November 3, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, the director was a renegade filmmaker who'd never made a profitable picture. The producer was hired because he could stay below 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.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
This is Lee Habeb and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history.
Up next, a great storyteller himself, and we're here to
talk to the author of a book called The Godfather Legacy,
the Untold story of the making of the classic Godfather trilogy.
And by the way, it features some terrific stills. Go
(00:37):
to Amazon dot com and get it, and Harlan Liibo
is the author. He's also the author of one hundred
Days and you can get that at Amazon dot com
as well, a terrific book about four big events in
nineteen sixty nine that changed the arc of this country.
A great cultural storyteller about this great country. Harlonlibo joins us,
(00:58):
thank you, Lee, you bet. Let's talk about the Godfather.
And you know in the opening you said this. Francis
Ford Coppola has often said that the story of the
Godfather is a romance about a king with three sons.
Talk about that The.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
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, and
(01:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
In that way. It's not a mafia picture. It's a
family picture with the mafia as a backdrop. And maybe
this is why some of the other quote mafia pictures
didn't succeed. They didn't lead with that family story first.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
That is true. I mean, it's the same way as
looking 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,
(02:30):
the youngest son played by al Pacino, never would have
done what he did, which has become part of the
family business, if it was.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Not for his love of his father.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And that's a real torment for him, but it doesn't
stop him from becoming the ruthless killer that he does become.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Indeed, and let's start where we should always start, and
that's the beginning, And let's talk about a guy named
Mary Opuzzo. He's the author of the book. He was born,
as you note in your book, in Hell's Kitchen, New York,
and it's very different today Hell's Kitchen than it was
when Mario Puzzo grew up. Describe his upbringing, where he
(03:08):
grew up, and how he grew up in a little
bit about his life.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Right, 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
tenement section of New York City for many decades, and
that's where Mario Puzo was from. He was young, he
(03:34):
was poor. 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
(03:54):
in one of his other books, which is the experiences
of a family involved in the un world of New York.
And that's when the idea for The Godfather came along.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And this was a massive best seller for Puso. Talk
about that. Describe some of the remarkable success of this book.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, the book itself was one of the great page
turning books. One summer that it came out, a Puzo
had decided to give writing one last shot. He maxed
out all the credit cards. He also got a little
money from Paramount Pictures, which we can talk about in
a minute, but this really was his last shot at writing.
(04:32):
He sent off the manuscript. He came back from a vacation,
and he came back to discover 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, number one on the bestseller list for months
and months, and it was a natural fit, you would think,
(04:54):
to be made into a film. But that's where other
problems started, and we can talk about those in a minute.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, let's do that, because in the end the film
business had now had great success with what are so
called mob movies. They'd failed in the box office. But
yet Mario Puzo gets in advance talk a little bit
about that process.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
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
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
(05:35):
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,
like Love Story, which did very well for Paramount Pictures.
So Peter Bart supported Puso with a few bucks now
and then, and they held on to the rights to
(05:59):
make The Godfather of 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.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So in the end, Peter Bart was putting markers on
certain authors and hoping they'd pop and every once in
a while he might get a really great discount. But
that wasn't why he was doing it. He was just
trying to keep it sounded like good writers in the
stables and close to him, Yes he was.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And it worked very well. I mean, writers felt loyal
to him as they should have. He had faith in them,
which he should and it worked out very successfully on
at least two movies for Paramund Pictures to the biggest
movies of the sixties and seventies, Love Story and eventually
The Godfather.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And we're talking to Harlan Liebo. The book is the
Godfather Legacy, the untold story of the making of the
classic Godfather trilogy. And when we come back, so much
more from Coppola to Paccino, the Brando and well stories,
You're just going to love. This is Lee Habib, Harlan
Libo the Godfather. The stories of both continue here on
(07:06):
Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our
(07:30):
American Stories, the show where America is the star and
the American people, and we do it all from the
heart of the South, Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't
do this show without you. Our shows will always be
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If you love what you hear, consider making a tax
deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to our American
(07:52):
Stories dot com. Give a little, give a lot. That's
our American Stories dot com. And we continue here on
Our American Stories with Harlan Leebo, author of The Godfather Legacy.
(08:15):
Let's talk next about another important person, his name Francis
Ford Coppola. It turns out that as everybody was looking
to place this with the director, as you write, no
one wanted to direct this film. Who is Coppola? Why
did he matter?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Well, you're right, 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,
(08:56):
there were no takers on directors for the film and
very little intro 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
(09:17):
to make movies about the mafia.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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. But part of the reason they
went to Copola was he seemed solid enough as a director,
but he was also Italian American and that was crucial
(09:42):
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 that anytime an Italian American person appeared
in a film, it was in a crime role, and
(10:03):
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, 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
(10:23):
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 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
(10:44):
at its core. And if you focus on Michael, the
problems of the youngest son, then it becomes even more interesting.
So Copola agreed to do the film with many conditions,
and he was able to convince Paramount to buy in.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Let's talk about Copa just a little bit more. He
had polio when he was young, and this I think
would really change him and perhaps even shape him, because
as a young boy, curiosity and his retreat into his
own world may have become actually something positive. Also his father, who,
as he put it, I lived in a household of
(11:19):
a jealous man, and it changed me. I said, I'm
never going to sit around waiting for my break to come.
