York City for many decades, and that's
where Mario Puzo was from. He was young, he was poor.
(02:38):
He eventually became a civil servant working in New York
and at the same time was a struggling fiction author
through the nineteen sixties. He wrote good books, but they
didn't sell very well at all until he decided to
pick up an idea that he thought about all along
the way and was mentioned just a bit in one
of his other books, which is the experiences of a
(03:00):
family involved in the underworld of New York, and that's
when the idea for The Godfather came along. The book
itself was one of the great page turning books. One
summer that it came out, Apuzo had decided to give
writing one last shot. He maxed out all the credit cards.
(03:22):
He also got a little money from Paramount Pictures, but
this really was his last shot at writing. He sent
off the manuscript. He came back from a vacation, and
he came back to discovery that not only had the
book sold, but the paperback rights that sold for about
four hundred thousand dollars and in nineteen seventy money. That's
a lot of money. So the book was a gigantic hit,
(03:44):
number one on the bestseller list for months and months,
and it was a natural fit, you would think, to
be made into a film. But that's where other problems started.
The process of giving writers advances wasn't done very often,
but it was done most frequently by an executive named
Peter Bart, who is still very active in the film
(04:06):
business right now. He is a columnist and has been
for years writing some of the most intelligent work about
the film business and entertainment in general. But Peter believed
very strongly that some writers needed a little help from
now and then to keep going, as all struggling writers do.
He had already supported other books that had done very well,
(04:26):
like Love Story, which did very well for Paramount Pictures.
So Peter Bart supported Pouso with a few bucks now
and then, and they held on to the rights to
make The Godfather the book into a film if it
turned out to be a success. Well, of course, it
turned out to be a huge success, which naturally led
it into becoming a film project in nineteen seventy one.
(04:52):
No one did want to direct the film, even though
The Godfather of the book was a huge bestseller, it
was thought at the time that a movie about the
mafia would not be very successful, and primarily that's because
what Paramount wanted to do with it. They had supported
Puzzo as a writer, but they didn't want to support
the film any more than any other relatively low budget
shoot him up picture about crime, and as a result,
(05:16):
there were no takers on directors for the film and
very little interest in the project. That problem was compounded
by the fact that a film called The Brotherhood had
come out at about the same time, which had huge,
a huge budget, big stars, and it flopped because again
it was just not well thought of as a topic
(05:38):
to make movies about the mafia. Well. Eventually the movie
was offered to Francis Coppola to direct, and Coppola was
a young, just getting started director. He'd only had I
think three films at that point and had written another one.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Much of the original book was a pockpboiler, so it
was not a film I particularly wanted to do, but
I had no money, and my then young assistant, George Lucas, said, Francis,
you got to get a job because the Sheriff's going
to come and put a chain on the door of
American Zotrope because we haven't paid our bills do this movie.
And so I ultimately took the job and wrote the screenplay.
(06:21):
I just took the novel and went through it and
underlined everything that I thought that I could use.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
But part of the reason they went to Coppola was
he seemed solid enough as a director, but he was
also Italian American and that was crucial to the project
at the time. And we could certainly talk about the
problems within the Italian American community in the nineteen sixties
and early nineteen seventies with Hollywood, but the short version
is that it was viewed within many Italian American families
(06:50):
that anytime an Italian American person appeared in the film,
it was in a crime role, and there were no
non crime roles legitimate characters who were Italian American in
films or on television. Well, Paramount came around to the
idea that one of the ways to solve that problem
is to have an Italian American director. They went to Copola,
(07:11):
they offered the project to him, and he turned it
down to he came around because of the same things
we were talking about a few minutes ago. He finally
did read the book all the way through. He only
read sort of the smutty parts up front before he declined.
But then he realized the same thing that we did,
which is that the movie is not about the Mafia
(07:31):
at its core. What it's about is a family and
the problems of a particular family and the struggles of
that family. That's the story at its core. And if
you focus on Michael, the problems of the youngest son,
then it becomes even more interesting. So Coppola agreed to
do the film with many conditions, and he was able
to convince Paramount to buy in. Copola did grow up
(07:54):
in Detroit and a few other places as well. His father, Carmine,
was a very talented musician and composer, but he always
felt like he was waiting for his break to come,
like he was waiting for that knock to come on
the door. And it never did, or at least it
never did until his son helped him later, and Coppola
realized that you just can't wait around for these things.
(08:15):
You need to go out and make your own breaks.
