April 23, 2025 • 27 mins
The cast of characters behind “The Godfather”’s success was nothing if not eclectic, from down-and-out Hollywood legends to ascendant show business superstars. Yet somehow, fifty years after its release—against all odds—the film remains in a league of its own for its evocation of the American dream, and for kickstarting a cultural fascination with the Mafia that endures today. On the tenth and final episode of “Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli,” Mark and Nathan reflect on the lasting legacy of the movie, and how it impacted the lives of those like Evans, who considered the film his crowning achievement.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
In his palatial estate known as Woodland. Robert Evans sits
up in his bed, he still glued to the screen.
The movie is ended and the memories begin.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It's my most supported legacy of life.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Evans holds firm to the conviction that he saved the movie,
save the studio, and in many ways elevated the glory
of American film.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Who worked out of Godfather lure, You're introduced to a
different world.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
As I would later write in the book, from this
bed and from this man and those he appointed the
Godfather sprang forth. It was a miracle on paper and
on screen, Created and inspired by the sons and daughters
of immigrants, Its characters were portrayed by a band of
mythsfits who based their roles on a gang of miscrants,
(00:53):
humanized to the point of being honorable. The story endures
as those who made it received, leaving behind a testament
to the glory of the American family and the steadfast
belief in the American dream.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I'm Mark Seal and I'm Nathan King.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
And this is Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
In our final episode, we're discussing the life, legacy and
legend of the cast, crew and film. Mark, when you
walked into Woodland that day, did you know you would
eventually write the definitive book on the making of The Godfather?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Not at all. I just thought that I was going
to do a magazine story, but I had no idea
that I would later write a book about it, and
that it would consume my life for so many years.
After the article was published, I started thinking about writing
the book, and I was able to meet with Anthony Colombo,
(02:03):
the son of Joe Colombo, who headed the Italian American
Civil Rights League, and we drove out to a diner
in New Jersey and there he was. He comes into
the diner walking with a cane. By then. I think
he was in his sixties maybe, and we've talked for
a long time, and he couldn't have been nicer. And
(02:25):
I tried to imagine him back in those days in
the Park Sheridan Hotel with Al Ruddy speaking before the League.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
You've said previously, Mark, when you're writing a magazine article
like this, that casting a wide net is very important
and talking to as many people as possible, no matter
how inconsequential they seem. Did you do that here?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Oh? Yes, of course, you know. I tried to talk
to as many people as I could for the article
and then later for the book, and it was amazing.
After the article came out, people would call and tell
me facts that I couldn't have dug up any other way.
But it was nothing like after the book came out.
One man called and said his uncle had delivered the
horse's head to the set. There were so many unexpected
(03:10):
but important additions that just came from the story being
out there in the world.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Who was the most unexpected character you talked to?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, maybe Marilyn Stewart, because I hadn't really read anything
about her. There's not one interview that I could find.
But I called the number that I had found for her,
and she answered the phone and it was like it
seemed like she was expecting my call, which of course
she couldn't have been, but she was just ready to
tell her story. And what a story she had to tell.
(03:42):
You know. She came on. She was Paramount's head of
publicity and promotion, and she just started before the movie
was even shot, you know, fostering its image, making sure
that she got the magazine covers and all the television shows.
And I just thought she was a great window into
the Godfather Pass and how it became such a sensation worldwide.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I want to talk a little bit more about the
reporting aspect of it. How you sort of organize your
thoughts and figure out who to talk to someone like
Janet Snow, for instance. Is that's someone whose name just
comes up in the course of interviewing someone else, and
then one thing leads to another.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
That was a great story. So Janet Snow had not
been interviewed either. I mean maybe she had, but I
had not seen any interviews with her. And I was
talking to Graf Frederickson and he goes, oh, my gosh,
Mario had an assistant during those days, and he couldn't
remember her name at first, and he just said, oh,
Janet Snow. And I called Janet, and she right off
(04:46):
the bat told me this incredible story about Mario Puzo
arriving in Hollywood and that story about the white Lincoln Continental,
and I went, oh, my gosh, it was just like
too wild to believe. You know, as you're putting together
a portrait of somebody for a book, you're just trying
(05:07):
to get as much clay as you can to build
the character. And Mario had done lots of interviews, so
there was a lot about him in print. But a
person like Janet Snow who was there when Mario arrived
in Hollywood and drove him from Paramount to the Beverly
Hills Hotel. I mean, you can't get much better than that.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And it's interesting because while they are in very different situations.
Mario is a huge successful author in Janet's relative nobody,
they're both neophytes in their own way in this Hollywood world.