His father was a conductor. I'm going to make it
and I did so. Talk about his dad and he
grew up in Detroit. Coppola and also Polio.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Coppola did grow up 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
(11:56):
can't wait around for these things. 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,
(12:17):
of course, was that it be filmed entirely on location
in New York, which is 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
(12:39):
and the struggles within the motion picture industry in the
early nineteen seventies, it was a very small budget. Copla
got more. He also got the right 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 trial and
(13:00):
tribulations of the family. And he stood his ground. And
that's and there were many times where he had to
stand his ground over the next few months.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Well. Indeed, storytellers, in the end, focus is so much
and point of view or what so much of artistic
choices are all about. I want to quote from your book,
and this is Coppola. I got into what the book
is really about the story of the family, this father
and his sons and questions of power and succession. And
(13:29):
I thought it was a terrific story if you could
just get out all that other stuff and that in
the end is what he did, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yes, he did. 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
and what how power can be used, and how power
can corrupt, and that those are the elements that Cope
(14:00):
went for. And in all fairness, the movie was very
of course, very popular at the time, 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.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
And it's true that you go from to experts film
experts straight down to Joe public and all of us
love this movie because in some deep way it speaks
to all of us. All of us have a Fredo
in the family, for instance, we just do and what
do you do with that older brother who's not going
to inherit the family pharmaceutical business, right or the family
(14:41):
autobody shop. These are real problems that occur, and I
think that's what the koppelas genius was was making this
a universal story, Harlan.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It really was quite universal. The issues of love and
family and conflict are so clear in the film. I mean,
let's face it, there's a lot of there's a lot
of violence in The Godfather, of course there is. That's
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
(15:15):
al Pacino playing Michael, and his struggles to stay away
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
(15:36):
of Fredo, the middle son, and and what happened to
him or what didn't happen to him, how he was
sort of left by the side of the road in
many respects. That gets picked up again in much more
detail in Godfather Part two.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Indeed, and you know that as you were talking about
that desire of Coppola to make sure that this shot,
this film was shot on location, he also wanted it
to be a period Smarlan, and you wrote beautifully about this.
I want to share just one little part because this
was expensive. When a New York City maintenance crew removed
a modern concrete street light, it costs two hundred and
(16:12):
fifty dollars to install an original Shepherd's crook light of
the earlier era, and costs another two fifty for the next.
At the end of the shoot, the shepherd's crook light
would be removed again another two hundred and fifty dollars
and the ugly concrete modern light replaced for another two fifty.
This was done time and again a little detail, but
(16:34):
to Francis Ford Coppola, all of these details, piled upon
one another, created this authentic life for which this movie
and this city could serve as a backdrop. And actually
I think New York City was a character in the movie.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Oh, New York City absolutely is a character. If you
ever want to see what New York City looked like
in real life. At about the time The Godfather was
being filmed. See a movie called The Hot Rock, which
is a hilarious comedy crime picture with Robert Redford and
George Siegel that was shot and almost entirely on location
in New York within months when The Godfather was filmed.
(17:10):
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, and the city really looked nothing like it
did in nineteen forty six. And constant attention to detail
(17:31):
was a constant challenge when making the film. One of
the great pleasures of watching The Godfathers watching the detail.
All that detail was a constant challenge, but well worth
it because The Godfather looks incredibly good and incredibly realistic.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Indeed, and when we continue more with Harlan Leebo, author
of The Godfather Legacy, here on our American story and
(18:10):
we continue with our American stories, We're talking to Harlan Leebo,
the author of The Godfather Legacy. And the next character
in this remarkable film. Well, it's Marlon Brando, and I'm
going to read from your book it says Coppola wanted
Brando the don in quotes, is in the movie no
more than thirty percent of the time, explained the producer.
(18:31):
But we had to have an actor with the power
and mystique to permeate those scenes in which he didn't appear.
Brando had that blunt power. Why did Coppola want Brando
and no one else for this role?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Well, because of that blunt power. 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
(19:07):
character of Don Vito Corleone come alive. Well, now we're
looking at it in retrospect. A lot of years later, then,
Brando was viewed by some as not bankable. Some most
of his films 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
(19:31):
that he was really very tough on the set and
was a difficult, difficult for directors for many things, many reasons.
He was not anyone's choice to be the Don, 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
(19:54):
the Don being. Keep in mind that Marlon Brando is young.
