The Unlikely Making of The Godfather

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Take it away, Harlan. The 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. 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 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, 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. I mean, it's the same way as looking at Gone with the Wind. 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're integral to The Godfather. Michael, the youngest son, played by Al Pacino, never would have done what he did, which is become part of the family business, if it was not for his love of his father. And that's a real torment for him.

But it doesn't stop him from becoming the ruthless killer that he does become. You spend time with your family? Sure I do. 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 uh and it's 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 was poor, he eventually became a civil servant working in New York, and at the same time was a struggling fiction author through the 1960s.

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 in one of his other books, which is the experiences of a family involved in the underworld of New York. And that's when the idea for The Godfather came along. The book itself was one of the great page-turning books one summer that it came out. Apuzo had decided to give writing one last shot. He maxed out all the credit cards.

he also got a little money from Paramount Pictures, but this really was his last shot of writing. He sent off the manuscript, he came back from a vacation, and he came back to discover that not only the book sold, but the paperback rights it sold for about $400,000. And in 1970 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, to be made into a film. But that's where other problems started. 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 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 Puzo with a few bucks now and then, and they held on to the rights to make The Godfather 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 1971. No one did want to direct the film, even though The Godfather 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 of what Paramount wanted to do with it. They had supported Puzo as a writer, but they didn't want to support the film any more than any other relatively low-budget shoot-em-up picture about crime.

And as a result, there were no takers on directors for the film and very little interest in the project. That problem was compounded by the fact that the film called The Brotherhood had come out at about the same time, which had a huge budget, big stars, and it flopped. Because, again, it was just not well thought of as a topic to make movies about the mafia.

Well, 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. Much of the original book was a potboiler, so it was not a film I particularly wanted to do. But I had no money, and my then young assistant, George Lucas, said, Francis, you've got to get a job because the sheriff's going to come and put a chain on the door of American Zorro because we haven't paid our bills.

Do this movie. And so I ultimately took the job and wrote the screenplay. I just took the novel and went through it and underlined everything that I thought that I could use. But part of the reason they went to Coppola was he seemed solid enough as a director, but he was also Italian-American, and that was crucial to the project at the time. And we could certainly talk about the problems within the Italian-American community in the 1960s and early 1970s with Hollywood.

But the short version is that it was viewed within many Italian-American families that any time an Italian-American person appeared in a film, it was in a crime role. And 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 Coppola, they offered the project to him, and he turned it down too. He came around because of the same things we were talking about a few 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 at its core. And if you focus on Michael, the problems of the youngest son, then it becomes even more interesting.

So Coppola agreed to do the film with many conditions, and he was able to convince Paramount to buy in. 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 can 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, 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 and the struggles within the motion picture industry in the early 1970s, it was a very small budget. Coppola got more. 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 trials and tribulations of the family. And he stood his ground.

And there were many times where he had to stand his ground over the next few months. And you've been listening to Harlan Lebo, author of The Godfather Legacy. tell the story about how The Godfather came to be. Heck, even as a best-selling piece of fiction, it barely happened. I mean, it was Mario Puzo's last shot.

And what do you know, it becomes a hit. Coppola doesn't even want to do the film. The only reason he's been picked is because he's Italian and he's probably cheap. And he says no the first time, but he needs the money. When we come back, more of the story of how The Godfather came to be with Harlan Lebo here on Our American Stories.

Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 semi-quincentennial coin and metal program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.

Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semiq. That's usmint.gov slash semiq. The biggest game of the season right here, right now. Starts Saturday strong.

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From the biggest headlines and breaking news to the story shaping the sport behind the scenes, Rushing the Field is your home for everything college football. Whether you're obsessed with rankings, rivalries, or game day drama, we've got you covered. Watch Rushing the Field on NBC Sports now. And we continue with Our American Stories and with Harlan Lebo, author of The Godfather Legacy, the untold story of the making of the classic Godfather trilogy. Let's pick up where we last left off.

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, how power can be used and how power can corrupt. And those are the elements that Coppola 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 really loves. 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 violence in The Godfather. Of course there is.

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, 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 of Fredo, the middle son, 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. Mike, you don't come to Las Vegas and talk to a man like Mo Green like that. Fredo, you're my older brother and I love you.

But don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever. But it was a real problem filming The Godfather. The film was shot primarily in the spring and summer of 1971. And they were filming in what was supposed to be 1946, 47, and 48.

While that doesn't seem all that long before, it was only 23 years earlier, but it was a long time in the history of New York, and the city really looked nothing like it did in 1946. And constant attention to detail and fixing the streets and putting up posters or big trucks to block things that would otherwise be seen on screen was a constant challenge when making the film. One of the great pleasures of watching The Godfather is watching the detail of the film, just adding extra details. Dean Tavalaris, the production designer, There's one scene on the streets of a tenement area where James Caan's character, Sonny, the oldest son, beats up his brother-in-law because his brother-in-law has attacked Sonny's sister, the youngest in the family. Look around at what's going on in that scene, just at the decor and the posters of political campaigns and posters that are falling down and tattered away that have posters underneath them or the cars or the shepherd's crook light poles.