And I think that's enough to bring them together.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yes, And they were both fairly young. Mario's in his
forties and he was new to that world. Plus Janet
had a magical story to tell about how she got
the job. You know, you open a door and these
stories just come flooding out, like I'll never forget going
to James Conn's home in Beverly Hills when I was
researching the article, and I walk in and there was
(06:00):
a huge drawing of the Godfather on his wall. It
was Don Corleone and his three sons, including Sonny, who
was played by James Kahn.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
I think, you know, with a lot of those guys,
not just the Italians obviously, Like I said, you know,
and immigrants couldn't get a job working three cents, so,
you know, so they did what they had to do
out of need.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And we spent I think three hours that day talking
about the movie and his role and how you prepared
for the part, how he got the part.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
What was it like interviewing James Common because he's obviously
an actor but also sort of a street guy. Did
you find him very easy to interview and affable?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh? Certainly? And later when I called him for the book,
he was incredibly forthcoming. I talked to him for another
I think two hours, and then called him again for
another hour or so. He was so giving and generous
with his time.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Was there somebody that you picked up mannerisms from like
you did, like the Rickles idea, Well, Andrew was my
closest friend, you know, and he had certain energy. You know,
there's a certain energy about Rickles when he was younger,
you know, which he still has today in his eighties,
you know, but it's obviously not as sharp.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
None of us are sharp. But I could just see
that botta ingrain is coming out of Roa.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Well, that's where it came, you know. I don't know,
I wish i'd had the foresight to, like.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
What do you call a copyright?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That thing I could have made money.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
I wouldn't begging.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Another great thing that I was privileged to do was
research the life of the actor who played Luca Brozi,
Lenny Montana, who is one of the most unforgettable characters
in the movie. He was a former wrestler and some
say a bodyguard. I was able to dig up some
really old newspapers about him, and there's one where he
(07:52):
tells the story of going to visit his mother in
suburban New York at the same time. They were filming
The Godfather there and had been looking for the perfect
actor to play Luca, who had to be a mountain
of a man, and they had gone through several potential actors,
all professionals, but none were quite right. Anyway, Lenny is
visiting his mother and al Ruddy looks out on the
(08:14):
crowd that's gathered around the set and sees this colossal
man behind the barricades. He takes Lenny Montana to meet
Francis Coppola and his trailer. Lenny's head was probably scraping
the ceiling because he was so big, and Coppola looks
up at him and says, that's Luca Brotzi.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
We mentioned earlier that Robert Evans passed away in twenty nineteen,
just before we started making the show. Sadly, he wasn't
the only one. There were six or seven other characters
in The Godfather's Story who died while we were making
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, just to name a few. Al Ruddy died this year,
Eleanor Coppola, Roger Corman, Robert Town, the screenwriter who wrote
the Majestic Succession scene. Fred Ruse died this year. Ye,
James con two years ago. I mean, it's amazing time
takes its toll. This is a movie that was made
fifty years ago, so a lot of time has passed,
(09:09):
and a lot of people who gave so much to
the film have passed along with it.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
One thing we should talk about is the proliferation of
conflicting accounts, and specifically how you chose who's to believe.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Well, honestly, I didn't want to choose, and I don't
really think it's my job to take aside and make
a choice. All of the stories were so fascinating, and
in the absence of any conclusive evidence about who was
right who was wrong, I just decided to present all
the versions to readers and let them decide. And I
feel like we've done the same thing with this podcast.
(09:44):
But it was a pretty chaotic time. And Ira Zuckerman's
Godfather journal was such a great help because he was
there every day and documented every single day of filming
in such detail that you really couldn't quite argue with that,
because that seemed to be the definitive fly on the
(10:05):
wall account. I mean, there's very few movies where you
have someone who's written a day to day diary of
everything that happened, and so it was a real treasure
to have that as a resource.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
And what about Gianni's version of events? I like his
account the best.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
What we you like personality wise? Like this same as
any never changed.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Don't care about nothing.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
We gotta leave, jump out the wind that we leave you,
take a shot, see you later.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I don't care.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I started from nothing. Well, yeah, of course, because Gianny
Russo has a way of telling these things that they
make them come alive, you know, but so many others
do as well. I mean, how Ruddy is the same way,
and of course Bob Evans, I mean he's the same way,
and Francis Kopple is a professional storyteller. They're all amazing storytellers.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
After working on this podcast, it's hard not to feel
like making a movie is a completely foolish endeavor because
you have all of these conflicting personalities tossed together in
one place, and you know you're all working toward a
common goal, but it seems like things are bound to
go wrong more often than not.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, it's a miracle that any movie gets made, isn't it?
Because all the personalities, money, logistics, there's so many ways
for things to go wrong. It's not unusual for a
movie not to work out, and The Godfather is a
rare case where the ending was happy and the alchemy
worked against all odds.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I think the directors like Francis Ford Koppola get a
lot of flak for being almost authoritarian in the pursuit
of getting what they want, But you can kind of
see where that would be a benefit in making The
Godfather because you need someone with such a determined vision
and sense of purpose.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
There has to be a captain of the ship, right Mark.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
We know the movie did well financially, but did the
people involved well.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
There's conflicting stories once again about this. You know, some
people said they got rich off of the movie, but
really the actors were paid minimal salaries. I guess thirty
five thousand I think for some, and that was for
the established ones. Al Ruddy said he had points and
he did well on it. But one thing is clear
(12:18):
above all is that Paramount made a lot of money.
Robert Evans told me that Dan Woodland that being the
head of production, he didn't have any points. So he
didn't make any money off the movie personally, but you
know it gave him a springboard to do other things
when he became a independent producer. So it's another mystery
(12:39):
of the Godfather about who made what on the movie.