When this movie's made, this is nineteen six seventy one,
he was forty seven years old. But he gave the
character the gravitas, the dignity, the power, and the authority
that it really needed. And Coppola was right. And Coppola
had to fight for practically every character, but the key
(20:14):
characters he had to fight for was first Marlon Brando
and then later Al Pacino.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Well, let's talk about Pacino next. He was a young
actor and up and comer, not a large body of work, but,
my goodness, a fascinating one, both in cinema and in
the theater. He was an up and comer and a
real riser. But talk about Pacino, my goodness, For a
lot of the time, Pachino didn't think he was going
to keep his job.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
No, he didn't, and Al Pacino. 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 work. You know, he would wait tables, he would
put he would put pamphlets on cars, just trying to
make ends meet while he got acting jobs and did
(21:01):
very well on the stage when he did, but a
lot of other people did too. He had 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 studios who
thought Robert Redford could play Michael. But copole knew better,
(21:23):
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
(21:45):
the role.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Indeed, I'm going to quote from the book, is this
is what Pacino bought because he was just worried, well
beyond all measure quote. I was out. Pacino was convinced
until the murder scene in the restaurant shot on March thirty.
First quote, they kept me after that scene, Paccino recalled,
that looked pretty good. I guess when you shoot a guy.
(22:07):
They wanted me to assert myself. So in that scene
there's kind of an assertion. And that's a scene where
he shoots the cop and he shoots those guys, drops
the gun and the next thing you know, he's off
to Italy to just avoid well capture by authorities. I'll
talk about that scene because, my goodness, it is the
one where his performance comes to life.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
It really does. 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 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
(22:51):
shot and severely wounded, which he does. He murders a
police captain and a drug dealer at a restaurant in
the Bronx. I think Pacino was 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
(23:12):
fear in those scenes as he's preparing for the two
murders is unmistakable and unforgettable. But what really sold the
studio 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
(23:33):
has been shot when he sees it on the headline
of a newspaper, and that simmering concern and how he
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.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And that scene, somehow we get innocence to experience in
almost a second Harlem.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yes, it's 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 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 1 (24:21):
Yep, everything's about to change. Let's talk about John Cazell
because people don't know his name, but my goodness, he
was in only five movies before well, cancer took him
too early. All five of those movies were Oscar nominated
pictures five for five. That's crazy. Who was John Kazel?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
John Cazade was a wonderful character actor. 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
(25:01):
in five classic films of the nineteen seventies. Besides The
Godfather Part one and Part two, he was in Dog
Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter, and The Conversation, five of
the best films ever made. So that's quite a legacy
for a man who's life ended way too quickly.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
There's a great picture in your book of Robert Duval,
another great actor, holding up cute cards under his jacket
with Marlon Brando reading from those cue cards, and there
are cute cards all over the room in the set,
and I'm just laughing. Who were those cute cards for
and why were they there?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
The Q cards are for Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando was
not a lazy actor, although some probably would have said
he was. He was definitely a method actor, and 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 in important for his roles. So
(26:02):
for many of his parts, for all of his career
after a certain point, he almost always had cue cards
just off camera and logistics of a movie set being
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
(26:23):
them poster size, some of them just little note size
sitting on a ac counter. It's too bad, because those
cue cards are worth a fortune. Now, I'd love to
have some.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah, just want it'd be great, just you know, memorialize
it forever in your home. We're talking to Harlan Libo.
The book is The Godfather Legacy, the Untold Story of
the Making and the Classic Godfather Trilogy. And by the way,
it features some never before published production stills. And go
get this on Amazon or on eBay or wherever you
can if you love the Godfather. When we continue more
(26:55):
with Harlan Libo, this is our American story, and we
(27:39):
continue here with our American stories. We're talking to Harlan Liebow,
author of The Godfather Legacy. Now let's get onto the
filming of this movie, because it was quite a show
in New York. It turns out when scenes would be shot,
hundreds and hundreds and possibly even thousands of New Yorkers
were rushing to these spots to watch his You get made.
(28:00):
And I think people knew something really big was happening.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Oh, I think so. They didn't know al Pacino at
the time, but they certainly knew some of the other characters.
But that's one of the fun things about being in
other New York or Los Angeles too, but especially in
New York because it's so much more compact, Because on
a summer day, there's almost always something going on in
the way of a movie being made, which was true
for the spring and summer of nineteen seventy one. The
(28:28):
Godfather was filming in all sorts of places. And there's
one scene when al Pacino's character is waiting to be
picked up, and he's standing in front of what was
Toutshore's restaurant, and he's standing right on the sidewalk all
by himself, but what you can't see is fifteen feet
away there are hundreds of people milling around watching the
(28:48):
film being shot.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Let's talk about one. Since we're talking about scenes, let's
talk about a scene that Robert Town wrote, and Robert
Town as a legendary script doctor, and it's the scene
where Michael and his father are in the backyard talking
about life. And it's such a beauty and it's such
a sparsely written scene. Talk about what happened? Why was
(29:13):
Town called? How long did he have to write this scene?
And it may be one of the great scenes in
movie history.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It really is one of the great scenes in movie history.