And he did make his own breaks and of course
here was a break that had been handed to him
because of the talent he had developed, and he turned
it down and then finally did accept it, but he
made very strong demands about how the film needed to
be made. The primary demand, of course, was that it
be filmed entirely on location in New York, which is
(08:38):
a very expensive proposition. At that point. The studio wanted
to make it either in studio or on the streets
in Los Angeles, which would have been much cheaper. They
had a very small budget in mind for the film,
and of course, by today's standards, the budget was very small,
but by the standards then and the struggles within the
motion picture industry in the early nineteen seventy it was
(09:00):
a very small budget. Copla got more. Keep in mind,
The Godfather is a huge book and has many subplots,
and he made the case that he was going to
focus as much as he could on the trials and
tribulations of the family. And he stood his ground. And
that's and there were many times where he had to
(09:21):
stand his ground over the next few months.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
And you've been listening to Harlan Libo, author of The
Godfather Legacy, tell the story about how The Godfather came
to be. Heck, even as a best selling piece of fiction,
it barely happened. I mean, it was Mario Puzo's last shot,
and what do you know, it becomes a hit. Coppola
doesn't even want to do the film. The only reason
(09:44):
he's been picked is because he's Italian, and he's probably cheap,
and he says no the first time, but he needs
the money. When we come back, more of the story
of how The Godfather came to be with Harlan Libo
here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(10:10):
American stories, and with Harlan Lee Bow, author of The
Godfather Legacy, the Untold story of the making of the
classic Godfather trilogy. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
The Godfather is a movie about violence and about in
some ways about love and about family. But it's one
of the best American films ever made, or one of
the best films ever made about power, how power can
be used, and how power can corrupt. And those are
the elements that Coppola went for. And in all fairness,
the movie was very of course, very popular at the time,
(10:47):
but even more important, it is a lasting treasure of
American cinema. If you ask practically anyone the kinds of
films they like, or the films of their favorite films,
The Godfather is almost always one of the films that everybody,
everybody really loves. It really was quite universal. The issues
of love and family and conflict are so clear in
(11:10):
the film. I mean, let's face it, there's a lot
of violence in The Godfather. Of course there is. That
is part of the story, it's part of the culture.
It tells the story in many ways of the family itself.
But the problems within the family, in particular of course
al Pacino playing Michael, and his struggles to stay away
(11:31):
from the family business all fall apart, and that's the
intriguing part of the story, right up to the very end.
What you do with the headstrong, violent oldest son. That
sort of takes care of itself about halfway through the
movie when he's killed. But then always that the story
of Fredo, the middle son, and what happened to him
or what didn't happen to him, how he was sort
(11:52):
of left by the side of the road in many respects.
That gets picked up again in much more detail in
Godfought At part too.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Mike, you don't come to Las Vegas and talk to
men like moul Green like that.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
Frado, You're my older brother and I love you.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
But don't ever take side with anyone against the family again.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Ever. But it was a real problem filming The Godfather.
The film was shot primarily in the spring and summer
of nineteen seventy one, and they were filming in nineteen
what was supposed to be nineteen forty six, forty seven,
and forty eight. Well, it doesn't seem all that long before.
It was only twenty three years earlier. But it was
a long time in the history of New York and
(12:42):
the city really looked nothing like it did in nineteen
forty six. And constant attention to detail and fixing the
streets and putting up posters or big trucks to block
things that were would otherwise be seen on screen. That
was a constant challenge when making the film. One of
(13:02):
the great pleasures of watching The Godfathers watching the detail
of the film, just adding extra details. Dean Tavalaris, the
production designer. There's one scene on the streets of a
tenement area where James Kahn's character Sonny, the oldest son
beats up his brother in law because his brother in
law has attacked Sonny's sister, the youngest in the family.
(13:25):
Look around at what's going on in that scene, Just
at the decor and the posters of political campaigns and
posters that are falling down and tattered away that have
posters underneath them, or the cars, or the shepherd's crook
light poles. All that detail was a constant challenge, but
well worth it because The Godfather looks incredibly good and
(13:48):
incredibly realistic. Actually, when you look at it now, I
believe Brando's character is only in the three hour Godfather
about forty three minutes something like that, but his aura
is over every frame of the film, and he had
exactly what it took to make that character of Don
(14:10):
Vito Corleone come alive. Godfather.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
I don't know what to do.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
I don't know what to do. You cannot like him
on what to.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
That's how it turns out a Hollywood phenog Christ like
a woman.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
What could I do? What can I do?
Speaker 5 (14:30):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Look you?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I want to the rest?
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well in a month from Navice, Hollywood, big SHOT's gonna give.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
You what you want.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Too late, they started shooting in a week.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I'm gonna make him an awfully game refuse.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Well, now we're looking at it in retrospect. A lot
of years later, then, Branda was viewed by some as
not bankable. Some most of his film just before The
Godfather had not done very well at all. He was
also viewed as impossible to work with by some people,
who probably unfairly said that he was really very tough
(15:13):
on the set and was difficult for directors for many things,
many reasons. He was not anyone's choice to be the
down except for Coppola, who went for him, who met
with Marlon Brando, and Brando certainly wanted the part and
created his own character right in front of Coppola's eyes
as he envisioned the don.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Being the president of Paramount told me in these words,
he says, Francis, as president of Paramount Pictures, I am
telling you that Marlon Brando will not be in this movie.
I said, we have to be like Ninja's. We have
to go to mister Brando's house, go make any noise,
and we'll just sort of photograph him experimenting to be
(15:54):
in Italian. So we went. We arrived very early in
the morning, and no one said a word, and he
came out. He had long blonde hair. He was only
forty seven. He was quite a handsome young man. And
as he came out in a beautiful japaning his robe.
I remember he came out and he took his long
hair and he kind of put it up behind his
(16:16):
head and pinned it in. He got some shoe polish
and he started to make it black and kind of
do that, and then he put a white shirt on.
And I remember he took the white shirt and he
was taking his collar. Interesting about little seeds of a character.
And he started to bend the end of the collar
and he said, those Italian guys collar is always went.
(16:40):
And he even said, oh, maybe his voice should be
very hoarse, because he shot in the story in the throat.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
He was talking like this.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Like that, not saying anything, and meanwhile we were photographing this.
So he even took some Kleenex and he put it
into his mouth, you know, and he said, those guys
look like bulldogs. And it was a miracle because the
character was growing out of this. I took this tape.