But here's how al Ruddy described it in our interview.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
You got to understand nobody and for vision success of
this movie, everyone worked for scale. It's a class.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That's points, Mary, I had two, and A.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
Had points and I had some points. But they kid
was that prophet, doesn't you know what they said? Not
worth the paper which went on right. The profits except
this went through the roof.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
If there was any doubt about how the movie did
or was received in Coppola's mind or anyone else's it
was eradicated when the nineteen seventy three Oscars came around, Mark,
can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
The Godfather was nominated for ten awards at the nineteen
seventy three Oscars Best Picture, Brando as Best Actor, Coppola
for Best Director, Coppola Empuso for Best Adapted Screenplay, and
for Best Supporting Actor, three of them Al Pacino, James Cohn,
and Robert Duval. They also had nominations for Costume, Editing
(13:44):
and Sound. When the envelopes were open, it was Mario
Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola for Best Adapted Screenplay, and
they said that Mario decided not to go because he
was too worried about having to give a speech, so
he watched it from home in suburban News New York.
Brando won Best Actor, but probably in one of the
most famous events in Oscar history, he didn't attend and
(14:07):
said he sent an emissary on his behalf, a woman
named Sasheen Little Feather, who got up and gives a
speech about what had been happening at wounded Me.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
Hello, my name is Sasheine Little Feather. I'm Apache and
I'm president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee.
I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening, and he has asked
me to tell you in a very long speech which
I cannot share with you presently because of time, but
(14:40):
I will be glad to share with the press afterwards,
that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award,
and the reasons for this being are the treatment of
American Indians today by the film industry excuse me me,
(15:09):
and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent
happenings that wounded me. I beg at this time that
I have not intruded upon this evening, and that we
will in the future, our hearts and our understandings will
meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of
(15:32):
Marlon Brando.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
It's fair to say that everyone was stunned by Saushy
and little feathers speech. Another surprise was to come shortly thereafter,
in the form of the Best Picture, A Lord.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
And the Winner and the Winner the ward.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Albert is ready God bother.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
Let me do this quickly in two parts, because I
know it's past midnight New York, and some of my
relatives want to go to sleep. There are a number
of people I would like to thank, as everyone else would,
because they deserve it.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Bob Edmonds forgiving more.
Speaker 7 (16:16):
Than any studio head should in time and creativity, Frank
your blond for having the courage and imagination to sell
this film and make my mother rich. Charlie Bludorn for
having the courage to finance films, which I guess borders
on insanity. And Peter Bart who was a friend all.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
The way through.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Let's talk about legacy. The film sort of eclipses the
careers of most of the people who made it.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, it's like every person who touched the movie has
this asterisk next to their name that says the Godfather.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Well, let's start with the obvious. Francis Ford Coppola. Despite
the success of the first movie, Coppola was so scarred
that he didn't want to make a sequel, but then
Charlie Bludorn talked him into it.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yes, the story goes that Coppola initially didn't want to
do it, but then Hurricane Charlie erupted. Francis, you've got
the recipe for Coca cola, and you don't want to
manufacturer anymore. Bottles of coke and whatever happened, Coppola ended
up signing on for Godfather too, and after that Godfather three,
and of course Charlie Bludorn wanted to make Godfather four, five,
(17:21):
and six as well.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
This movie changed Copola's life.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Well, for better and for worse, but mostly for better.
You know, time hills, all wounds. And recently Coppola told
Rolling Stone that he saw The Godfather as a gift.
He said, the movie opened up the world to me.
Some of the greatest people in the world have wanted
to talk to me simply because I was a guy
who made that film.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
What about Mario Puzzo, what happens to him afterwards?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Well, Mario Puzo became a superstar screenwriter, He became rich,
he became famous. He could gamble all he wanted. I
loved what is His son told me via email. He told me,
now that he had money, look out. He would buy
books instead of taking him out of the library. He
rented a house in Malibu. You know, he would eat
(18:12):
whatever he wanted, He would gamble whenever he wanted. I
think he still loved the good life of Hollywood and
of course Las Vegas. He wrote a book about Las
Vegas that was sort of a love letter to the
city and what it meant to him. And in addition
to writing many more novels, he wrote the screenplay to Superman,
so he maintained his Hollywood ties.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Another person who went on to have an amazing career
Robert Town.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yes, Robert Town became the Dean of Hollywood screenwriters. He
wrote Chinatown and so many other movies that became classics.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
And he wasn't famous when Copola brought him in, but
he had certainly worked on other projects. He'd done Bonnie
and Clyde and McCabe and Missus Miller, and then The
Godfather was probably his first big project.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, and I love the story of how he came
up with that incredible scene, the succession scene. It was
late in the night in New York and Coppola was
going to pick him up the next morning to take
him to the set, and he was looking at the
cover of Mario Puzo's novel, you know, with the invisible
puppeteer holding the strings, you know, with those strings dangling down,
(19:21):
and he said, it was like at four in the morning,
the line came to him and it was just this
incredible line that would sum up so much and it
became one of the most classic scenes in the movie.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Listen to this list of movies he went on to
write after that, the Last Detail, Parallax View, Chinatown, Shampoo,
The Missouri Breaks, Days of Thunder, The Firm, Mission Impossible
one and two.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, pretty incredible list. Robert town once said that he
was not really interested in writing novels, that he just
wanted to write movies. And listen to that list of
movies that he wrote. I mean, he's one of the
greatest screenwriters in hollywood A history.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
What was Charlie Bludorn's legacy like at Paramount.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Charlie Bludorn saved the studio in the end with The
Godfather and other movies later, But sadly Charlie passed away
at a fairly young age. He lived in the Dominican
Republic where he built this amazing resort. But he died
on a they say, on a plane coming home. So
he missed out on seeing so much. And I would
have loved to have obviously spoken with him, But he's
(20:27):
remembered by everyone whose path he crossed.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
What about Al Ruddy? What happens to him?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Afterwards, so al Ruddy remained vital until the end. He
produced both The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby, winning Best
Picture Oscars for both, and he died at ninety four
years old last May. And about two weeks before he
passed away, I spoke to him again. He was the
(20:53):
same Al Ruddy as always, you know, talking a mile
a minute. His memory was sharp, and he was really
excited about this podcast and wanted to do whatever he
could to help, which is typical out the quintessential producer,
the man who gets things done. Well.