There's no question. It's two incredible actors facing each other
as father and son talking about in only a few minutes,
several key issues, not just the threat to the life
of the youngest son, Michael, and what might happen to
him in a plot to overthrow him, but also the
(29:41):
father's concern the dons concerns about why Michael's life had
gone the way it did, and the dons regrets about
what had happened there. And that scene was written many
times and no one was particularly happy with it, And
finally it got to the point when they were making
the film and they couldn't wait any longer to get
scene right. They had to call in Robert town who's
(30:03):
written many scripts of his own, but was also known
at the time and for years after as a great
script doctor, someone who could come in, swoop in, save
the day. And that's exactly what he did. He came
to New York, he read the script, he talked with
those involved, and he took a scene which was only
okay and transformed it into an absolute masterpiece of cinema,
(30:28):
which it is.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Indeed, you know these lines at the end. I'm looking
you actually have a part of the screenplay here, and
it says Vito Corleone. I knew that Santino was going
to have to go through all this, and Fredo dot
dot dot, Well, Fredo was dot dot dot well, I
never and we all knew without saying anything. He said
(30:50):
everything right, and then he said, I never wanted this
for you. I worked my whole life. I don't apologize.
I take care of my family, and I refuse to
be a fool. So on and so forth, and then
in the end he says, well, there wasn't enough time, Michael,
there wasn't enough time. And Michael says, we'll get there, Pop,
We'll get there. It's just so beautiful, it really is.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
And Robert Town knew, and for a long time knew
the key to writing any scene is often what you
don't say. We didn't have to describe Fredo at that
point at all, because we knew that Fredo just had
that undefinable He wasn't right for any of this. Later
(31:32):
in the scene, when the Dawn talks about how he'd
hoped that Michael would wind up being governor or senator,
Michael doesn't go into a long explanation of why that
wasn't necessary. All he says is another pessantlevente, which means
another big shot, just like, eh, you know, it would
have been just another big shot. It wouldn't have been
anything important. It wouldn't have been for me. What he
(31:53):
would have done is left unsaid. But the point is
with two words, he negates any of the possibilities of
what he might have wound up being. And that's just
beautiful writing.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
It is, and then beautiful acting. We have one last
scene we'll talk about. There's Brando in the garden scene
with his grandson and this orange. And this is the
actor's decision, right, I mean, this isn't Coppola, this isn't
the script. This is the actor using an orange well
to a remarkable effect. Talk about that last great scene,
(32:27):
Marlon Brando and that orange.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
This is the scene when Marlon Brando's character dies. He's
in he's in the family tomato patch with his grandson, Anthony.
It's actually his real name is also Anthony uh. And
the scene was scripted for Brando's character to die, but
a lot of it was left to Brando and Anthony
to work out in well, actually for Brando to work
(32:51):
out in interacting with Anthony. Anthony was and young and
wasn't old enough to really act for himself. And one
of the things that brand and it 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
(33:11):
teeth into it, and it really scared Anthony. It genuinely
scared him. If you 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 the dawn passes away, falls into the
(33:35):
tomato plants and dies. 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.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Indeed, let's talk about the music too, while we're at
some of the other attributes. Talk about the music, because
my goodness, I don't know that the movie is the
movie without the music either.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Well, one of the things that we haven't really chatted
about is Coppola really felt strongly that to convey that
sense of family is that there needed to be a
lot of issues of legitimate Italian American culture in the film.
And you know, they had meals and conversations in the film,
there were many little touches about Italian American culture. And
(34:27):
what he felt strongly about, among many things he felt
strongly about, was he really wanted to have an Italian
composer create the music for the film. So he called
on Nino Rota, the composer probably best known for doing
many of the best films of Frederico Fellini, and Rota
(34:48):
wrote the music for The Godfather.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
And what a soundtrack it is. And it's not just
what we remember. I mean that opening scene in The Godfather,
we get to see many Americans had never seen a
tyran tella. They'd never seen it. The dance, not just
the music, but the dance. Right.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Some of that music was not Roto's music. That was
traditional Italian music. But yeah, the film opens at the
wedding of Connie, the youngest, the youngest child in the
family and the only daughter in the Carleona family. You
see great scenes of partying and festivities and it's a
real slice of Italian American culture from the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
And even the word cannoli gets thrown in one of
the great improvised lines in the movie. Talk about that
you write just to drop about that as well, Yes
it is.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
It is at a great line. After one of the
family henchman Clemenza, kills a trader to their cause, the
one who's sold out the Dawn and got him set
up to be shot. They go into Little Italy, New York.
Clemenza gets lunch while his boys wait in the car
and he picks up a package of canoli. Then on
(35:56):
the way home they stop and the trader is killed.
The box of cannoli is still in the car. So
that's one of the great lines from the film and
from any film. Leave the gun, take the canoli.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
And boy canoli. Lovers understand the gravity of that command
as well. Let's talk about the box office success, because
this could have been one of the first movies where
folks lined up. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
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 you 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
(36:44):
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
instantaneous around the block for hours and hours a day sensation,
absolute gigantic hit in the summer of nineteen seventy two,
(37:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
And every actor got a career boost from this movie, right, Harlan.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Oh, Absolutely, this was a huge boost for everyone involved.
All of the younger characters, the people who played the Suns,
James Kahn, al Pacino and then an adopted son played
by Robert Davall all became legitimate stars immediately. They were
all nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Brando's career got a
(37:48):
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, a giant success story for everyone.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Parlanlibo, thanks for the book. The book is the Godfather
and Legacy. Go to Amazon and get it. Also get
one hundred days that's available on Amazon dot Com to
these stories both here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habeb and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
from the arts to sports, and from business to history.
