Harlan Lebo: The Making of The Godfather

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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 to Amazon.com and get it. And Harlan Lebo is the author. He's also the author of 100 Days.

And you can get that at Amazon.com as well. A terrific book about four big events in 1969 that changed the arc of this country. A great cultural storyteller about this great country, Harlan Lebo joins us. Thank you, Lee.

You bet. Let's talk about The Godfather. And 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 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. 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.

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'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. Indeed.

And let's start where we should always start, and that's the beginning. And let's talk about a guy named Mario Puzo. 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 Puzo grew up.

Describe his upbringing, where he grew up, and how he grew up, and a little bit about his life. Right. If you look at Hell's Kitchen or other parts of New York, for example, where they filmed The Godfather Part II, 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 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. And this was a massive bestseller for Puzo.

Talk about that. Describe some of the remarkable success of this book. Yes, the book itself was one of the great page-turning books one summer that it came out. 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. 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 had 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. And we can talk about those in a minute, too.

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 an advance.

Talk a little bit about that process. 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 onto 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. 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 them. Yes, he was. 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 Paramount Pictures, two of the biggest movies of the 60s and 70s, Love Story and eventually The Godfather. And we're talking to Harlan Lebo.

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 Pacino to Brando and, well, stories you're just going to love. This is Lee Habib, Harlan Lebo, The Godfather. The stories of both continue here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star in the American people.

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Because you're worth it. And we continue here on Our American Stories with Harlan Lebo, author of The Godfather Legacy. 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? Well, you're right, 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 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 a 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. 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 the 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. Let's talk about Coppola 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 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. He grew up in Detroit Coppola and also polio. 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'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 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. 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 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. 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 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?

Yes, he did. The Godfather is a movie about violence and 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 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 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. 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 auto body shop? These are real problems that occur. And I think that's what the Coppola's genius was, was making this a universal story, Harlan. 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 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 II. Indeed. And as you were talking about that desire of Coppola to make sure that this film was shot on location, he also wanted it to be a period piece, Harlan.

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 streetlight, it cost $250 to install an original Shepherd's crook light of the earlier era and cost another $250 for the next.

At the end of the shoot, the Shepherd's crook light would be removed, again, another $250, and the ugly concrete modern light replaced for another $250. This was done time and again, a little detail, but 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.

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 Segal. That was shot in almost entirely on location in New York within months of when The Godfather was filmed, 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 19, what was supposed to be 1946, 47, and 48, and the city really looked nothing like it did in 1946, and constant attention to detail was a constant challenge when making the film. One of the great pleasures of watching The Godfather is watching the detail. All that detail was a constant challenge, but well worth it because The Godfather looks incredibly good and incredibly realistic. Indeed, and when we continue more with Harlan Lebo, author of The Godfather Legacy, here on Our American Story.

Hi, this is Lee Habib here. Do you wake up every morning dreading that first step out of bed because of foot pain? I know I used to. Living with plantar fasciitis felt like a constant battle. Then I tried Power Step, the number one podiatrist recommended insoles clinically proven to relieve pain. I was skeptical at first, but from the moment I put them in my shoes and sneakers, I felt the difference. Support and comfort exactly where I needed it and when I needed it, especially those really long walks I take each day with my wife. My foot pain vanished, and even my back and knee pain was eased.

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Discover more about these extraordinary women and embrace your beauty with L'Oreal Paris. Because you're worth it. The Don, in quotes, is in the movie no more than 30% of the time, explained the producer. 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?

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 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.

Well, now we're looking at it in retrospect a lot of years later. Then Brando was viewed by some as not bankable. 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'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 the Don being. Keep in mind that Marlon Brando is young when this movie is made.

This is 1971. He was 47 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 characters he had to fight for was first Marlon Brando and then later Al Pacino. Well, let's talk about Pacino next. He was a young actor, an 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, Pacino didn't think he was going to keep his job.

No, he didn't. 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. 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.

Indeed. I'm going to quote from the book because this is what Pacino thought 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 31st. Quote, they kept me after that scene, Pacino recalled. That looked pretty good, I guess, when you shoot a guy.

They wanted me to assert myself. So in that scene, there's kind of an assertion, and that's the 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. Talk about that scene because, my goodness, it is the one where his performance comes to life.

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 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 is 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-ups 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. And that scene somehow we get innocence to experience in almost a nanosecond, Harlan. Yes.

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. Yep.

Everything's about to change. Let's talk about Jon Cazale 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 Jon Cazale? Jon 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 1, but became integral to the story in Godfather Part 2. Jon 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. There's a great picture in your book of Robert Duvall, another great actor, holding up cue cards under his jacket with Marlon Brando reading from those cue cards, and there are cue cards all over the room in this set, and I'm just laughing. Who were those cue cards for, and why were they there? The cue 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 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 had cue 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 cue cards are worth a fortune now. I'd love to have some.