Speaker 8 (21:11):
We came back to sicily, I went through New York
and they said they wanted to do a sequel, and
I told straight out, I have no interest. Livesen to me,
no interest in never doing a movie again.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
But this mom I got lucky.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
I got out.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
I'm happy of at one piece. I could never get
more out of him.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
And regardless of the fact that he didn't work on
subsequent Godfather movies, he clearly cared about the movie's legacy
a lot because he worked on the offer.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, the offer was really molded around his life. It
was his story. Miles Teller played Al Ruddy, you know,
he was the central character.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
You didn't get a chance to interview Brando because he
was dead by the time you started working on this.
But if you could have, what would you have asked him.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I would have loved to have known in his own
words about how he made the transformation into Don Corleone.
But Alice was able to tell me a lot, and
also she was able to tell me his reluctance to
play a mobster. He didn't want to do it at first,
and he only wanted to do it when he heard
that they were thinking about Lawrence o Libya, and he goes,
(22:23):
he can't play a mafia don, And Alice said she
looked in and he was like using shoe polish to
create a mustache and dye his eyebrows. And she goes, no,
that's not right. Do it like Brando. But I would
have liked to have asked him about that.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Let's move on to Evans. So you spoke with Evans
in two thousand and eight, which is eleven years before
his death. What were his reflections on the film and
his legacy.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
He said it was his greatest legacy, but it was
also a failure for him personally in many ways because
he chose the Godfather over his personal life, and that
was lipping away from him that day in Woodland. I'll
never forget the line that he said. He said, it's
so long ago, so many people are dead, and he
proceeded to rattle off everyone who had died in the interim,
(23:12):
which at that point was already quite long, Richard Castellano,
Marlon Brando, John Cassol, and so forth. And so he
had some regrets, for sure, But at the same time,
he was really proud of the movie and all that
the movie had achieved. As I wrote in the book,
he felt that he had fostered it and much of
its success was due to him, which you know, as
(23:33):
the head of the studio, he had the right to believe.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
If the filming process was rough for Robert Evans, it
got even rougher after The Godfather came out, didn't it? Mark?
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Well? At first it went all right. He produced Chinatown,
starring his close friend Jack Nicholson, But not long after
that he left Paramount to become an independent producer, and
that's when he started to struggle a little bit. As
I wrote in the book, he descended into darkness for
a period. There was a misdemeanor cocaine trafficking plea in
(24:04):
nineteen eighty the box office disaster of the Cotton Club
in nineteen eighty four, his entangment in a murder scandal
stemming from the film, and the eight torturous years it
would take him to clear his name. Also, I thought
it was interesting his wealth, which is, you know, pretty
much always the ultimate measure of success or failure in Hollywood,
(24:25):
dropped from eleven million in nineteen seventy nine to thirty
seven dollars a decade later. He had to sell his
beloved his home, Woodland, and he was only able to
buy it back with the help of Jack Nicholson. The
house of a Hollywood producer is always very important, but
for Robert Evans this was beyond anything. He had so
(24:47):
many memories there, and it was a privilege to be
able to interview him in that storied place, which is
where he lived until his death in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Okay, so Mark, let's end this on a hol happy note.
We know that Evans and Coppola eventually made up, were
supposedly made up at the twenty fifth anniversary of the film.
Let's hear Evans's recollection of that evening. In San Francisco
five years ago.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Ever, it was the twenty fifth anniversary of it.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
In San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Francis walked in there, he's King of San Francisco. As
he walked down the aisle, I took his sister Tadia
to the affair. He came over to me for his
arms around me and kissed me. He said, the messages
something right. That's good. It's a good line. Yeah, the
(25:39):
message in something right, and kissed me and then walked on.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
And Evans was really proud of that.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
It's my most important igacy in life.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
This is the Godmother's number number one.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
It broke a whole barrier a film opera. It is
do filmmakers great ideas and fighting the organization?
Speaker 5 (26:01):
And I look fighting the organization?
Speaker 8 (26:03):
What organization were you?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
By the two of them? The other one was the
other the boys, but they're all the same. Wow, well
they're all Everything is monetarily focused. And I was looking
to touch magic, and magic to me last longer? Why
is it? At Mozart is remembered far longer, the Napoleon
(26:30):
world of far long as the world of reed.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Leave the Gun Take the Canoli as a production of
Airmail and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
The podcast is based on the book of the same name,
written by our very own Mark Seal.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Our producer is Tina Mullin.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Research assistants by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are
Meet Nathan King, Mark ziel Doan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Special banks to Bridget Arseno and everyone at c DM Studios.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found
in Mark Sieal's book, Leave the Gun, Take the Canolli,
published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster
In his palatial estate known as Woodland. Robert Evans sits
up in his bed, he still glued to the screen.
