The Making of The Godfather

THE box office appeal of a blockbuster best seller. The charisma of Marlon Brando in one of his finest performances. Warmth, violence, nostalgia and the dynastic sweep of an Italian-American Gone With the Wind. The Godfather, which will be released next week, is a movie that seems to have everything. Canny producers know that when a movie has everything, it needs something more: a sequel. What could the brains at Paramount come up with to match The Godfather? Something to do with the Mafia, something rife with greed, intrigue and passion. For that, they might consider The Making of the Godfather. The story behind the movie has all those elements and then some.

No sooner had Paramount announced plans to film Mario Puzo's novel about the powerful leader of a Mafia family than the protests began. The Italian-American Civil Rights League, a group headed by Joseph Colombo, the reputed don of one of New York City's five Mafia families, held a rally in Madison Square Garden, raising a $600,000 war chest to stop the production as a slur on Italian-Americans. Close to 100 letters of protest came in from Senators, Congressmen and New York State legislators. The Manhattan offices of Paramount's parent company, Gulf & Western, twice had to be evacuated because of bomb threats. In Los Angeles, police told the movie's producer, Al Ruddy, that his car was being tailed, and Ruddy switched cars with his secretary. She parked his in front of her house, and the next morning found it riddled with bullets.

The melodrama was right in keeping with the kind of picture Paramount had in mind. The company wanted a quickie exploiting the book's success, shot in modern dress in St. Louis on a relatively low budget of $2.5 million. To direct it, Paramount Production Chief Robert Evans approached Peter Yates, who had established his thriller credentials with Bullitt; Richard Brooks, who shot In Cold Blood; and even Greek Director Costa Gavras, the man who made Z. When, for various reasons, none of these choices worked out, Evans went for a dark horse: Francis Ford Coppola, who was only 31 .

Dynasty and Power. Coppola was an established screenwriter (he won an Oscar last year for co-authoring Patton), but he had an indifferent record as a director (Finian's Rainbow, You're a Big Boy Now). Nevertheless, Evans had faith in Coppola's ability, and attached particular importance to the fact that he was Italian-American. Says Evans: "He knew the way these men in The Godfather ate their food, kissed each other, talked. He knew the grit." Coppola, deeply in debt, could have used an offer to direct traffic, let alone a movie like The Godfather. He jumped at the chance, and over some strenuous front-office opposition, won the job.

Although hardly dealing from strength, Coppola fought to get his budget doubled, shift the style to the period in which the book is set (late 1940s and early 1950s), and alter the whole conception of the film. "I saw important ideas in this book that had to do with dynasty and power," he says. "Puzo's screenplay had turned into a slick, contemporary gangster picture of no importance. It wasn't Puzo's fault. He just did what they told him to do." With Puzo's collaboration, Coppola rewrote the script along the broader lines he envisioned. "It was my intention," he says, "to make this an authentic piece of film about gangsters who were Italian, how they lived, how they behaved, the way they treated their families, celebrated their rituals."

Puzo seemed to be bemused by the already dizzying changes. He had welcomed a Hollywood writing stint as a vacation from the hermit existence of the novelist. His office at Paramount had a refrigerator containing "an unlimited supply of soda pop free," he recounts in an upcoming nonbook entitled, naturally, The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions. "I had an adjoining office for my secretary and a telephone with a buzzer and four lines. This was living." However, between the soda pop and the tennis and the gambling, which Puzo plunged into with relish, he soon found that being the father of The Godfather had its drawbacks. At a Los Angeles restaurant he was introduced to Frank Sinatra, who was widely believed to be the model for Puzo's character of Johnny Fontane, the singer who is backed by the Mob. Sinatra, writes Puzo, never even looked up from his plate, but "started to shout abuse . . . The worst thing he called me was a pimp, which rather flattered me. But what hurt was that there he was, a northern Italian, threatening me, a southern Italian, with physical violence. That was roughly equivalent to Einstein pulling a knife on Al Capone."

More troubles were to come for Puzo. He be came disgruntled because he had no final say on the picture. He was not allowed to view the finished cut when he wished to, and it was rumored that he had sworn -- humorously, no doubt -- a Sicilian vendetta against Paramount's Robert Evans.

Meanwhile it seemed that every actor in the world who was over 35 -- and some men who were not actors -- was scowling into his mirror and jockeying for the plum role in the picture: the Godfather himself, Don Vito Corleone. Under consideration were prospects who ranged from George C. Scott to Laurence Olivier to Italian Producer Carlo Ponti, Sophia Loren's husband.

Flamboyant San Francisco Lawyer Melvin Belli let it be known that he was available. Coppola and Puzo agreed that the actor they saw in the role was Brando (see CINEMA). Once again the Paramount bosses howled. They saw Brando in his more familiar role as the star of money-losing pictures and a moody troublemaker on the set. Brando's shenanigans during the filming of Mutiny on the Bounty had become legend, and the star, who is currently divorced from his second wife, was famous for his sometimes tumultuous off-screen romances.

Shoe Polish and Tissue Paper. Finally Paramount accepted the choice of Brando -- with a stipulation. He would have to go through a screen test. Though Brando had never lost his technical brilliance, he had not given a truly satisfactory performance in years. Still, asking him to go through a screen test was like asking the Pope to recite the catechism. But Brando was so eager for the part that, when he heard about the stipulation through the grapevine, he beat Paramount to the punch by suggesting a test himself. Coppola hauled a video-tape camera to the star's house and Brando, with a little shoe polish under the eyes and wads of tissue paper in his cheeks, trans formed himself undeniably into the Godfather.