(17:13):
I decided to go to New York and show it
to the chairman and the owner of Paramount, who was
named Charlie Bluehorn, who was an interesting person, and he
had a company called Golf and Western. It was the
first conglomerate and one of the companies he owned was Paramount.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I'm gonna make him an offer again.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Review.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Charlie Bluehorn comes out and he recognized Mel Francis. What
can I do? I said, well, look at this, and
I turned on the tape recorder and there is Marlon
Brando with this long blonde hair rolling it up. And
Charlie Bluehorn said, no, no, absolutely not Maldon Brando. And
as he watched and saw this transformation, he said, that's incredible,
(17:58):
that's incredible. And as at that moment, I knew that
I had Brando in the part. And of course Brando
to this day is thought of for that role.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And Coppola was right. And Coppola had to fight for
practically every character, but the key characters he had to
fight fight for was first Marlon Brando and then later
Al Pacino.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And we've been listening to author Harlan Leebow tell one
heck of a story about the greatest film ever made
in American history, that is that's The Godfather and a
lot of film critics, but The Godfather too right there
with it, and that never happens with sequels, And so
much of it had to do with Francis Ford Coppola's
artistic nature, him seeing and understanding the core of the story,
(18:44):
which was that it was not a mob film. It
was a film about power, violence, love and family at
the center. And my goodness, having to create a film
in the streets of New York in nineteen seventy one
and make it look like it was nineteen forty seven
or forty eight was pulled off by a master. And
then there's that talk of the scene with Marlon Brando
(19:06):
and him showing it to this titan, this head of
golf in Western and saying no Brando, and then seeing
the magic of Brando owning the character almost instantly. Remarkable storytelling.
When we come back more of the story of how
The Godfather came to be here on our American stories,
(19:37):
and we continue with our American stories, and with Harlan Lebow,
author of The Godfather Legacy, let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
And Alpucino, it's so hard for us to think of
it now at Al Pacino, the superstar, the legend of Hollywood.
But in nineteen seventy one, he was like many other
struggling actors in New York, with no word. You know.
He would wait tables, you would put pamphlets on cars,
just trying to make ends meet. While he got acting
(20:08):
jobs and did very well on the stage when he did,
but a lot of other people did too. He'd made
a couple of movies, including a superb role as a
junkie in Panic and Needle Park. But he's small, He's
not traditionally handsome, and there were some of the studio
who thought Robert Redford could play Michael. But copoly knew better,
(20:30):
and he tested endlessly for the part of Michael, throwing
Pacino's screen tests in as often as he could. But
once Pacino got into costume, once he was on set,
once his measured, reserved performance started to come out, I
think people finally realized immediately that he was perfect for
(20:52):
the role.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
And I was thinking, why would Francis want me to
play that part? I much prefer Sonny, the one that's
more vbus more. There's more to play there, there's more
fun there. How do you play Michael?
Speaker 4 (21:04):
I thought?
Speaker 5 (21:05):
But he sees me as Michael. I thought, Gee, he's
seeing something I don't see.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Keep in mind that al Pacino's character, Michael Corleone, is
struggling about what to do with his life. He's just
out of the army. He knows he does not want
to be part of the of the family business, family
business and quotes. But he also feels a duty to
his father and feels that he needs to take care
of the people who are responsible for having his father
shot and severely wounded, which he does. He murders a
(21:34):
police captain and a drug dealer at a restaurant in
the Bronx. I think Pacino is probably getting a little
behind himself at that point. The studios certainly thought that
those scenes were fabulous, which they are. If you look
at Pacino in those scenes, that undercurrent of rage and
fear in those scenes as he's preparing for the two
(21:55):
murders is unmistakable and unforgettable. But what really sold the
student were some of the first scenes that he shot,
which were on the streets of New York with Diane
Keaton his girlfriend Kay as they were walking away from
Radio City Music Hall, and he discovers that his father
has been shot when he sees it on the headline
of a newspaper, and that simmering concern, and how he
(22:20):
presents himself on screen in beautiful color closeups by cinematographer
Gordon Willis, with his very dark eyes and penetrating stare.
That's what sold the studio. They were with him from
the start. There was no question at that point. In fact,
it's really sad. You can see after you've seen the movie.
Once you see him walking on a street and you
(22:42):
realize before he walked past this new stand, he was
the carefree kid he was trying to become. And when
he passes the new stand and Kay has seen the headlines,
you know that it's all on the way down.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Send Fredo off to do this, Fredo off to do that.
Let Fredo take care of some Mickey Mouse nightclub somewhere,
said Freido, to pick somebody up at the airport. I
mean your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over.
I ain't the way I wanted it. I can handle things.
(23:20):
I'm smart. Like everybody says like dumb, I'm smart and
I want to spect.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
John Cazzali was a wonderful character actor. He played the
part of Fredo the misunderstood middle Son as perfectly as
it could possibly have been played, creating all kinds of conflict,
not as much in Godfather Part one, but became integral
to the story in Godfather Part two. John Cazzali was
in five classic films of the nineteen seventies. Besides The
(23:52):
Godfather Part one and Part two, he was in Dog
Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter, and The Conversation, five of
the homes ever made. So that's quite a legacy for
a man whose life ended way too quickly. Marlon Brandon
was not a lazy actor, although some probably would have
said he was. He was definitely a method actor, and
(24:14):
he felt very strongly that for his style of acting,
studying the script as little as possible and making it
as spontaneous as possible was important for his roles. So
for many of his parts, for all of his career
after a certain point, he almost always had C cards
just off camera, and logistics of a movie set being
(24:36):
what they are. Sometimes the Q card can be right
in front of you, and sometimes it's right on the
lap of the person that you're talking to. So they
hit cue cards everywhere, some of them big, some of
them poster size. Some of them just little note size
sitting on a accounter. It's too bad, because those cue
cards are worth a fortune. Now I'd love to have some, eh.