Up next, a great storyteller himself, and we're here to
talk to the author of a book called The Godfather Legacy,
the Untold story of the making of the classic Godfather trilogy.
And by the way, it features some terrific stills. Go
(00:37):
to Amazon dot com and get it, and Harlan Liibo
is the author. He's also the author of one hundred
Days and you can get that at Amazon dot com
as well, a terrific book about four big events in
nineteen sixty nine that changed the arc of this country.
A great cultural storyteller about this great country. Harlonlibo joins us,
(00:58):
thank you, Lee, you bet. Let's talk about the Godfather.
And you know in the opening you said this. Francis
Ford Coppola has often said that the story of the
Godfather is a romance about a king with three sons.
Talk about that The.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
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, and
(01:36):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
In that way. It's not a mafia picture. It's a
family picture with the mafia as a backdrop. And maybe
this is why some of the other quote mafia pictures
didn't succeed. They didn't lead with that family story first.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
That is true. I mean, it's the same way as
looking 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,
(02:30):
the youngest son played by al Pacino, never would have
done what he did, which has become part of the
family business, if it was.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Not for his love of his father.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And that's a real torment for him, but it doesn't
stop him from becoming the ruthless killer that he does become.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Indeed, and let's start where we should always start, and
that's the beginning, And let's talk about a guy named
Mary Opuzzo. He's the author of the book. He was born,
as you note in your book, in Hell's Kitchen, New York,
and it's very different today Hell's Kitchen than it was
when Mario Puzzo grew up. Describe his upbringing, where he
(03:08):
grew up, and how he grew up in a little
bit about his life.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Right, 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
tenement section of New York City for many decades, and
that's where Mario Puzo was from. He was young, he
(03:34):
was poor. 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
(03:54):
in one of his other books, which is the experiences
of a family involved in the un world of New York.
And that's when the idea for The Godfather came along.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And this was a massive best seller for Puso. Talk
about that. Describe some of the remarkable success of this book.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, the book itself was one of the great page
turning books. One summer that it came out, a Puzo
had decided to give writing one last shot. He maxed
out all the credit cards. He also got a little
money from Paramount Pictures, which we can talk about in
a minute, but this really was his last shot at writing.
(04:32):
He sent off the manuscript. He came back from a vacation,
and he came back to discover 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, number one on the bestseller list for months
and months, and it was a natural fit, you would think,
(04:54):
to be made into a film. But that's where other
problems started, and we can talk about those in a minute.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, let's do that, because in the end the film
business had now had great success with what are so
called mob movies. They'd failed in the box office. But
yet Mario Puzo gets in advance talk a little bit
about that process.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
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
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
(05:35):
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,
like Love Story, which did very well for Paramount Pictures.
So Peter Bart supported Puso with a few bucks now
and then, and they held on to the rights to
(05:59):
make The Godfather of 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.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
So in the end, Peter Bart was putting markers on
certain authors and hoping they'd pop and every once in
a while he might get a really great discount. But
that wasn't why he was doing it. He was just
trying to keep it sounded like good writers in the
stables and close to him, Yes he was.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And it worked very well. I mean, writers felt loyal
to him as they should have. He had faith in them,
which he should and it worked out very successfully on
at least two movies for Paramund Pictures to the biggest
movies of the sixties and seventies, Love Story and eventually
The Godfather.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
And we're talking to Harlan Liebo. The book is the
Godfather Legacy, the untold story of the making of the
classic Godfather trilogy. And when we come back, so much
more from Coppola to Paccino, the Brando and well stories,
You're just going to love. This is Lee Habib, Harlan
Libo the Godfather. The stories of both continue here on
(07:06):
Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our
(07:30):
American Stories, the show where America is the star and
the American people, and we do it all from the
heart of the South, Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't
do this show without you. Our shows will always be
free to listen to, but they're not free to make.
If you love what you hear, consider making a tax
deductible donation to our American Stories. Go to our American
(07:52):
Stories dot com. Give a little, give a lot. That's
our American Stories dot com. And we continue here on
Our American Stories with Harlan Leebo, author of The Godfather Legacy.
(08:15):
Let's talk next about another important person, his name Francis
Ford Coppola. It turns out that as everybody was looking
to place this with the director, as you write, no
one wanted to direct this film. Who is Coppola? Why
did he matter?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Well, you're right, 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,
(08:56):
there were no takers on directors for the film and
very little intro 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
(09:17):
to make movies about the mafia.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
Well.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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. But part of the reason they
went to Copola was he seemed solid enough as a director,
but he was also Italian American and that was crucial
(09:42):
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 that anytime an Italian American person appeared
in a film, it was in a crime role, and
(10:03):
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, 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
(10:23):
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 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
(10:44):
at its core. And if you focus on Michael, the
problems of the youngest son, then it becomes even more interesting.
So Copola agreed to do the film with many conditions,
and he was able to convince Paramount to buy in.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Let's talk about Copa just a little bit more. He
had polio when he was young, and this I think
would really change him and perhaps even shape him, because
as a young boy, curiosity and his retreat into his
own world may have become actually something positive. Also his father, who,
as he put it, I lived in a household of
(11:19):
a jealous man, and it changed me. I said, I'm
never going to sit around waiting for my break to come.