All that detail was a constant challenge, but well worth it because The Godfather looks incredibly good and incredibly realistic. Actually, when you look at it now, I believe Brando's character is only in the three-hour Godfather, about 43 minutes, something like that. But his aura is over every frame of the film. And he had exactly what it took to make that character of Don Vito Corleone come alive. Godfather, I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do. You can act like a man! What's the matter with you? Is this how you turned out a Hollywood Pinocchio that cries like a woman? What can I do?

What can I do? What is that, Nelson? Ridiculous. I want you to rest well, and a month from now, this Hollywood big shot's going to give you what you want. It's too late.

They start shooting in a week. I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

Well, now we're looking at it in retrospect a lot of years later. Then, Brando was viewed by some as not bankable.

So 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 that he was really very tough on the set and was difficult for directors. For many things many reasons he was not anyone 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 the Don being. The president of Paramount told me in these words, he says, Francis, as president of Paramount Pictures, I am telling you that Marlon Brando will not be in this movie. I said, we have to be like ninjas.

We have to go to Mr. Brando's house, go make any noise, and we'll just sort of photograph him experimenting to be an Italian.

So we went, we arrived very early in the morning, and no one said a word. And he came out, he had long blonde hair, he was only 47, he was quite a handsome young man. And as he came out, he, in a beautiful Japanese robe, I remember, He came out and he took his long hair and he kind of put it up behind his head and pinned it in. He got some shoe polish and he started to make it black and kind of do that. And then he put a white shirt on.

And I remember he took the white shirt and he was taking his collar. Interesting about little seeds of a character. And he started to bend the end of the collar. And he said, those Italian guys, a collar has always bent. And he even said, oh, maybe his voice should be very hoarse because he shot in the story in the throat.

He was talking like this. Like that, not saying anything. And meanwhile, we were photographing this.

So he even took some Kleenex and he put it into his mouth and said, oh, you know, and he said, those guys look like bulldogs. and it was a miracle because the character was growing out of this. I took this tape. I decided to go to New York and show it to the chairman and the owner of Paramount who was named Charlie Bluthorn, who was an interesting person. And he had a company called Golf and Western.

It was the first conglomerate and one of the companies he owned was Paramount. I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

Charlie Bluthorn comes out and he recognized me oh Francis what can I do I said well look at this and I turned on the tape recorder and there is Marlon Brando with this long blonde hair rolling it up and Charlie Bluthorn said no no absolutely not Marlon Brando and as he watched and saw this transformation he said that's incredible that's incredible and as of that moment I knew that I had Brando in the part and of course Brando to this day is thought of for that role. And Coppola was right. And Coppola had to fight for practically every character, but the key characters he had to fight for was first Marlon Brando and then later Al Pacino. And we've been listening to author Harlan Lebo tell one heck of a story about the greatest film ever made in American history, that is. That's The Godfather.

And a lot of film critics put The Godfather 2 right there with it, and that never happens with sequels. And so much of it had to do with Francis Ford Coppola's artistic nature, him seeing and understanding the core of the story, which was that it was not a mob film. It was a film about power, violence, love, and family at the center. And my goodness, having to create a film in the streets of New York in 1971 and make it look like it was 1947 or 48. It was pulled off by a master.

And then there's that talk of the scene with Marlon Brando and him showing it to this titan, this head of gulf and western and saying, no, Brando. And then seeing the magic of Brando owning the character almost instantly. Remarkable storytelling. When we come back, more of the story of how the Godfather came to be here on Our American Stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans.

It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 semi-quincidentennial coin and metal program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues.

Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semiq. That's usmint.gov slash semiq. The biggest game of the season right here, right now. Starts Saturday strong. It's Big News Saturday on Fox.

And here we go. It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big News kickoff live with an epic pregame. The crowd, the atmosphere, this is what makes it special. Then it's America's number one game. What a hit!

The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest games. Down the sideline, touchdown! It's Big Noon Saturday, noon Eastern on Fox.

All right, quick quiz for the hiring managers out there. What's worse, being understaffed or being poorly staffed?

Well, that's a trick question because both are recipes for chaos. Either way, just say to yourself, this is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. You'll get matched with candidates that meet the skills, certifications, and everything else you're looking for. Or go a different way and get no traction. Seriously, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs.

It really is a no-brainer. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves.

at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now. Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire?

This is a job for Indeed's sponsored jobs. This is Hoda Kotb from Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. Halloween has a funny way of making you buy things you'd never normally buy. A 10-foot skeleton? Sure.

A full-size fog machine? Why not? Three bags of candy that somehow become six bags of candy? It happens. Which brings me to the Chase Freedom Flex card, the savvy decision that will earn you more cash back on the everyday purchases, plus the extraordinary Halloween tricks and treats.

With Freedom Flex, you earn even more treats on your Halloween and everyday needs. You get 5% cash back on popular rotating quarterly categories, 3% on dining and drugstores, and 1% on all other purchases. More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded. That's no tricks, all treats. More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded.

