When I was 11 years old, I was preparing to make some class presentation, and one of my teachers told me I should talk like someone named "Don Corleone." He told me to tell the audience I'd be making them an offer they can't refuse. I imitated my instructor's raspy voice.
Because I was a child, I assumed Don was a car dealer.
Once I reached my teens, I discovered a used paperback copy of Mario Puzo's novel "The Godfather" and found its depiction of life in the mob as impossible to refuse as any of the title character's offers.
As the son of a Baptist deacon, the strange moral code of gangsters twisted my head, and Puzo's ability to string a reader along until revealing a shocking payoff made plowing through hundreds of pages seem easy.
It wasn't until I was in my early 30s that I finally had a proper viewing of Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation, but its power ended up dwarfing that of the book. In making the film, Puzo and Coppola (who collaborated on the script) carefully refined the ore of the book into a precious metal. Distracting subplots disappeared (Lucy Mancini's difficulty in having orgasms isn't missed), and mesmerizing performances made the onscreen equivalents of the book's characters seem even more real.
For example, on TV (or at least on tiny, low-res sets), Brando's mannerisms seemed hammy and contrived, but when I could see his features on the big screen, his Don Vito Corleone was astonishingly subtle. As a leader, any remark or gesture he made could affect countless lives. You could see Brando weighing decisions in real time, making the now-familiar-to-me story even more suspenseful.
SLOWLY TAKES THE REINS
If you haven't read the book or watched the movie, it deals with how the Don's youngest son Michael (Al Pacino in his breakthrough role), who has lived his entire life outside of organized crime, slowly takes the reins of his father's empire when rival gangsters attempt to kill Vito.
Despite having seen "The Godfather" dozens of times, I still love it. As you can probably guess, I'm not alone.
In the five decades that have passed since the film debuted on March 24, 1972, Coppola has directed two sequels, and references to the original film are omnipresent. Young wannabe gangsters often wear jackets or T-shirts sporting Brando's face.
It has been parodied frequently on "Saturday Night Live." John Belushi's Vito Corleone winds up in group therapy and laments how the ASPCA is angry about what he's done to a horse. While Dana Carvey's George H.W. Bush tries to neutralize Saddam Hussein (Phil Hartman) the way Michael Corleone eliminated an opponent in the movie. Even "Rugrats Go to Paris" and "You've Got Mail" have nods to the previous movie.
Oh, and the movie won three Oscars (Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture). Brando rejected his award, but one of Brando's final gigs was voicing a 2006 video game made from the saga.
It's no wonder that Paramount is now releasing 4K Ultra HD editions of all three of Coppola's movies, and Paramount+ is even running a miniseries "The Offer," which chronicles how producer Albert S. Ruddy (Miles Teller) struggled with Coppola (Dan Fogler) to get the movie made. Even the studio that paid for the movie had doubts about the merits of Puzo's story or Coppola's abilities as a director.
BEFORE HE WAS 20
Vanity Fair special correspondent Mark Seal has documented the off-screen drama in his book, "Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: The Epic Story of the Making of The Godfather." Like me, Seal discovered the story before he was 20 years old.
"It was a moment that still reverberates with me today. I was a 19-year-old college freshman, visiting my mom on spring break in Memphis. I felt like I was a kid when I walked into the theater and an adult when I walked out. It introduced me to a world I did not know -- and one I have never been able to forget," Seal recalls in an email.
Despite the time that has passed, the movie still hits as hard as one of Sonny Corleone's (James Caan) temper tantrums. While the movie's later success now seems inevitable, it didn't seem like that in 1971 and 1972. The filmmakers had more to worry about than displeasing Paramount brass.
"It was an event worthy of an exhibit in The Mob Museum (which I've visited several times and always enjoy!)," he says. "Threats came by telephone, the windshield of the movie producer's car was riddled with bullets one night, and there were bomb scares at Paramount's parent company Gulf + Western in New York -- along with letters of protest arriving through the mail -- following the announcement that 'The Godfather' was in pre-production.
"Then, a man reputed to be the head of one of the five Mafia families of New York stepped forward to rise up against the making of the movie. Joe Colombo had founded The Italian American Civil Rights League, and he and his followers were on a mission to stop the stereotyping of Italian Americans in popular culture. 'The Godfather' soon became something that Colombo and the League were determined to stop -- until the producer Albert Ruddy spoke at a League meeting and eventually agreed to excise the one word from the script that Colombo felt represented the stereotyping of his people: Mafia. After that, the city of New York opened wide for 'The Godfather.'"
THE PARAMOUNT SUITS
While it was bad enough that real mobsters were wary of the New York-shot film, suits at the studio were nervous about the film as well.
"Because, as Robert Evans, head of production at Paramount at the time, wrote of those times, 'Sicilian mobster films don't play,'" Seal says. "Paramount had made 'The Brotherhood,' a mafia movie starring Kirk Douglas, and it hadn't been a commercial success. So, the idea of making another mob movie certainly wasn't a sure bet, much less anyone having the idea that it might become an all-time classic. But when Puzo's novel became a bestseller, 'The Godfather' had to be made. Also, knocking on Paramount's door were Burt Lancaster and Danny Thomas, both of whom wanted to buy the property from the studio and produce and star in it themselves."
Curiously, the wise guys who once resented the movie later reveled in it.
Seal recalls, "Once the movie was out, the fiction became larger than fact: the mob seemed to embrace the film along with the public because it elevated these men and women above the grim realities of the real mob by focusing on their families first. This gave 'The Godfather' its heart and soul and made the movie a hit that people watch year after year, many with their families."
If the movie only appealed to gangsters, it wouldn't have held the public's interest for half a century. When I asked Seal why people showed up at recent theatrical screenings of the movie or would happily buy the new HD boxed set, he said, "Two reasons: Because it was filmed in New York as a period piece in the 1940s, which gives it a timeless feel and makes it as fresh today as it was 50 years ago. And because it doesn't merely cast its Mafia characters as gangsters but family men and women that you can't help but care about. As 'The Godfather' producer Albert Ruddy says in the book, "It may be the greatest family movie ever made."
GRANDFATHER'S OPERAS
It probably didn't hurt that both Puzo and Coppola were proud Italian-Americans and that the movies celebrate Italian food, music and culture. "The Godfather: Part III" even features operas the director's grandfather composed. The two knew how to depict wise guys without making them sound like Chico Marx.
In a documentary included in the boxed set, Coppola laments hearing the Marx Brother and other comedians and actors speaking in a way that sounded nothing like his relatives. By primarily casting actors who shared his heritage, Coppola ended up making the Corleones seem believable.
Seal also points out that the film stands for more than crime, bloodshed or even cannoli.
"The opening line, 'I believe in America,' says everything about the movie. And while the line doesn't appear until many pages into Chapter 1 in Mario Puzo's novel, Francis Ford Coppola had the vision to see the line for what it was: the perfect summation of the immigrant experience and all of the struggles to come, in both real life and in the movie. At its core, "The Godfather" is an immigrant story, a saga about the American Dream and what it takes to realize that dream. As Michael tells his father in the succession scene, "We'll get there, Pop. We'll get there."
“I believe in America.” The undertaker Amerigo Bonasera (Salvatore Corsitto, an Italian immigrant who’d never acted before) goes to Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) to ask for justice for his daughter’s rape in the famous opening scene from “The Godfather.”