His father was a conductor. I'm going to make it
and I did so. Talk about his dad and he
grew up in Detroit. Coppola and also Polio.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Coppola did grow up 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
(11:56):
can't wait around for these things. 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,
(12:17):
of course, was that it be filmed entirely on location
in New York, which is 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
(12:39):
and the struggles within the motion picture industry in the
early nineteen seventies, it was a very small budget. Copla
got more. He also got the right 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 trial and
(13:00):
tribulations of the family. And he stood his ground. And
that's and there were many times where he had to
stand his ground over the next few months.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Well. Indeed, storytellers, in the end, focus is so much
and point of view or what so much of artistic
choices are all about. I want to quote from your book,
and this is Coppola. I got into what the book
is really about the story of the family, this father
and his sons and questions of power and succession. And
(13:29):
I thought it was a terrific story if you could
just get out all that other stuff and that in
the end is what he did, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yes, he did. 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
and what how power can be used, and how power
can corrupt, and that those are the elements that Cope
(14:00):
went for. And in all fairness, the movie was very
of course, very popular at the time, 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.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
And it's true that you go from to experts film
experts straight down to Joe public and all of us
love this movie because in some deep way it speaks
to all of us. All of us have a Fredo
in the family, for instance, we just do and what
do you do with that older brother who's not going
to inherit the family pharmaceutical business, right or the family
(14:41):
autobody shop. These are real problems that occur, and I
think that's what the koppelas genius was was making this
a universal story, Harlan.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It really was quite universal. The issues of love and
family and conflict are so clear in the film. I mean,
let's face it, there's a lot of there's a lot
of violence in The Godfather, of course there is. That's
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
(15:15):
al Pacino playing Michael, and his struggles to stay away
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
(15:36):
of Fredo, the middle son, and and what happened to
him or what didn't happen to him, how he was
sort of left by the side of the road in
many respects. That gets picked up again in much more
detail in Godfather Part two.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Indeed, and you know that as you were talking about
that desire of Coppola to make sure that this shot,
this film was shot on location, he also wanted it
to be a period Smarlan, and you wrote beautifully about this.
I want to share just one little part because this
was expensive. When a New York City maintenance crew removed
a modern concrete street light, it costs two hundred and
(16:12):
fifty dollars to install an original Shepherd's crook light of
the earlier era, and costs another two fifty for the next.
At the end of the shoot, the shepherd's crook light
would be removed again another two hundred and fifty dollars
and the ugly concrete modern light replaced for another two fifty.
This was done time and again a little detail, but
(16:34):
to Francis Ford Coppola, all of these details, piled upon
one another, created this authentic life for which this movie
and this city could serve as a backdrop. And actually
I think New York City was a character in the movie.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Oh, New York City absolutely is a character. If you
ever want to see what New York City looked like
in real life. At about the time The Godfather was
being filmed. See a movie called The Hot Rock, which
is a hilarious comedy crime picture with Robert Redford and
George Siegel that was shot and almost entirely on location
in New York within months when The Godfather was filmed.
(17:10):
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, and the city really looked nothing like it
did in nineteen forty six. And constant attention to detail
(17:31):
was a constant challenge when making the film. One of
the great pleasures of watching The Godfathers watching the detail.
All that detail was a constant challenge, but well worth
it because The Godfather looks incredibly good and incredibly realistic.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Indeed, and when we continue more with Harlan Leebo, author
of The Godfather Legacy, here on our American story and
(18:10):
we continue with our American stories, We're talking to Harlan Leebo,
the author of The Godfather Legacy. And the next character
in this remarkable film. Well, it's Marlon Brando, and I'm
going to read from your book it says Coppola wanted
Brando the don in quotes, is in the movie no
more than thirty percent of the time, explained the producer.
(18:31):
But we had to have an actor with the power
and mystique to permeate those scenes in which he didn't appear.
Brando had that blunt power. Why did Coppola want Brando
and no one else for this role?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Well, because of that blunt power. 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
(19:07):
character of Don Vito Corleone come alive. Well, now we're
looking at it in retrospect. A lot of years later, then,
Brando was viewed by some as not bankable. Some most
of his films 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
(19:31):
that he was really very tough on the set and
was a difficult, difficult for directors for many things, many reasons.
He was not anyone's choice to be the Don, 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
(19:54):
the Don being. Keep in mind that Marlon Brando is young.
When this movie's made, this is nineteen six seventy one,
he was forty seven years old. But he gave the
character the gravitas, the dignity, the power, and the authority
that it really needed. And Coppola was right. And Coppola
had to fight for practically every character, but the key
(20:14):
characters he had to fight for was first Marlon Brando
and then later Al Pacino.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Well, let's talk about Pacino next. He was a young
actor and up and comer, not a large body of work, but,
my goodness, a fascinating one, both in cinema and in
the theater. He was an up and comer and a
real riser. But talk about Pacino, my goodness, For a
lot of the time, Pachino didn't think he was going
to keep his job.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
No, he didn't, and Al Pacino. 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 work. You know, he would wait tables, he would
put he would put pamphlets on cars, just trying to
make ends meet while he got acting jobs and did
(21:01):
very well on the stage when he did, but a
lot of other people did too. He had 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 studios who
thought Robert Redford could play Michael. But copole knew better,
(21:23):
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
(21:45):
the role.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Indeed, I'm going to quote from the book, is this
is what Pacino bought because he was just worried, well
beyond all measure quote. I was out. Pacino was convinced
until the murder scene in the restaurant shot on March thirty.