The movie is ended and the memories begin.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It's my most supported legacy of life.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Evans holds firm to the conviction that he saved the movie,
save the studio, and in many ways elevated the glory
of American film.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Who worked out of Godfather lure, You're introduced to a
different world.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
As I would later write in the book, from this
bed and from this man and those he appointed the
Godfather sprang forth. It was a miracle on paper and
on screen, Created and inspired by the sons and daughters
of immigrants, Its characters were portrayed by a band of
mythsfits who based their roles on a gang of miscrants,
(00:53):
humanized to the point of being honorable. The story endures
as those who made it received, leaving behind a testament
to the glory of the American family and the steadfast
belief in the American dream.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
I'm Mark Seal and I'm Nathan King.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
And this is Leave the Gun, Take the Canoli.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
In our final episode, we're discussing the life, legacy and
legend of the cast, crew and film. Mark, when you
walked into Woodland that day, did you know you would
eventually write the definitive book on the making of The Godfather?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Not at all. I just thought that I was going
to do a magazine story, but I had no idea
that I would later write a book about it, and
that it would consume my life for so many years.
After the article was published, I started thinking about writing
the book, and I was able to meet with Anthony Colombo,
(02:03):
the son of Joe Colombo, who headed the Italian American
Civil Rights League, and we drove out to a diner
in New Jersey and there he was. He comes into
the diner walking with a cane. By then. I think
he was in his sixties maybe, and we've talked for
a long time, and he couldn't have been nicer. And
(02:25):
I tried to imagine him back in those days in
the Park Sheridan Hotel with Al Ruddy speaking before the League.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
You've said previously, Mark, when you're writing a magazine article
like this, that casting a wide net is very important
and talking to as many people as possible, no matter
how inconsequential they seem. Did you do that here?
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Oh? Yes, of course, you know. I tried to talk
to as many people as I could for the article
and then later for the book, and it was amazing.
After the article came out, people would call and tell
me facts that I couldn't have dug up any other way.
But it was nothing like after the book came out.
One man called and said his uncle had delivered the
horse's head to the set. There were so many unexpected
(03:10):
but important additions that just came from the story being
out there in the world.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Who was the most unexpected character you talked to?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, maybe Marilyn Stewart, because I hadn't really read anything
about her. There's not one interview that I could find.
But I called the number that I had found for her,
and she answered the phone and it was like it
seemed like she was expecting my call, which of course
she couldn't have been, but she was just ready to
tell her story. And what a story she had to tell.
(03:42):
You know. She came on. She was Paramount's head of
publicity and promotion, and she just started before the movie
was even shot, you know, fostering its image, making sure
that she got the magazine covers and all the television shows.
And I just thought she was a great window into
the Godfather Pass and how it became such a sensation worldwide.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I want to talk a little bit more about the
reporting aspect of it. How you sort of organize your
thoughts and figure out who to talk to someone like
Janet Snow, for instance. Is that's someone whose name just
comes up in the course of interviewing someone else, and
then one thing leads to another.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
That was a great story. So Janet Snow had not
been interviewed either. I mean maybe she had, but I
had not seen any interviews with her. And I was
talking to Graf Frederickson and he goes, oh, my gosh,
Mario had an assistant during those days, and he couldn't
remember her name at first, and he just said, oh,
Janet Snow. And I called Janet, and she right off
(04:46):
the bat told me this incredible story about Mario Puzo
arriving in Hollywood and that story about the white Lincoln Continental,
and I went, oh, my gosh, it was just like
too wild to believe. You know, as you're putting together
a portrait of somebody for a book, you're just trying
(05:07):
to get as much clay as you can to build
the character. And Mario had done lots of interviews, so
there was a lot about him in print. But a
person like Janet Snow who was there when Mario arrived
in Hollywood and drove him from Paramount to the Beverly
Hills Hotel. I mean, you can't get much better than that.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And it's interesting because while they are in very different situations.
Mario is a huge successful author in Janet's relative nobody,
they're both neophytes in their own way in this Hollywood world.