(25:01):
This is the scene when Marlon Brando's character dies in
that he's in the family tomato patch with his grandson Anthony.
It's actually his real name is also Anthony, and the
scene was scripted for Brando's character to die, but a
lot of it was left for Brando to work out
and interacting with Anthony. Anthony was and young, it wasn't
(25:22):
old enough to really act for himself. And one of
the things that Brando did was something from his own childhood.
Was he took an orange, he ate part of it
and then like many of us, he put the rind
in his teeth and it made it look like a
funny face and he actually cut teeth into it, and
it really scared Anthony. It genuinely scared him. If you
(25:43):
see him on screen, he's actually scared by this. But
it plays so beautifully as this tender, intimate scene between
grandfather and grandson, and it's a wonderful contrast to what
happens a few seconds later, which is that Brando's character
that passes away, falls into the tomato plants and dies.
(26:04):
It's absolutely wonderfully shot. And by the way, just a
little unsung hero of this film was Gordon Willis's cinematographer,
who shot every frame of the film as if it
was literally a frame from a photograph or a painting.
It is so physically beautiful the whole film. It's wonderful,
(26:24):
incredible as it may seem now, movies were not marketed
the same way they are today. The idea then and
for way too long, was he would build up interest
in a film by having road shows for it in
a select number of theaters, as opposed to showing it
in hundreds and hundreds of theaters or thousands of theaters
(26:46):
all on one big weekend. And that's what happened with
The Godfather as well, where they opened it in several
theaters or well many theaters in major cities across the country,
but not in thousands of theaters, and it was an
instantane is around the block for hours and hours a day, sensation,
absolute gigantic hit in the summer of nineteen seventy two,
(27:10):
later becoming the biggest box office attraction of all time,
made more money than any other film up to that time.
But it was huge, and then of course when it
opened wide, it opened wide and very successfully. This was
a huge boost for everyone involved. All of the younger characters,
the people who played the Suns, James Kahn, al Pacino
(27:32):
and then an adopted son played by Robert Devall all
became legitimate stars immediately. They were all nominated for Best
Supporting Actor. Brando's career got a huge boost. Talia Schier's
career at playing Connie, the youngest in the family, also
got a huge boost and went on to do all
the Rocky films, among other things. This was a giant,
(27:53):
a giant success story for everyone.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Being an Italian American, I knew my own family, who
were a family of musicians and tulndye makers, but living
in New York, and so I knew what the family
life was like. I was very much anxious to draw
upon my own family in terms of how we lived
and what it was like in the house, and what
we ate and what the day to day feel of
(28:19):
an Italian family was. I used as much of my
own memory of my family to give it a kind
of authenticity, and that was my approach. It was the
story of a family, and it was kind of Shakespearean,
and that there was a great king, and he had
three sons, and each of the sons had a part
(28:40):
of the talent of the old man, but none really
all of it. The youngest had the cunning, and the
second had the sweetness, and the older had the rage
and the violence.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I don't know for all fascinated by gangsters as much
as we're fascinated by men of action. These were deliberate,
ruthless men there, unsavory, horrible people and murderers. Yet there's
something attractive or compelling about them that it really fascinates everyone.
It's part of American culture.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. A special thanks to Harlan Libo,
author of The Godfather Legacy, the untold story of the
making of the classic Godfather trilogy. You will not put
it down once you start reading it. The pictures are terrific,
and my goodness, what a story he tells about the
(29:32):
whole movie, the making of it, from beginning to end,
and particularly the stories about some of these other actors.
Al Pacino a staggering performance and launches this amazing career.
John Gazzal, who plays Fredo, the actor's actor. We've done
a piece on John Cazal. Go to Alamericanstories dot com
and you can listen to a real beauty. And then
(29:53):
of course there's Gordon Willis, the cinematographer, and Nino Rota
that soundtrack it was all just and there is Copala
discussing and describing his Italian heritage and now he brought
that authenticity through the screen, the unlikely story of the
Godfather and how it became the greatest film of all time.
(30:14):
Here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, the
story of The Godfather and its unlikely journey to the screen.
The director of Francis Ford Coppola, was a renegade filmmaker
who never made a profitable picture. The producer already was
hired because it could stay below budget. The star Marlon
Brando had a reputation for being difficult, a formula for disaster. Nope,
(00:34):
not quite. It was the makings of one of the
greatest films of all time. Here to tell the story
is Harln Liebow, author of The Godfather Legacy.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
The Godfather really is very much a family story. It's
certainly not a family picture by any means in the
traditional sense of a rated G film, but it is
a movie about a family there. Of course, there are
many things about the mafia and violence in the film,
but at the heart of the story are the struggles
within a family a very powerful man, his three sons,
(01:05):
and his daughter, and in particular the struggles of Michael,
his youngest son, who wanted to stay out of the
family business as they call it, but winds up, of course,
at the end of The Godfather of the film and
the book, both as powerful and as ruthless as his
father could have ever imagined. So it's very much a
family picture. I mean, it's the same way as looking
(01:26):
at Gone with the Wind. It's Gone with the Wind
isn't a movie about the Civil War. It just has
the Civil War as a backdrop. It's about the struggles
of a woman during the Civil War. But The Godfather
is the same way. The whole issue of family and
trust and love are very much a part of the Godfather.