First quote, they kept me after that scene, Paccino recalled,
that looked pretty good. I guess when you shoot a guy.
(22:07):
They wanted me to assert myself. So in that scene
there's kind of an assertion. And that's a scene where
he shoots the cop and he shoots those guys, drops
the gun and the next thing you know, he's off
to Italy to just avoid well capture by authorities. I'll
talk about that scene because, my goodness, it is the
one where his performance comes to life.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
It really does. 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 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
(22:51):
shot and severely wounded, which he does. He murders a
police captain and a drug dealer at a restaurant in
the Bronx. I think Pacino was 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
(23:12):
fear in those scenes as he's preparing for the two
murders is unmistakable and unforgettable. But what really sold the
studio 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
(23:33):
has been shot when he sees it on the headline
of a newspaper, and that simmering concern and how he
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.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And that scene, somehow we get innocence to experience in
almost a second Harlem.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yes, it's 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 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 1 (24:21):
Yep, everything's about to change. Let's talk about John Cazell
because people don't know his name, but my goodness, he
was in only five movies before well, cancer took him
too early. All five of those movies were Oscar nominated
pictures five for five. That's crazy. Who was John Kazel?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
John Cazade was a wonderful character actor. 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
(25:01):
in five classic films of the nineteen seventies. Besides The
Godfather Part one and Part two, he was in Dog
Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter, and The Conversation, five of
the best films ever made. So that's quite a legacy
for a man who's life ended way too quickly.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
There's a great picture in your book of Robert Duval,
another great actor, holding up cute cards under his jacket
with Marlon Brando reading from those cue cards, and there
are cute cards all over the room in the set,
and I'm just laughing. Who were those cute cards for
and why were they there?
Speaker 2 (25:40):
The Q cards are for Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando was
not a lazy actor, although some probably would have said
he was. He was definitely a method actor, and 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 in important for his roles. So
(26:02):
for many of his parts, for all of his career
after a certain point, he almost always had cue cards
just off camera and logistics of a movie set being
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
(26:23):
them poster size, some of them just little note size
sitting on a ac counter. It's too bad, because those
cue cards are worth a fortune. Now, I'd love to
have some.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Yeah, just want it'd be great, just you know, memorialize
it forever in your home. We're talking to Harlan Libo.
The book is The Godfather Legacy, the Untold Story of
the Making and the Classic Godfather Trilogy. And by the way,
it features some never before published production stills. And go
get this on Amazon or on eBay or wherever you
can if you love the Godfather. When we continue more
(26:55):
with Harlan Libo, this is our American story, and we
(27:39):
continue here with our American stories. We're talking to Harlan Liebow,
author of The Godfather Legacy. Now let's get onto the
filming of this movie, because it was quite a show
in New York. It turns out when scenes would be shot,
hundreds and hundreds and possibly even thousands of New Yorkers
were rushing to these spots to watch his You get made.
(28:00):
And I think people knew something really big was happening.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Oh, I think so. They didn't know al Pacino at
the time, but they certainly knew some of the other characters.
But that's one of the fun things about being in
other New York or Los Angeles too, but especially in
New York because it's so much more compact, Because on
a summer day, there's almost always something going on in
the way of a movie being made, which was true
for the spring and summer of nineteen seventy one. The
(28:28):
Godfather was filming in all sorts of places. And there's
one scene when al Pacino's character is waiting to be
picked up, and he's standing in front of what was
Toutshore's restaurant, and he's standing right on the sidewalk all
by himself, but what you can't see is fifteen feet
away there are hundreds of people milling around watching the
(28:48):
film being shot.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Let's talk about one. Since we're talking about scenes, let's
talk about a scene that Robert Town wrote, and Robert
Town as a legendary script doctor, and it's the scene
where Michael and his father are in the backyard talking
about life. And it's such a beauty and it's such
a sparsely written scene. Talk about what happened? Why was
(29:13):
Town called? How long did he have to write this scene?
And it may be one of the great scenes in
movie history.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It really is one of the great scenes in movie history.
