NOVEMBER 2022:

BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF A CLASSIC…

It has been 50 years since the theatrical release of The Godfather in 1972 and the film became a landmark gangster film in Hollywood. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, and Diane Keaton, the film went on to become one of the most influential films in Hollywood as well as rank besides Citizen Kane on many lists, including the American Film Institute, of the best movies ever made. Most people have seen the film and can tell you all about the film and its two others, The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III, because, after the success of the first film in 1972, the film adapted from the 1969 crime novel of the same title by Mario Puzo, became a trilogy. Most movie geeks will tell you to skip the third movie and just watch the first two films, but I beg you, don’t do this, it completes the saga of the Corleone family and if you ask me, the 1990 film was seriously misunderstood and is actually not that bad.

The Godfather is not only considered a true American classic, but it is also an unlikely Holiday classic that can be found on a marathon loop during the Holiday Season filling hours of TV while network shows are on Midseason Finale breaks. And while you might question its place as a Holiday favorite due to the violence and glorification of the Mafia, the film tells the story of a moving family drama and is also a generational story of an immigrant who came to the United States and pursued the American Dream at all costs. And while most film viewers know all there is to know about the edge-of-your-seat suspense drama, there are also plenty of things you may not have known about the legendary film and its production in 1972.

Here are 10 things that you probably didn’t know about The Godfather:

• Vito Corleone’s cat was NOT scripted.

The cat that Marlon Brando holds on his lap in the iconic opening scene of The Godfather was not originally in the script. It was a stray cat that was found on the Paramount Pictures lot by Francis Ford Coppola while he was taking a walk before filming, and when he returned to the studio to film the scene, without a word, he placed the cat into Brando’s lap and began shooting the scene. Coppola thought the cat would show the more docile side of Don Vito Corleone. Brando decided to pet the cat and show it affection while discussing life-or-death decisions on the day of his daughter’s wedding and the scene became an iconic beginning to a film, and the cat would later serve as a metaphor for the hidden claws Don Vito would pull out when his family was under attack by a rival criminal enterprise in New York. The cat being unscripted was no issue to the production, but the cat‘s mutual affection for Brando as he was petting it became a difficult issue for the production. The cat purred so loud during the shooting of the scene that the lines that Brando said were disjointed and marred and while the scene was kept in the film, the lines had to be re-recorded and looped over the acting. The cat scene became so influential that other movies began to mimic the placement of cats with crime bosses.

• Marlon Brando was NOT the studio’s first choice to cast as Vito Corleone.

It is hard now to see anyone but Brando in the role of the Corleone family patriarch, but in truth, he was not Paramount Pictures first choice to cast in the iconic role of the mush-mouthed mob boss. The studio had suggested to Coppola that he try to hire Sir Laurence Olivier, and when the studio first objected to Coppola’s suggestion of Brando, Coppola considered other actors but none of them screen-tested for Coppola the way he had already envisioned Brando would play the role, and Coppola saw it as fate and returned to his original idea of Brando in the role of Vito Corleone and in the end Coppola tricked Brando into what is now a legendary screen test where Brando shoved Kleenex in his mouth to get the mush-mouth sound. Coppola visited him at his home to discuss the role with him unbeknownst to the studio, who was so impressed by the screen test they got on board with the idea and the rest is film history.

• The studio did NOT want to cast Al Pacino in the role of Michael Corleone.

The young actor was at the time not well known but famous on the studio lots for his method acting and Paramount needed a hit to make or break the studio as a whole, due to them having a few bad years with films and the studio was facing a sale or closure all together to make up the profits lost. The studio wanted an actor who was already established as a leading man and suggested to Coppola that instead of Pacino, he should consider hiring Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, or Warren Beatty. Redford was approached by Coppola to star in the film and was asked to read the script and consider it, but he eventually turned it down. James Caan, who played Michael’s older brother, Santino Corleone, had originally screen tested for Michael, but Coppola thought he would play a better Sonny than Michael. Martin Sheen also screen tested for the role of Michael Corleone, but didn’t test the way Coppola was hoping and he pushed for Al Pacino.

• Clemenza’s cannoli line was not scripted and instead was improvised.

In the desolate street side scene of the film where Don Vito’s second in command Peter Clemenza was dealing with a snitch, in the script Richard Castellano’s Clemenza tells the hitman who had just taken out the snitch to “Leave the gun.” Castellano uttered the purely genius improvisational “take the cannoli,” and one of the most legendary one-liners from the film was born. There is also not one person today who won’t take advantage of the line when asking someone to grab their cannoli. Even the few people in the world who haven’t seen the film, know the cannoli line.

• You never hear the words “Mafia,” “Mob” or “Cosa Nostra” in the film.