In fact, they are integral to The Godfather. Michael, the
youngest son played by al Pacino, never would have done
(01:48):
what he did, which has become part of the family business,
if it was not for his love of his father,
and that's a real torment for him, but it doesn't
stop him from becoming the ruthless killer that he does become.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
He spent time with their family, sure I do, but
that's a man who doesn't spent time with his family
could never.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Be a real man.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
If you look at Hell's Kitchen or other parts of
New York, for example, where they filmed The Godfather Part two,
they were not good parts of New York then. But
the city has changed and continues to change, and it's
much nicer now, but Hell's Kitchen was the classic tenements
section of New York City for many decades, and that's
where Mario Puzo was from. He was young, he was poor.
(02:38):
He eventually became a civil servant working in New York
and at the same time was a struggling fiction author
through the nineteen sixties. He wrote good books, but they
didn't sell very well at all until he decided to
pick up an idea that he thought about all along
the way and was mentioned just a bit in one
of his other books, which is the experiences of a
(03:00):
family involved in the underworld of New York, and that's
when the idea for The Godfather came along. The book
itself was one of the great page turning books. One
summer that it came out, Apuzo had decided to give
writing one last shot. He maxed out all the credit cards.
(03:22):
He also got a little money from Paramount Pictures, but
this really was his last shot at writing. He sent
off the manuscript. He came back from a vacation, and
he came back to discovery that not only had the
book sold, but the paperback rights that sold for about
four hundred thousand dollars and in nineteen seventy money. That's
a lot of money. So the book was a gigantic hit,
(03:44):
number one on the bestseller list for months and months,
and it was a natural fit, you would think, to
be made into a film. But that's where other problems started.
The process of giving writers advances wasn't done very often,
but it was done most frequently by an executive named
Peter Bart, who is still very active in the film
(04:06):
business right now. He is a columnist and has been
for years writing some of the most intelligent work about
the film business and entertainment in general. But Peter believed
very strongly that some writers needed a little help from
now and then to keep going, as all struggling writers do.
He had already supported other books that had done very well,
(04:26):
like Love Story, which did very well for Paramount Pictures.
So Peter Bart supported Pouso with a few bucks now
and then, and they held on to the rights to
make The Godfather the book into a film if it
turned out to be a success. Well, of course, it
turned out to be a huge success, which naturally led
it into becoming a film project in nineteen seventy one.
(04:52):
No one did want to direct the film, even though
The Godfather of the book was a huge bestseller, it
was thought at the time that a movie about the
mafia would not be very successful, and primarily that's because
what Paramount wanted to do with it. They had supported
Puzzo as a writer, but they didn't want to support
the film any more than any other relatively low budget
shoot him up picture about crime, and as a result,
(05:16):
there were no takers on directors for the film and
very little interest in the project. That problem was compounded
by the fact that a film called The Brotherhood had
come out at about the same time, which had huge,
a huge budget, big stars, and it flopped because again
it was just not well thought of as a topic
(05:38):
to make movies about the mafia. Well. Eventually the movie
was offered to Francis Coppola to direct, and Coppola was
a young, just getting started director. He'd only had I
think three films at that point and had written another one.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Much of the original book was a pockpboiler, so it
was not a film I particularly wanted to do, but
I had no money, and my then young assistant, George Lucas, said, Francis,
you got to get a job because the Sheriff's going
to come and put a chain on the door of
American Zotrope because we haven't paid our bills do this movie.
And so I ultimately took the job and wrote the screenplay.
(06:21):
I just took the novel and went through it and
underlined everything that I thought that I could use.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
But part of the reason they went to Coppola was
he seemed solid enough as a director, but he was
also Italian American and that was crucial to the project
at the time. And we could certainly talk about the
problems within the Italian American community in the nineteen sixties
and early nineteen seventies with Hollywood, but the short version
is that it was viewed within many Italian American families
(06:50):
that anytime an Italian American person appeared in the film,
it was in a crime role, and there were no
non crime roles legitimate characters who were Italian American in
films or on television. Well, Paramount came around to the
idea that one of the ways to solve that problem
is to have an Italian American director. They went to Copola,
(07:11):
they offered the project to him, and he turned it
down to he came around because of the same things
we were talking about a few minutes ago. He finally
did read the book all the way through. He only
read sort of the smutty parts up front before he declined.
But then he realized the same thing that we did,
which is that the movie is not about the Mafia
(07:31):
at its core. What it's about is a family and
the problems of a particular family and the struggles of
that family. That's the story at its core. And if
you focus on Michael, the problems of the youngest son,
then it becomes even more interesting. So Coppola agreed to
do the film with many conditions, and he was able
to convince Paramount to buy in. Copola did grow up
(07:54):
in Detroit and a few other places as well. His father, Carmine,
was a very talented musician and composer, but he always
felt like he was waiting for his break to come,
like he was waiting for that knock to come on
the door. And it never did, or at least it
never did until his son helped him later, and Coppola
realized that you just can't wait around for these things.
(08:15):
You need to go out and make your own breaks.