Yeah, just want to be great and just memorialize it forever in your home. We're talking to Harlan Lebo. The book is The Godfather Legacy, the untold story of the making of 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 with Harlan Lebo, this is our American Story.

Hi, this is Lee Habib here. Do you wake up every morning dreading that first step out of bed because of foot pain? I know I used to. Living with plantar fasciitis felt like a constant battle. Then I tried PowerStep, the number one podiatrist recommended insoles clinically proven to relieve pain. I was skeptical at first, but from the moment I put them in my shoes and sneakers, I felt the difference, support and comfort exactly where I needed it and when I needed it, especially those really long walks I take each day with my wife. My foot pain vanished, and even my back and knee pain was eased. Now I can go through my day pain-free. Go to PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order.

That's PowerStep.com slash OAS and use code OAS for 15% off your first order. and especially to our Savior Jesus. To listen, just search taboo questions with Pastor Mike. Just a few years ago, only 3% of domestic violence shelters accepted pets, meaning many abuse survivors had to choose between staying in a difficult situation for their pet or leaving their pet behind. One in three women and one in four men experienced domestic abuse in their lifetime, and nearly half of survivors delay leaving because they can't bring their pets with them. Purina believes in the healing power of pets, particularly for survivors of abuse. They believe pets and people are better together, which is one of the many reasons they started the Purple Leash Project. Through the Purple Leash Project, Purina is helping break down one of the many barriers abuse survivors face, the lack of pet-friendly domestic violence shelters. Purina has helped increase the amount of pet-friendly shelters across the country from 3% to nearly 20% through the Purple Leash Project. With more pet-friendly domestic violence shelters, survivors and their pets can escape and heal together.

Visit purina.com slash purple to get involved. This is Danielle Robé from The Bright Side. Because you're worth it. Growing up, I remember hearing that famous L'Oreal Paris tagline and feeling empowered. With those four words, L'Oreal Paris broke the mold. Beauty was for all of us. For me, knowing my worth means being able to be my authentic self.

It's more than just getting that perfect lash. Knowing your worth is embracing the things that make you beautiful, inside and out. With a commitment to innovation and quality, L'Oreal Paris delivers groundbreaking products that help you take on the world. Through their Women of Worth program, they recognize 10 exceptional female nonprofit leaders each year, offering grants, mentorship, and a platform to share their inspiring stories. Discover more about these extraordinary women and embrace your beauty with L'Oreal Paris.

Because you're worth it. And we continue here with our American stories. We're talking to Harlan Lebo, author of The Godfather Legacy. Now let's get on to 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 history get made. And I think people knew something really big was happening.

Oh, I think so. They didn't know Al Pacino at the time, but they certainly knew some of the other characters. And that's one of the fun things about being in either New York or Los Angeles, too, but especially 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 1971. The 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 Tootshore's restaurant.

He's standing right on the sidewalk all by himself, but what you can't see is 15 feet away. There are hundreds of people milling around watching the film being shot. Let's talk about one, since we're talking about scenes, let's talk about a scene that Robert Towne wrote. And Robert Towne is 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 Towne called? How long did he have to write this scene? And it may be one of the great scenes in movie history. 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 father's concern, the Don's concerns about why Michael's life had gone the way it did and the Don's 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 the scene right. They had to call in Robert Towne, who's 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, which it is. 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 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. And Robert Towne 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 in the scene, when the Don talks about how he 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 peso novante, which means another big shot, just like, 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 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. 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 remarkable effect. Talk about that last great scene, Marlon Brando and that orange. 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 is also Anthony. 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 in. Well, actually, for Brando to work out and in interacting with Anthony.

Anthony was 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 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. 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. 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 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 Rotta, the composer probably best known for doing many of the best films of Federico Fellini, and Rotta wrote the music for The Godfather. 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 tarantella.

They'd never seen it. The dance, not just the music, but the dance. Right. Some of that music was not Rotta's music. That was traditional Italian music. But yeah, the film opens at the wedding of Connie, the youngest child in the family and the only daughter in the Corleone family. You see great scenes of partying and festivities. And it's a real slice of Italian-American culture from the 1940s. And even the word cannoli gets thrown in one of the great improvised lines in the movie. Talk about that. You write just a drop about that as well. Yes, it is.

That is a great line. After one of the family henchmen, Clemenza, kills a traitor to their cause, the one who sold out the don 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 cannoli.

Then on the way home, they stop and the traitor is killed. But 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 cannoli.

And boy, cannoli 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. 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 all on one big weekend. And that's what happened with The Godfather as well, where they opened it in several theaters or while 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. And every actor got a career boost from this movie, right, Harlan?

Oh, absolutely. 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 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. Harlan Lebo, thanks for the book. The book is The Godfather Legacy. Go to Amazon and get it. Also get 100 Days.

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