There's no question. It's two incredible actors facing each other
as father and son talking about in only a few minutes,
several key issues, not just the threat to the life
of the youngest son, Michael, and what might happen to
him in a plot to overthrow him, but also the
(29:41):
father's concern the dons concerns about why Michael's life had
gone the way it did, and the dons regrets about
what had happened there. And that scene was written many
times and no one was particularly happy with it, And
finally it got to the point when they were making
the film and they couldn't wait any longer to get
scene right. They had to call in Robert town who's
(30:03):
written many scripts of his own, but was also known
at the time and for years after as a great
script doctor, someone who could come in, swoop in, save
the day. And that's exactly what he did. He came
to New York, he read the script, he talked with
those involved, and he took a scene which was only
okay and transformed it into an absolute masterpiece of cinema,
(30:28):
which it is.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Indeed, you know these lines at the end. I'm looking
you actually have a part of the screenplay here, and
it says Vito Corleone. I knew that Santino was going
to have to go through all this, and Fredo dot
dot dot, Well, Fredo was dot dot dot well, I
never and we all knew without saying anything. He said
(30:50):
everything right, and then he said, I never wanted this
for you. I worked my whole life. I don't apologize.
I take care of my family, and I refuse to
be a fool. So on and so forth, and then
in the end he says, well, there wasn't enough time, Michael,
there wasn't enough time. And Michael says, we'll get there, Pop,
We'll get there. It's just so beautiful, it really is.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
And Robert Town knew, and for a long time knew
the key to writing any scene is often what you
don't say. We didn't have to describe Fredo at that
point at all, because we knew that Fredo just had
that undefinable He wasn't right for any of this. Later
(31:32):
in the scene, when the Dawn talks about how he'd
hoped that Michael would wind up being governor or senator,
Michael doesn't go into a long explanation of why that
wasn't necessary. All he says is another pessantlevente, which means
another big shot, just like, eh, you know, it would
have been just another big shot. It wouldn't have been
anything important. It wouldn't have been for me. What he
(31:53):
would have done is left unsaid. But the point is
with two words, he negates any of the possibilities of
what he might have wound up being. And that's just
beautiful writing.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
It is, and then beautiful acting. We have one last
scene we'll talk about. There's Brando in the garden scene
with his grandson and this orange. And this is the
actor's decision, right, I mean, this isn't Coppola, this isn't
the script. This is the actor using an orange well
to a remarkable effect. Talk about that last great scene,
(32:27):
Marlon Brando and that orange.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
This is the scene when Marlon Brando's character dies. He's
in he's in the family tomato patch with his grandson, Anthony.
It's actually his real name is also Anthony uh. And
the scene was scripted for Brando's character to die, but
a lot of it was left to Brando and Anthony
to work out in well, actually for Brando to work
(32:51):
out in interacting with Anthony. Anthony was and young and
wasn't old enough to really act for himself. And one
of the things that brand and it 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
(33:11):
teeth into it, and it really scared Anthony. It genuinely
scared him. If you 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 the dawn passes away, falls into the
(33:35):
tomato plants and dies. 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.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Indeed, let's talk about the music too, while we're at
some of the other attributes. Talk about the music, because
my goodness, I don't know that the movie is the
movie without the music either.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Well, one of the things that we haven't really chatted
about is Coppola really felt strongly that to convey that
sense of family is that there needed to be a
lot of issues of legitimate Italian American culture in the film.
And you know, they had meals and conversations in the film,
there were many little touches about Italian American culture. And
(34:27):
what he felt strongly about, among many things he felt
strongly about, was he really wanted to have an Italian
composer create the music for the film. So he called
on Nino Rota, the composer probably best known for doing
many of the best films of Frederico Fellini, and Rota
(34:48):
wrote the music for The Godfather.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
And what a soundtrack it is. And it's not just
what we remember. I mean that opening scene in The Godfather,
we get to see many Americans had never seen a
tyran tella. They'd never seen it. The dance, not just
the music, but the dance. Right.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Some of that music was not Roto's music. That was
traditional Italian music. But yeah, the film opens at the
wedding of Connie, the youngest, the youngest child in the
family and the only daughter in the Carleona family. You
see great scenes of partying and festivities and it's a
real slice of Italian American culture from the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
And even the word cannoli gets thrown in one of
the great improvised lines in the movie. Talk about that
you write just to drop about that as well, Yes
it is.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
It is at a great line. After one of the
family henchman Clemenza, kills a trader to their cause, the
one who's sold out the Dawn and got him set
up to be shot. They go into Little Italy, New York.
Clemenza gets lunch while his boys wait in the car
and he picks up a package of canoli. Then on
(35:56):
the way home they stop and the trader is killed.
The box of cannoli is still in the car. So
that's one of the great lines from the film and
from any film. Leave the gun, take the canoli.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
And boy canoli. Lovers understand the gravity of that command
as well. Let's talk about the box office success, because
this could have been one of the first movies where
folks lined up. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
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 you 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
(36:44):
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
instantaneous around the block for hours and hours a day sensation,
absolute gigantic hit in the summer of nineteen seventy two,
(37:09):
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.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
And every actor got a career boost from this movie, right, Harlan.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Oh, Absolutely, this was a huge boost for everyone involved.
All of the younger characters, the people who played the Suns,
James Kahn, al Pacino and then an adopted son played
by Robert Davall all became legitimate stars immediately. They were
all nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Brando's career got a
(37:48):
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, a giant success story for everyone.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Parlanlibo, thanks for the book. The book is the Godfather
and Legacy. Go to Amazon and get it. Also get
one hundred days that's available on Amazon dot Com to
these stories both here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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