And he did make his own breaks and of course
here was a break that had been handed to him
because of the talent he had developed, and he turned
it down and then finally did accept it, but he
made very strong demands about how the film needed to
be made. The primary demand, of course, was that it
be filmed entirely on location in New York, which is
(08:38):
a very expensive proposition. At that point. The studio wanted
to make it either in studio or on the streets
in Los Angeles, which would have been much cheaper. They
had a very small budget in mind for the film,
and of course, by today's standards, the budget was very small,
but by the standards then and the struggles within the
motion picture industry in the early nineteen seventy it was
(09:00):
a very small budget. Copla got more. Keep in mind,
The Godfather is a huge book and has many subplots,
and he made the case that he was going to
focus as much as he could on the trials and
tribulations of the family. And he stood his ground. And
that's and there were many times where he had to
(09:21):
stand his ground over the next few months.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
And you've been listening to Harlan Libo, author of The
Godfather Legacy, tell the story about how The Godfather came
to be. Heck, even as a best selling piece of fiction,
it barely happened. I mean, it was Mario Puzo's last shot,
and what do you know, it becomes a hit. Coppola
doesn't even want to do the film. The only reason
(09:44):
he's been picked is because he's Italian, and he's probably cheap,
and he says no the first time, but he needs
the money. When we come back, more of the story
of how The Godfather came to be with Harlan Libo
here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(10:10):
American stories, and with Harlan Lee Bow, author of The
Godfather Legacy, the Untold story of the making of the
classic Godfather trilogy. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
The Godfather is a movie about violence and about in
some ways about love and about family. But it's one
of the best American films ever made, or one of
the best films ever made about power, how power can
be used, and how power can corrupt. And those are
the elements that Coppola went for. And in all fairness,
the movie was very of course, very popular at the time,
(10:47):
but even more important, it is a lasting treasure of
American cinema. If you ask practically anyone the kinds of
films they like, or the films of their favorite films,
The Godfather is almost always one of the films that everybody,
everybody really loves. It really was quite universal. The issues
of love and family and conflict are so clear in
(11:10):
the film. I mean, let's face it, there's a lot
of violence in The Godfather. Of course there is. That
is part of the story, it's part of the culture.
It tells the story in many ways of the family itself.
But the problems within the family, in particular of course
al Pacino playing Michael, and his struggles to stay away
(11:31):
from the family business all fall apart, and that's the
intriguing part of the story, right up to the very end.
What you do with the headstrong, violent oldest son. That
sort of takes care of itself about halfway through the
movie when he's killed. But then always that the story
of Fredo, the middle son, and what happened to him
or what didn't happen to him, how he was sort
(11:52):
of left by the side of the road in many respects.
That gets picked up again in much more detail in
Godfought At part too.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Mike, you don't come to Las Vegas and talk to
men like moul Green like that.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
Frado, You're my older brother and I love you.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
But don't ever take side with anyone against the family again.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Ever. But it was a real problem filming The Godfather.
The film was shot primarily in the spring and summer
of nineteen seventy one, and they were filming in nineteen
what was supposed to be nineteen forty six, forty seven,
and forty eight. Well, it doesn't seem all that long before.
It was only twenty three years earlier. But it was
a long time in the history of New York and
(12:42):
the city really looked nothing like it did in nineteen
forty six. And constant attention to detail and fixing the
streets and putting up posters or big trucks to block
things that were would otherwise be seen on screen. That
was a constant challenge when making the film. One of
(13:02):
the great pleasures of watching The Godfathers watching the detail
of the film, just adding extra details. Dean Tavalaris, the
production designer. There's one scene on the streets of a
tenement area where James Kahn's character Sonny, the oldest son
beats up his brother in law because his brother in
law has attacked Sonny's sister, the youngest in the family.
(13:25):
Look around at what's going on in that scene, Just
at the decor and the posters of political campaigns and
posters that are falling down and tattered away that have
posters underneath them, or the cars, or the shepherd's crook
light poles. All that detail was a constant challenge, but
well worth it because The Godfather looks incredibly good and
(13:48):
incredibly realistic. Actually, when you look at it now, I
believe Brando's character is only in the three hour Godfather
about forty three minutes something like that, but his aura
is over every frame of the film, and he had
exactly what it took to make that character of Don
(14:10):
Vito Corleone come alive. Godfather.
Speaker 5 (14:14):
I don't know what to do.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
I don't know what to do. You cannot like him
on what to.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
That's how it turns out a Hollywood phenog Christ like
a woman.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
What could I do? What can I do?
Speaker 5 (14:30):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Look you?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I want to the rest?
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well in a month from Navice, Hollywood, big SHOT's gonna give.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
You what you want.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Too late, they started shooting in a week.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
I'm gonna make him an awfully game refuse.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Well, now we're looking at it in retrospect. A lot
of years later, then, Branda was viewed by some as
not bankable. Some most of his film just before The
Godfather had not done very well at all. He was
also viewed as impossible to work with by some people,
who probably unfairly said that he was really very tough
(15:13):
on the set and was difficult for directors for many things,
many reasons. He was not anyone's choice to be the
down except for Coppola, who went for him, who met
with Marlon Brando, and Brando certainly wanted the part and
created his own character right in front of Coppola's eyes
as he envisioned the don.
Speaker 4 (15:33):
Being the president of Paramount told me in these words,
he says, Francis, as president of Paramount Pictures, I am
telling you that Marlon Brando will not be in this movie.