And I think that's enough to bring them together.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yes, And they were both fairly young. Mario's in his
forties and he was new to that world. Plus Janet
had a magical story to tell about how she got
the job. You know, you open a door and these
stories just come flooding out, like I'll never forget going
to James Conn's home in Beverly Hills when I was
researching the article, and I walk in and there was
(06:00):
a huge drawing of the Godfather on his wall. It
was Don Corleone and his three sons, including Sonny, who
was played by James Kahn.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
I think, you know, with a lot of those guys,
not just the Italians obviously, Like I said, you know,
and immigrants couldn't get a job working three cents, so,
you know, so they did what they had to do
out of need.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
And we spent I think three hours that day talking
about the movie and his role and how you prepared
for the part, how he got the part.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
What was it like interviewing James Common because he's obviously
an actor but also sort of a street guy. Did
you find him very easy to interview and affable?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh? Certainly? And later when I called him for the book,
he was incredibly forthcoming. I talked to him for another
I think two hours, and then called him again for
another hour or so. He was so giving and generous
with his time.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Was there somebody that you picked up mannerisms from like
you did, like the Rickles idea, Well, Andrew was my
closest friend, you know, and he had certain energy. You know,
there's a certain energy about Rickles when he was younger,
you know, which he still has today in his eighties,
you know, but it's obviously not as sharp.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
None of us are sharp. But I could just see
that botta ingrain is coming out of Roa.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Well, that's where it came, you know. I don't know,
I wish i'd had the foresight to, like.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
What do you call a copyright?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
That thing I could have made money.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
I wouldn't begging.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Another great thing that I was privileged to do was
research the life of the actor who played Luca Brozi,
Lenny Montana, who is one of the most unforgettable characters
in the movie. He was a former wrestler and some
say a bodyguard. I was able to dig up some
really old newspapers about him, and there's one where he
(07:52):
tells the story of going to visit his mother in
suburban New York at the same time. They were filming
The Godfather there and had been looking for the perfect
actor to play Luca, who had to be a mountain
of a man, and they had gone through several potential actors,
all professionals, but none were quite right. Anyway, Lenny is
visiting his mother and al Ruddy looks out on the
(08:14):
crowd that's gathered around the set and sees this colossal
man behind the barricades. He takes Lenny Montana to meet
Francis Coppola and his trailer. Lenny's head was probably scraping
the ceiling because he was so big, and Coppola looks
up at him and says, that's Luca Brotzi.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
We mentioned earlier that Robert Evans passed away in twenty nineteen,
just before we started making the show. Sadly, he wasn't
the only one. There were six or seven other characters
in The Godfather's Story who died while we were making
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, just to name a few. Al Ruddy died this year,
Eleanor Coppola, Roger Corman, Robert Town, the screenwriter who wrote
the Majestic Succession scene. Fred Ruse died this year. Ye,
James con two years ago. I mean, it's amazing time
takes its toll. This is a movie that was made
fifty years ago, so a lot of time has passed,
(09:09):
and a lot of people who gave so much to
the film have passed along with it.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
One thing we should talk about is the proliferation of
conflicting accounts, and specifically how you chose who's to believe.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Well, honestly, I didn't want to choose, and I don't
really think it's my job to take aside and make
a choice. All of the stories were so fascinating, and
in the absence of any conclusive evidence about who was
right who was wrong, I just decided to present all
the versions to readers and let them decide. And I
feel like we've done the same thing with this podcast.
(09:44):
But it was a pretty chaotic time. And Ira Zuckerman's
Godfather journal was such a great help because he was
there every day and documented every single day of filming
in such detail that you really couldn't quite argue with that,
because that seemed to be the definitive fly on the
(10:05):
wall account. I mean, there's very few movies where you
have someone who's written a day to day diary of
everything that happened, and so it was a real treasure
to have that as a resource.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
And what about Gianni's version of events? I like his
account the best.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
What we you like personality wise? Like this same as
any never changed.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Don't care about nothing.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
We gotta leave, jump out the wind that we leave you,
take a shot, see you later.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I don't care.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I started from nothing. Well, yeah, of course, because Gianny
Russo has a way of telling these things that they
make them come alive, you know, but so many others
do as well. I mean, how Ruddy is the same way,
and of course Bob Evans, I mean he's the same way,
and Francis Kopple is a professional storyteller. They're all amazing storytellers.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
After working on this podcast, it's hard not to feel
like making a movie is a completely foolish endeavor because
you have all of these conflicting personalities tossed together in
one place, and you know you're all working toward a
common goal, but it seems like things are bound to
go wrong more often than not.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Yeah, it's a miracle that any movie gets made, isn't it?
Because all the personalities, money, logistics, there's so many ways
for things to go wrong. It's not unusual for a
movie not to work out, and The Godfather is a
rare case where the ending was happy and the alchemy
worked against all odds.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I think the directors like Francis Ford Koppola get a
lot of flak for being almost authoritarian in the pursuit
of getting what they want, But you can kind of
see where that would be a benefit in making The
Godfather because you need someone with such a determined vision
and sense of purpose.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
There has to be a captain of the ship, right Mark.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
We know the movie did well financially, but did the
people involved well.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
There's conflicting stories once again about this. You know, some
people said they got rich off of the movie, but
really the actors were paid minimal salaries. I guess thirty
five thousand I think for some, and that was for
the established ones. Al Ruddy said he had points and
he did well on it. But one thing is clear
(12:18):
above all is that Paramount made a lot of money.
Robert Evans told me that Dan Woodland that being the
head of production, he didn't have any points. So he
didn't make any money off the movie personally, but you
know it gave him a springboard to do other things
when he became a independent producer. So it's another mystery
(12:39):
of the Godfather about who made what on the movie.
But here's how al Ruddy described it in our interview.
Speaker 5 (12:46):
You got to understand nobody and for vision success of
this movie, everyone worked for scale. It's a class.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
That's points, Mary, I had two, and A.
Speaker 5 (12:56):
Had points and I had some points. But they kid
was that prophet, doesn't you know what they said? Not
worth the paper which went on right. The profits except
this went through the roof.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
If there was any doubt about how the movie did
or was received in Coppola's mind or anyone else's it
was eradicated when the nineteen seventy three Oscars came around, Mark,
can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
The Godfather was nominated for ten awards at the nineteen
seventy three Oscars Best Picture, Brando as Best Actor, Coppola
for Best Director, Coppola Empuso for Best Adapted Screenplay, and
for Best Supporting Actor, three of them Al Pacino, James Cohn,
and Robert Duval. They also had nominations for Costume, Editing
(13:44):
and Sound. When the envelopes were open, it was Mario
Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola for Best Adapted Screenplay, and
they said that Mario decided not to go because he
was too worried about having to give a speech, so
he watched it from home in suburban News New York.