So sign up for the Chase Freedom Flex card. Learn more at chase.com slash getflex. This is a paid collaboration with Chase Freedom Flex. Cards issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC subject to credit approval offer subject to change.

Terms apply. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Rushing the Field. I'm Nicole Auerbach. And I'm Joshua Perry. We're so excited to be here to chat about our favorite thing in the entire world, college football.

From the biggest headlines and breaking news to the story shaping the sport behind the scenes, Rushing the Field is your home for everything college football. Whether you're obsessed with rankings, rivalries, or game day drama, we've got you covered. Watch Rushing the Field on NBC Sports now. And we continue with Our American Stories and with Harlan Lebo, author of The Godfather Legacy. Let's pick up where we last left off.

And Al Pacino, it's so hard for us to think of it now. Al Pacino, the superstar, the legend of Hollywood. But in 1971, he was like many other struggling actors in New York with no work. You know, he would wait tables. He would put pamphlets on cars.

just trying to make ends meet while he got acting jobs and did very well on the stage when he did, but a lot of other people did too. He'd 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 studio who thought Robert Redford could play Michael, but Coppola knew better.

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 the role. And I was thinking, why would Francis want me to play that part? I much prefer Sonny, the one that's more robust, there's more to play there, there's more fun there. How do you play Michael?

I thought, but he sees me as Michael. I thought, gee, he's seeing something I don't see. 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 in 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 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 studio certainly thought that those scenes were fabulous, which they are. If you look at Pacino in those scenes, that undercurrent of rage and 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 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 close by cinematographer Gordon Willis with his very dark eyes and penetrating stare that what sold the studio They were with him from the start There was no question at that point In fact, it's really sad. After you've seen the movie once, you see him walking on a street, and you realize, before he walked past this newsstand, he was the carefree kid he was trying to become. And when he passes the newsstand and Kay has seen the headlines, you know that it's all on the way down.

Send Fredo off to do this, send Fredo off to do that. Let Fredo take care of some Mickey Mouse nightclub somewhere. Send Fredo to pick somebody up at the airport. I'm your older brother, Mike, and I was stepped over. That's the way Pop wanted it.

It ain't the way I wanted it. I can handle things, I'm smart. Not like everybody says. Like, dumb, I'm smart, and I want respect. John Cazale was a wonderful character actor.

He 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 I, but became integral to the story in Godfather Part II. John Cazale was in five classic films of the 1970s, Besides The Godfather, Part 1 and Part 2, 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 whose life ended way too quickly. Marlon Brander 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 important for his roles.

So 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 cue 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 hid cute cards everywhere.

Some of them big, some of them poster size, some of them just little note size sitting on a counter. It's too bad because those cute cards are worth a fortune now. I'd love to have some. This is the scene when Marlon Brando's character dies. He's in the family tomato patch with his grandson, Anthony.

It's actually his real name, also Anthony. and the scene was scripted for Brando's character to die but a lot of it was left for Brando to work out and interacting with Anthony Anthony wasn't young and wasn't old enough to really act for himself and one of the things that Brando 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 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 Don, passes away, falls into the tomato plants and dies.

It's absolutely wonderfully shot. And by the way, just a little unsung hero of this film was Gordon Willis, a 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. 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 he 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 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 1972. 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. This was a huge boost for everyone involved. All of the younger characters, the people who played the sons, James Caan, Al Pacino, and then an adopted son played by Robert Duvall, all became legitimate stars immediately.

They were all nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Brando's career got a huge boost. Talia Shire's career as 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. Being an Italian-American, I knew my own family, who were a family of musicians and tool and die makers, but living in New York.

And so I knew what the family life was like. I was very much anxious to draw upon my own family in terms of how we lived and what it was like in the house and what we ate and what the day-to-day feel of an Italian family was. I used as much of my own memory of my family to give it a kind of authenticity, and that was my approach. it was the story of a family and it was kind of shakespearean and that there was a great king and he had three sons and each of the sons had a part of the talent of the old man but none really all of it the youngest had the cunning and the second had the sweetness and the older had the rage and the violence i don't know for all fascinated by gangsters as much as we're fascinated by men of action. These were deliberate, ruthless men.

They are unsavory, horrible people and murderers. Yet there's something attractive or compelling about them that really fascinates everyone. It's part of American culture. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. A special thanks to Harlan Lebo, author of The Godfather Legacy, the untold story of the making of the classic Godfather trilogy.

You will not put it down once you start reading it. The pictures are terrific. And my goodness, what a story he tells about the whole movie, the making of it from beginning to end, and particularly the stories about some of these other actors. Al Pacino, a staggering performance, and launches this amazing career. John Cazal, who plays Fredo, the actor's actor.

We've done a piece on John Cazal. Go to alamericanstories.com, and you can listen to a real beauty. And then, of course, there's Gordon Willis, the cinematographer, and Nino Rota, that soundtrack. It was all just spectacular. And there is Coppola discussing and describing his Italian heritage and how he brought that authenticity to the screen.

The unlikely story of The Godfather and how it became the greatest film of all time, here on Our American Stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years, and now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage.

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