I said, we have to be like Ninja's. We have
to go to mister Brando's house, go make any noise,
and we'll just sort of photograph him experimenting to be
(15:54):
in Italian. So we went. We arrived very early in
the morning, and no one said a word, and he
came out. He had long blonde hair. He was only
forty seven. He was quite a handsome young man. And
as he came out in a beautiful japaning his robe.
I remember he came out and he took his long
hair and he kind of put it up behind his
(16:16):
head and pinned it in. He got some shoe polish
and he started to make it black and kind of
do that, and then he put a white shirt on.
And I remember he took the white shirt and he
was taking his collar. Interesting about little seeds of a character.
And he started to bend the end of the collar
and he said, those Italian guys collar is always went.
(16:40):
And he even said, oh, maybe his voice should be
very hoarse, because he shot in the story in the throat.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
He was talking like this.
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Like that, not saying anything, and meanwhile we were photographing this.
So he even took some Kleenex and he put it
into his mouth, you know, and he said, those guys
look like bulldogs. And it was a miracle because the
character was growing out of this. I took this tape.
(17:13):
I decided to go to New York and show it
to the chairman and the owner of Paramount, who was
named Charlie Bluehorn, who was an interesting person, and he
had a company called Golf and Western. It was the
first conglomerate and one of the companies he owned was Paramount.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
I'm gonna make him an offer again.
Speaker 5 (17:32):
Review.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Charlie Bluehorn comes out and he recognized Mel Francis. What
can I do? I said, well, look at this, and
I turned on the tape recorder and there is Marlon
Brando with this long blonde hair rolling it up. And
Charlie Bluehorn said, no, no, absolutely not Maldon Brando. And
as he watched and saw this transformation, he said, that's incredible,
(17:58):
that's incredible. And as at that moment, I knew that
I had Brando in the part. And of course Brando
to this day is thought of for that role.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
And Coppola was right. And Coppola had to fight for
practically every character, but the key characters he had to
fight fight for was first Marlon Brando and then later
Al Pacino.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
And we've been listening to author Harlan Leebow tell one
heck of a story about the greatest film ever made
in American history, that is that's The Godfather and a
lot of film critics, but The Godfather too right there
with it, and that never happens with sequels, And so
much of it had to do with Francis Ford Coppola's
artistic nature, him seeing and understanding the core of the story,
(18:44):
which was that it was not a mob film. It
was a film about power, violence, love and family at
the center. And my goodness, having to create a film
in the streets of New York in nineteen seventy one
and make it look like it was nineteen forty seven
or forty eight was pulled off by a master. And
then there's that talk of the scene with Marlon Brando
(19:06):
and him showing it to this titan, this head of
golf in Western and saying no Brando, and then seeing
the magic of Brando owning the character almost instantly. Remarkable storytelling.
When we come back more of the story of how
The Godfather came to be here on our American stories,
(19:37):
and we continue with our American stories, and with Harlan Lebow,
author of The Godfather Legacy, let's pick up where we
last left off.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
And Alpucino, it's so hard for us to think of
it now at Al Pacino, the superstar, the legend of Hollywood.
But in nineteen seventy one, he was like many other
struggling actors in New York, with no word. You know.
He would wait tables, you would put pamphlets on cars,
just trying to make ends meet. While he got acting
(20:08):
jobs and did very well on the stage when he did,
but a lot of other people did too. He'd made
a couple of movies, including a superb role as a
junkie in Panic and Needle Park. But he's small, He's
not traditionally handsome, and there were some of the studio
who thought Robert Redford could play Michael. But copoly knew better,
(20:30):
and he tested endlessly for the part of Michael, throwing
Pacino's screen tests in as often as he could. But
once Pacino got into costume, once he was on set,
once his measured, reserved performance started to come out, I
think people finally realized immediately that he was perfect for
(20:52):
the role.
Speaker 5 (20:53):
And I was thinking, why would Francis want me to
play that part? I much prefer Sonny, the one that's
more vbus more. There's more to play there, there's more
fun there. How do you play Michael?
Speaker 4 (21:04):
I thought?
Speaker 5 (21:05):
But he sees me as Michael. I thought, Gee, he's
seeing something I don't see.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Keep in mind that al Pacino's character, Michael Corleone, is
struggling about what to do with his life. He's just
out of the army. He knows he does not want
to be part of the of the family business, family
business and quotes. But he also feels a duty to
his father and feels that he needs to take care
of the people who are responsible for having his father
shot and severely wounded, which he does. He murders a
(21:34):
police captain and a drug dealer at a restaurant in
the Bronx. I think Pacino is probably getting a little
behind himself at that point. The studios certainly thought that
those scenes were fabulous, which they are. If you look
at Pacino in those scenes, that undercurrent of rage and
fear in those scenes as he's preparing for the two
(21:55):
murders is unmistakable and unforgettable. But what really sold the
student were some of the first scenes that he shot,
which were on the streets of New York with Diane
Keaton his girlfriend Kay as they were walking away from
Radio City Music Hall, and he discovers that his father
has been shot when he sees it on the headline
of a newspaper, and that simmering concern, and how he
(22:20):
presents himself on screen in beautiful color closeups by cinematographer
Gordon Willis, with his very dark eyes and penetrating stare.
That's what sold the studio. They were with him from
the start. There was no question at that point. In fact,
it's really sad. You can see after you've seen the movie.
Once you see him walking on a street and you
(22:42):
realize before he walked past this new stand, he was
the carefree kid he was trying to become. And when
he passes the new stand and Kay has seen the headlines,
you know that it's all on the way down.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
Send Fredo off to do this, Fredo off to do that.