Brando won Best Actor, but probably in one of the
most famous events in Oscar history, he didn't attend and
(14:07):
said he sent an emissary on his behalf, a woman
named Sasheen Little Feather, who got up and gives a
speech about what had been happening at wounded Me.
Speaker 6 (14:19):
Hello, my name is Sasheine Little Feather. I'm Apache and
I'm president of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee.
I'm representing Marlon Brando this evening, and he has asked
me to tell you in a very long speech which
I cannot share with you presently because of time, but
(14:40):
I will be glad to share with the press afterwards,
that he very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award,
and the reasons for this being are the treatment of
American Indians today by the film industry excuse me me,
(15:09):
and on television in movie reruns, and also with recent
happenings that wounded me. I beg at this time that
I have not intruded upon this evening, and that we
will in the future, our hearts and our understandings will
meet with love and generosity. Thank you on behalf of
(15:32):
Marlon Brando.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
It's fair to say that everyone was stunned by Saushy
and little feathers speech. Another surprise was to come shortly thereafter,
in the form of the Best Picture, A Lord.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
And the Winner and the Winner the ward.
Speaker 4 (15:55):
Albert is ready God bother.
Speaker 7 (16:06):
Let me do this quickly in two parts, because I
know it's past midnight New York, and some of my
relatives want to go to sleep. There are a number
of people I would like to thank, as everyone else would,
because they deserve it.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Bob Edmonds forgiving more.
Speaker 7 (16:16):
Than any studio head should in time and creativity, Frank
your blond for having the courage and imagination to sell
this film and make my mother rich. Charlie Bludorn for
having the courage to finance films, which I guess borders
on insanity. And Peter Bart who was a friend all.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
The way through.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Let's talk about legacy. The film sort of eclipses the
careers of most of the people who made it.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, it's like every person who touched the movie has
this asterisk next to their name that says the Godfather.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Well, let's start with the obvious. Francis Ford Coppola. Despite
the success of the first movie, Coppola was so scarred
that he didn't want to make a sequel, but then
Charlie Bludorn talked him into it.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yes, the story goes that Coppola initially didn't want to
do it, but then Hurricane Charlie erupted. Francis, you've got
the recipe for Coca cola, and you don't want to
manufacturer anymore. Bottles of coke and whatever happened, Coppola ended
up signing on for Godfather too, and after that Godfather three,
and of course Charlie Bludorn wanted to make Godfather four, five,
(17:21):
and six as well.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
This movie changed Copola's life.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Well, for better and for worse, but mostly for better.
You know, time hills, all wounds. And recently Coppola told
Rolling Stone that he saw The Godfather as a gift.
He said, the movie opened up the world to me.
Some of the greatest people in the world have wanted
to talk to me simply because I was a guy
who made that film.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
What about Mario Puzzo, what happens to him afterwards?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Well, Mario Puzo became a superstar screenwriter, He became rich,
he became famous. He could gamble all he wanted. I
loved what is His son told me via email. He told me,
now that he had money, look out. He would buy
books instead of taking him out of the library. He
rented a house in Malibu. You know, he would eat
(18:12):
whatever he wanted, He would gamble whenever he wanted. I
think he still loved the good life of Hollywood and
of course Las Vegas. He wrote a book about Las
Vegas that was sort of a love letter to the
city and what it meant to him. And in addition
to writing many more novels, he wrote the screenplay to Superman,
so he maintained his Hollywood ties.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Another person who went on to have an amazing career
Robert Town.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yes, Robert Town became the Dean of Hollywood screenwriters. He
wrote Chinatown and so many other movies that became classics.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
And he wasn't famous when Copola brought him in, but
he had certainly worked on other projects. He'd done Bonnie
and Clyde and McCabe and Missus Miller, and then The
Godfather was probably his first big project.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, and I love the story of how he came
up with that incredible scene, the succession scene. It was
late in the night in New York and Coppola was
going to pick him up the next morning to take
him to the set, and he was looking at the
cover of Mario Puzo's novel, you know, with the invisible
puppeteer holding the strings, you know, with those strings dangling down,
(19:21):
and he said, it was like at four in the morning,
the line came to him and it was just this
incredible line that would sum up so much and it
became one of the most classic scenes in the movie.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Listen to this list of movies he went on to
write after that, the Last Detail, Parallax View, Chinatown, Shampoo,
The Missouri Breaks, Days of Thunder, The Firm, Mission Impossible
one and two.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Yeah, pretty incredible list. Robert town once said that he
was not really interested in writing novels, that he just
wanted to write movies. And listen to that list of
movies that he wrote. I mean, he's one of the
greatest screenwriters in hollywood A history.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
What was Charlie Bludorn's legacy like at Paramount.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Charlie Bludorn saved the studio in the end with The
Godfather and other movies later, But sadly Charlie passed away
at a fairly young age. He lived in the Dominican
Republic where he built this amazing resort. But he died
on a they say, on a plane coming home. So
he missed out on seeing so much. And I would
have loved to have obviously spoken with him, But he's
(20:27):
remembered by everyone whose path he crossed.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
What about Al Ruddy? What happens to him?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Afterwards, so al Ruddy remained vital until the end. He
produced both The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby, winning Best
Picture Oscars for both, and he died at ninety four
years old last May. And about two weeks before he
passed away, I spoke to him again. He was the
(20:53):
same Al Ruddy as always, you know, talking a mile
a minute. His memory was sharp, and he was really
excited about this podcast and wanted to do whatever he
could to help, which is typical out the quintessential producer,
the man who gets things done. Well.