Two other contenders for the title role, John Marley (Faces, Love Story) and the familiar screen heavy Richard Conte, ended up taking smaller parts.

For the crucial roles of the Godfather's sons, such glamorous candidates as Robert Redford, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson were ruled out in favor of lesser-known actors with a tougher, more authentic look: Al Pacino as Michael, the Ivy-educated son who succeeds the Godfather; James Caan as the lusty Sonny, the oldest son whose hot temper betrays him; Robert Duvall as the adopted son Tom Hagen, the lawyer who be comes the family's consigliere; John Cazale as Fredo, the timid, feckless son who is given a Las Vegas casino to play with. For the role of Luca Brasi, the Godfather's muscleman, Ruddy signed Former Wrestler Lenny Mantana, whom he spotted idling among a crowd of bystanders during the early shooting. Several of these actors had distinguished themselves on Broadway and in minor movies, but few could be considered name actors.

With the casting battles behind him, Coppola found other problems on the set. Some members of his crew, openly unimpressed with his direction after the first few days, began plotting to get him fired. His cinematographer seemed to obstruct more than help. "I'd tell the guy how I wanted to shoot the scene," says Coppola, "and he'd say, 'Oh, that's dumb.'" Evans decided after three weeks that Coppola was near a nervous breakdown and never knew whether the director would show up the following day. But Coppola got rid of the key detractors, came to an understanding with the cinematographer--for whom he still has high professional regard--and kept showing up. "I had to hang in," he says. "Everything was at stake."

Ruddy turned his attention to the growing pressure being exerted by the Italian-American Civil Rights League. Shopkeepers in New York City, where the film was now being shot, were making difficulties over the use of their premises for locations, unions were becoming restive, and Joseph Colombo was continuing his harassment by publicity. Coppola was stopped on the street by people asking, "How come you, an Italian, can make such a movie?"

Ruddy met with the league and made a number of concessions that cleared up most of the trouble right away. He agreed to delete the words

"Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" from the script--a shrewd piece of bargaining, since "Mafia" had never appeared in the script anyway and "Cosa Nostra" had been used only once. Also, he hired some people associated with the league, including a Las Vegas nightclub M.C., Gianni Russo, who got the role of the Godfather's treacherous son-in-law Carlo. Russo, a friend of Colombo's son Anthony, provided the cast with tips on how Mafiosi would act. He cheerfully observes that the Mob is "like the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. Everyone should have an organization."

Brando, who had been expected to loom as the biggest of all the movie's problems, turned out to be a model team player. Indeed, Brando's only major fault as an actor was that he would not or could not learn his lines, and had to read them from hidden cue cards. Long known as an actor who lives his roles, Brando in effect adopted the actors who played his screen sons. Just before shooting started, Ruddy threw a cast party at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. "We were all new to each other," says John Cazale. "We stood there not knowing what to do. It was Brando who broke the ice. He just went over, opened a bottle of wine and started the festivities. I think we all realized then that he was acting with us the way the Don would have acted with his own family."

Brando gave and took advice freely, and encouraged backstage pranks that kept the atmosphere relaxed. A favorite was "mooning," the infantile practice of dropping one's trousers to show bare buttocks. "My best moon was on Second Avenue," remembers James Caan. "Bob Duvall and I were in one car and Brando was in another, so we drove up beside him and I pulled down my pants and stuck my ass out of the window. Brando fell down in the car with laughter."

During shooting, says Coppola, "there was a full flush of intuition that Brando fused with his technique. If a herd of buffalo ran across the set, he'd react in character." For Brando's death scene, the script called for him to cavort with his grandson in a garden, then topple over from a stroke. Brando suggested adding a little game that he played with his own children: he cut a set of jagged fangs from an orange rind and inserted them in his mouth. The result not only drew a spontaneous on-screen reaction from the child playing the grandson, but also captured in a tiny image the essence of the Godfather characterization--a monster, but seemingly benign.

Enormous Pains. Brando's stunning performance seemed to spur the entire cast. Coppola, working from the emotional inside of his subject, was able to succeed as few American film makers have in evoking the texture and variety of an ethnic subculture. He took enormous pains to project a believable period milieu, using old cars, plastering buildings with correctly dated posters and handbills, even making sure that such minute items as pencils and lipsticks were authentic. He and his cinematographer emulated the visual style of the period, eschewing zoom lenses, fast cuts and jarring closeups. They used many longer tableau shots, achieving emphasis with subtle framing and lighting. Coppola edited it all together in what he calls a "legato" rather than a "staccato" rhythm, enabling him to build tension gradually and effectively over the picture's three-hour labyrinthine development.

The result is a movie that -- despite the mayhem and gallons of gore -- is far more than the soap opera full of raw energy that might have been expected. It is far more than an efficient action melodrama -- more, even, than just a good solid movie. It is a movie that exemplifies what is great in the Hollywood tradition. Out of all the false starts and chaos and hassles, Coppola has created something that promises to open a rewarding new phase in Brando's career and put Coppola in the forefront of American film artists.

Does it give an accurate portrayal of the Ma fia? Perhaps not. Many real-life Mafiosi were reportedly amused and somewhat flattered by their portraits in the book, despite the protestations of Colombo's now discredited league. They may well be equally amused and flattered by the movie.

They are, however, angry about one thing. They have not been invited to the Manhattan premiere.

"Look," a top-ranking man in Vito Genovese's family recently told a federal agent, "if some picture company did the life of Audie Murphy, he'd be invited to the premiere. If the movie was about the military, they'd turn out the generals. So when they do one about us, we should be there too." Your move. Paramount.

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