Let Fredo take care of some Mickey Mouse nightclub somewhere,
said Freido, to pick somebody up at the airport. I
mean your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over.
I ain't the way I wanted it. I can handle things.
(23:20):
I'm smart. Like everybody says like dumb, I'm smart and
I want to spect.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
John Cazzali was a wonderful character actor. He played the
part of Fredo the misunderstood middle Son as perfectly as
it could possibly have been played, creating all kinds of conflict,
not as much in Godfather Part one, but became integral
to the story in Godfather Part two. John Cazzali was
in five classic films of the nineteen seventies. Besides The
(23:52):
Godfather Part one and Part two, he was in Dog
Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter, and The Conversation, five of
the homes ever made. So that's quite a legacy for
a man whose life ended way too quickly. Marlon Brandon
was not a lazy actor, although some probably would have
said he was. He was definitely a method actor, and
(24:14):
he felt very strongly that for his style of acting,
studying the script as little as possible and making it
as spontaneous as possible was important for his roles. So
for many of his parts, for all of his career
after a certain point, he almost always had C cards
just off camera, and logistics of a movie set being
(24:36):
what they are. Sometimes the Q card can be right
in front of you, and sometimes it's right on the
lap of the person that you're talking to. So they
hit cue cards everywhere, some of them big, some of
them poster size. Some of them just little note size
sitting on a accounter. It's too bad, because those cue
cards are worth a fortune. Now I'd love to have some, eh.
(25:01):
This is the scene when Marlon Brando's character dies in
that he's in the family tomato patch with his grandson Anthony.
It's actually his real name is also Anthony, and the
scene was scripted for Brando's character to die, but a
lot of it was left for Brando to work out
and interacting with Anthony. Anthony was and young, it wasn't
(25:22):
old enough to really act for himself. And one of
the things that Brando did was something from his own childhood.
Was he took an orange, he ate part of it
and then like many of us, he put the rind
in his teeth and it made it look like a
funny face and he actually cut teeth into it, and
it really scared Anthony. It genuinely scared him. If you
(25:43):
see him on screen, he's actually scared by this. But
it plays so beautifully as this tender, intimate scene between
grandfather and grandson, and it's a wonderful contrast to what
happens a few seconds later, which is that Brando's character
that passes away, falls into the tomato plants and dies.
(26:04):
It's absolutely wonderfully shot. And by the way, just a
little unsung hero of this film was Gordon Willis's cinematographer,
who shot every frame of the film as if it
was literally a frame from a photograph or a painting.
It is so physically beautiful the whole film. It's wonderful,
(26:24):
incredible as it may seem now, movies were not marketed
the same way they are today. The idea then and
for way too long, was he would build up interest
in a film by having road shows for it in
a select number of theaters, as opposed to showing it
in hundreds and hundreds of theaters or thousands of theaters
(26:46):
all on one big weekend. And that's what happened with
The Godfather as well, where they opened it in several
theaters or well many theaters in major cities across the country,
but not in thousands of theaters, and it was an
instantane is around the block for hours and hours a day, sensation,
absolute gigantic hit in the summer of nineteen seventy two,
(27:10):
later becoming the biggest box office attraction of all time,
made more money than any other film up to that time.
But it was huge, and then of course when it
opened wide, it opened wide and very successfully. This was
a huge boost for everyone involved. All of the younger characters,
the people who played the Suns, James Kahn, al Pacino
(27:32):
and then an adopted son played by Robert Devall all
became legitimate stars immediately. They were all nominated for Best
Supporting Actor. Brando's career got a huge boost. Talia Schier's
career at playing Connie, the youngest in the family, also
got a huge boost and went on to do all
the Rocky films, among other things. This was a giant,
(27:53):
a giant success story for everyone.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Being an Italian American, I knew my own family, who
were a family of musicians and tulndye makers, but living
in New York, and so I knew what the family
life was like. I was very much anxious to draw
upon my own family in terms of how we lived
and what it was like in the house, and what
we ate and what the day to day feel of
(28:19):
an Italian family was. I used as much of my
own memory of my family to give it a kind
of authenticity, and that was my approach. It was the
story of a family, and it was kind of Shakespearean,
and that there was a great king, and he had
three sons, and each of the sons had a part
(28:40):
of the talent of the old man, but none really
all of it. The youngest had the cunning, and the
second had the sweetness, and the older had the rage
and the violence.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I don't know for all fascinated by gangsters as much
as we're fascinated by men of action. These were deliberate,
ruthless men there, unsavory, horrible people and murderers. Yet there's
something attractive or compelling about them that it really fascinates everyone.
It's part of American culture.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler. A special thanks to Harlan Libo,
author of The Godfather Legacy, the untold story of the
making of the classic Godfather trilogy. You will not put
it down once you start reading it. The pictures are terrific,
and my goodness, what a story he tells about the
(29:32):
whole movie, the making of it, from beginning to end,
and particularly the stories about some of these other actors.
Al Pacino a staggering performance and launches this amazing career.
John Gazzal, who plays Fredo, the actor's actor. We've done
a piece on John Cazal. Go to Alamericanstories dot com
and you can listen to a real beauty. And then
(29:53):
of course there's Gordon Willis, the cinematographer, and Nino Rota
that soundtrack it was all just and there is Copala
discussing and describing his Italian heritage and now he brought
that authenticity through the screen, the unlikely story of the
Godfather and how it became the greatest film of all time.
(30:14):
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!