Yes, it’s a film about a Mafia family, but surprisingly in the 2 hours and 55 minutes that you are watching The Godfather you never hear any of the three words in reference to the Corleone family. The words “Mafia,” “Mob” and “Cosa Nostra” were not in the script to appease the Italian American Civil Rights League who were boycotting the shooting of the film in New York City and as a whole, for the way, it depicted Italian Americans. The Italian American Civil Rights League was founded by Joseph A. Colombo, Sr., the major organized crime boss in Brooklyn who created the league to deflect government investigations of his activities but under the guise of it being formed to combat negative Italian stereotypes. Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola offered him the script to read to prove they were telling a great story about Italian Americans outside of crime and violence, but Colombo didn’t understand script formatting, so he told his subordinates to read it. He had been dealing with the film’s producer, Albert S. Ruddy to try and find a compromise so that the film could be made, and Colombo satisfied. Colombo eventually just trusted that Ruddy would follow his requests and omissions in order for him to let the filming continue in New York City, which had subsequently been shut down for the time being due to Colombo’s connections with the unions and companies within the city needed for the studio to successfully film their scenes. Ruddy considered cutting the New York City scene out to avoid all of it and Colombo, but Coppola refused it, saying it was vital to the story he was telling. So Ruddy worked out a deal with Colombo and part of that deal was the omission of the words “Mafia” from the script. It was the line where Tom Hagen, played by Robert Duvall, says “greasy-haired Mafia thugs,” the line was kept in the film, but the word “Mafia” was removed. Colombo nor his men could read the script to realize the word is only mentioned one time throughout the whole film.

• Frank Sinatra tried to end The Godfather.

Frank Sinatra hated the implications of the Johnny Fontaine scenes and decided to try to get the film shut down. But when he was convinced by studio chief Robert Evans and Ruddy that Johnny Fontaine would only appear in two scenes, he backed off trying to end The Godfather. In the original book, there were more Johnny Fontaine scenes but Coppola and Puzo assured Evans that the film would be no longer than 2 ½ hours, so they wrote a script that focused more on Vito Corleone and his family and cut out the subplots from the book.

• The Godfather almost took place in the 70s.

Francis Ford Coppola was absolutely against making it a contemporary film and argued with the studio on shooting a “Period” (1940s) and a “Contemporary” (1970s) film. Coppola told Evans that if he was allowed to make the movie he envisioned, this film would not flop, and the studio would make millions. Although it was a difficult fight and he had quite a few with the studio, he eventually got his way to making the movie that he envisioned. He knew the studio had issues with the film being a period piece because it would be more expensive to film, outfiring an entire street of 70s New York and transforming to look like New York in the 40s. This would require mint-condition classic cars that would complete the look and cost the studio to rent the cars for however long needed to film the scenes. Coppola didn’t care and told the studio to trust him and let him make his movie and Paramount would thank him later. And boy did they.

• That was in fact a real horse’s decapitated head in the bed.

Don’t worry, no production assistants went out and decapitated a horse in the name of Francis Ford Coppola and a vision. The horse head left as a warning to movie producer Jack Woltz by Don Vito Corleone was in fact the real thing! They didn’t have to kill a horse to make a realistically gruesome prop and never would have, someone on the production knew a guy, for real, and called a company that made dog food and they donated the head. No, dog food is not made with horse meat, but it used to be. According to Nestlé, in the 1920s slaughterhouses opened for pet food companies to dispose of horse meat. It remained a major ingredient in pet food until at least 1940. Most companies today do not profess to use horse meat to deter the fear that it would discourage people from buying the product. The pet food company knew how Coppola could get his hands on a real decapitated horse head and the rest is an iconic film scene.

• When Marlon Brando won the Oscar, he rejected it controversially.

Marlon Brando was awarded the Best Actor Academy Award for his role as Vito Corleone and instead of going to the ceremony in 1973, he sent Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather in his place. She read a statement from Brando that read that she was representing him up on the stage and stated, “He cannot accept this very generous award…because of the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry.” Off stage, John Wayne was losing his mind so much at what he saw as disrespect to the ceremony and had to be held down and back by producers trying to keep him from rushing the stage and attacking Littlefeather. Needless to say, Hollywood didn’t know what to do and freaked out a bit. They started booing her in the audience and you can hear it in old clips from that night at the Oscars.

• The actors kept mooning each other during the production.

Once the cast had spent some time together and filmed some scenes together, they had warmed up to each other and James Caan and Robert Duvall began to try and throw off Brando’s screen presence while filming scenes, and Caan and Duvall would drop their pants and moon him. Brando ever the performer had the last laugh though, the wedding scene was shot on the last day of shooting and Brando pulled the same prank on Caan and Duvall during their filming of those scenes and the prank happened to be witnessed by dozens of lucky extras there to fill guest space at the wedding.

MY PRODUCTIVE REVIEW…

I would watch The Godfather and its two other films if you have not yet seen it, and then you will be able to watch the limited series, The Offer from Paramount+ that goes into detail on a lot of the events I listed above as well as many more of the true stories about the making of and production of The Godfather in 1972. It is also featured in my television section for November to coincide with the featured blog film of The Godfather for the month of November. You wouldn’t believe most of what happened while trying to get the best movie ever made actually made, I have listed at least ten things that happened, and that’s not even all of what happened. I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse. Watch The Godfather saga and then, watch The Offer. Period.

The Godfather is available to stream on 4K now and can be purchased from your preferred retail store.