Speaker 8 (21:11):
We came back to sicily, I went through New York
and they said they wanted to do a sequel, and
I told straight out, I have no interest. Livesen to me,
no interest in never doing a movie again.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
But this mom I got lucky.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
I got out.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
I'm happy of at one piece. I could never get
more out of him.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
And regardless of the fact that he didn't work on
subsequent Godfather movies, he clearly cared about the movie's legacy
a lot because he worked on the offer.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Yeah, the offer was really molded around his life. It
was his story. Miles Teller played Al Ruddy, you know,
he was the central character.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
You didn't get a chance to interview Brando because he
was dead by the time you started working on this.
But if you could have, what would you have asked him.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I would have loved to have known in his own
words about how he made the transformation into Don Corleone.
But Alice was able to tell me a lot, and
also she was able to tell me his reluctance to
play a mobster. He didn't want to do it at first,
and he only wanted to do it when he heard
that they were thinking about Lawrence o Libya, and he goes,
(22:23):
he can't play a mafia don, And Alice said she
looked in and he was like using shoe polish to
create a mustache and dye his eyebrows. And she goes, no,
that's not right. Do it like Brando. But I would
have liked to have asked him about that.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
Let's move on to Evans. So you spoke with Evans
in two thousand and eight, which is eleven years before
his death. What were his reflections on the film and
his legacy.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
He said it was his greatest legacy, but it was
also a failure for him personally in many ways because
he chose the Godfather over his personal life, and that
was lipping away from him that day in Woodland. I'll
never forget the line that he said. He said, it's
so long ago, so many people are dead, and he
proceeded to rattle off everyone who had died in the interim,
(23:12):
which at that point was already quite long, Richard Castellano,
Marlon Brando, John Cassol, and so forth. And so he
had some regrets, for sure, But at the same time,
he was really proud of the movie and all that
the movie had achieved. As I wrote in the book,
he felt that he had fostered it and much of
its success was due to him, which you know, as
(23:33):
the head of the studio, he had the right to believe.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
If the filming process was rough for Robert Evans, it
got even rougher after The Godfather came out, didn't it? Mark?
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Well? At first it went all right. He produced Chinatown,
starring his close friend Jack Nicholson, But not long after
that he left Paramount to become an independent producer, and
that's when he started to struggle a little bit. As
I wrote in the book, he descended into darkness for
a period. There was a misdemeanor cocaine trafficking plea in
(24:04):
nineteen eighty the box office disaster of the Cotton Club
in nineteen eighty four, his entangment in a murder scandal
stemming from the film, and the eight torturous years it
would take him to clear his name. Also, I thought
it was interesting his wealth, which is, you know, pretty
much always the ultimate measure of success or failure in Hollywood,
(24:25):
dropped from eleven million in nineteen seventy nine to thirty
seven dollars a decade later. He had to sell his
beloved his home, Woodland, and he was only able to
buy it back with the help of Jack Nicholson. The
house of a Hollywood producer is always very important, but
for Robert Evans this was beyond anything. He had so
(24:47):
many memories there, and it was a privilege to be
able to interview him in that storied place, which is
where he lived until his death in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Okay, so Mark, let's end this on a hol happy note.
We know that Evans and Coppola eventually made up, were
supposedly made up at the twenty fifth anniversary of the film.
Let's hear Evans's recollection of that evening. In San Francisco
five years ago.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Ever, it was the twenty fifth anniversary of it.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
In San Francisco.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Francis walked in there, he's King of San Francisco. As
he walked down the aisle, I took his sister Tadia
to the affair. He came over to me for his
arms around me and kissed me. He said, the messages
something right. That's good. It's a good line. Yeah, the
(25:39):
message in something right, and kissed me and then walked on.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
And Evans was really proud of that.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
It's my most important igacy in life.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
This is the Godmother's number number one.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
It broke a whole barrier a film opera. It is
do filmmakers great ideas and fighting the organization?
Speaker 5 (26:01):
And I look fighting the organization?
Speaker 8 (26:03):
What organization were you?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
By the two of them? The other one was the
other the boys, but they're all the same. Wow, well
they're all Everything is monetarily focused. And I was looking
to touch magic, and magic to me last longer? Why
is it? At Mozart is remembered far longer, the Napoleon
(26:30):
world of far long as the world of reed.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Leave the Gun Take the Canoli as a production of
Airmail and iHeartMedia.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
The podcast is based on the book of the same name,
written by our very own Mark Seal.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Our producer is Tina Mullin.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Research assistants by Jack Sullivan.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are
Meet Nathan King, Mark ziel Doan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Special banks to Bridget Arseno and everyone at c DM Studios.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found
in Mark Sieal's book, Leave the Gun, Take the Canolli,
published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster
Hosts And Creators
Mark Seal
Nathan King
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