Someday there may be a monument to The Godfather, where the corpses of its founding fathers will be interred and worshipped. Gone now are Mario Puzo, author of the original bestseller and co-screenwriter of the film; Marlon Brando (Don Vito Corleone), James Caan (Sonny Corleone), among others.
Last week, Hollywood producer Al Ruddy died at age 94. Ruddy was hired by Paramount Pictures to control expenses for rookie director Francis Coppola, who already owed $400,000 to Warner Brothers for his production of a sci-fi flop. Because Paramount wanted The Godfather to be “ethnic to the core”— a revolutionary concept that would depart from decades of Mob movies that avoided denigrating Italian culture—the studio insisted on an Italian American director and cast. Coppola wanted Marlon Brando (of German extraction) in the part of Don Vito, but Paramount envisioned Ernest Borgnine or even Danny Thomas (a Lebanese American comedian who mimicked Italians). Brando’s screen test made him the shoe-in.
Puzo’s book wallowed in everything Italic, from Catholicism to culture and cannoli, leaving the reader convinced that organized crime was inherently Italian. The storyline was well-known to notables like Frank Sinatra, who saw the proposed film as defamation on a grand scale. More specifically, some thought that a character in the book was based on Sinatra’s career. Even Coppola thought the book was sleazy and sensational: “pretty cheap stuff.”
Ruddy soon found himself knee-deep in Italian American controversy. According to Ruddy’s obit by the Associated Press), involving himself in The Godfather put his life in jeopardy. Threats were reportedly made to Ruddy—his car window was shot out and a warning note left on the dashboard. How much of this is true or conjured up to hype the film is a valid question. I’d like to see a police report. Since when did wiseguys go to the mattresses over gangster movies?
Much of the movie was to be filmed on locations in New York rather than Hollywood, the real fear was that goombahs might shake down Ruddy’s union guys or mess up a day’s filming for a piece of the action. So, Ruddy figured some local Mob diplomacy might keep the film on budget.
Let’s consider Ruddy’s frame of reference. Canadian-born Ruddy knew squat about Italian Americans, only what he read in Puzo’s novel or heard about from the Valachi Hearings of 1964. Yet, Mob hits never involved outsiders or family; that’s one rule that even the media acknowledged.
At the time of the filming in New York City, the biggest goombah was Joe Colombo and his Italian American Civil Rights League. The League had held a massive rally in Columbus Circle in 1970. Colombo was said to be head of one of the Five Families and was clearly the man to sit down with.
The meeting went better than expected. Ruddy found Colombo to be an intellectual lightweight, flattered to be courted by Hollywood elites. When handed a copy of The Godfather script, Colombo was totally intimidated by its length and screenplay format. After perusing it for two minutes he asked, “What does this mean, ‘fade in?” As for Colombo’s concern for defamation, he only asked that the word Mafia not be used. Since there was only one occurrence Ruddy happily complied. “It was like one big happy family,” Ruddy later recalled. “All these guys loved the underworld characters, and obviously the underworld guys loved Hollywood.” Ruddy didn’t even have to buy the goombahs lunch.
The Godfather was completed for $6 million and earned $250 million. It swept the Academy Awards. It’s most important achievement was to open the floodgates of media defamation of Italian Americans. Paramount’s groundbreaking order to make it “ethnic to the core” made The Godfather and its progeny box office knock-offs of real Italian culture. Coppola has spent the last 50 years denying that, claiming the saga is actually about the evils of capitalism, ‘What Italians?’
The hypocrisy hit home when Marlon Brando, who wantonly participated in this wholesale defamation of the Italic people, refused to accept an Academy Award, using the occasion to instead protest Hollywood’s defamation of Native Americans.
America welcomed the misdirection. -JLM
Ruddy rhymes with cruddy. Good word to also describe Colombo and his enablers.
Speaking of which: Note how the article uses words like “threats” or phrases like “a car window was shot out” to suggest “mafia” violence? Hunh?
My take: Colombo and many of his major supporters were “neighborhood guys”; that is, working-class Italians. The only college-educated person close to Colombo’s inner-circle was the late Richard Capozzola, a highly decorated (by Washington, D.C.!) high-school superintendent. Capozzola said that Joe never acted “thuggish.”
More to the point: Reporters who write articles like this show their class bias; they see working-class Italians and immediately equate them with “mafia violence.” Is making a threatening phone call or shooting out a car window exclusive to Italian surnamed people? Don’t political nuts from both parties do the same in 2024?
Exactly. There is nothing “mafia” about working-class people letting off steam. They (i.e. the educated media) may not approve of such confrontational acts–actually, no one does–but to see something sinister below them (“mafia”) shows the prejudice.
and the rest is history, including all the “want to be’s”, mob experts, and 4th and 5th generation part Italian Americans over identifying with their perceived roots…a classic case of a self fulfilling prophecy that we are stuck with……..Why it still resonated in American culture says more about our society in general than it ever does about Italian American life.
I guess long live “Robin Hood and Jessie James” among other anti-hero cultural icons!
Once again Italians miss the mark regarding the impact of The Godfather. It enhanced, not damaged the Italian American image.
Without Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, we would still be deemed as polluting the American gene pool… still be at the bottom rung of the educational ladder… still be barred from the executive suites… still be required to castrate the vowel at the end of our names… and on and on.
The Godfather uncovered the reality that we spring from the loins of the Caesar’s and the Michelangelo’s.
Vincent Romano,
Editor, Chicago’s Taylor Street Archives.
Vincent
I have edited your comment down to a reasonable length. Frankly, I am shocked at your perspective. You basically believe that Mafia movies have given us a leg up in American society and link us to the Caesars. The logic escapes me. But it does reveal that our intellectual gene pool may still need some improvement.
Recently, Justice Alito has been under attack by some for what is perceived as MAGA sympathies. Some of his rhetoric, used in an official Supreme Court hearing, was described by some of these same people as “sounding like threatening mob talk”. That is the real legacy of The Godfather.
I started reflecting on comments about any positive consequences of the Mafia, and can only think of the thousands of Italian Americans who were victims of this organized crime group…..Prior to the mainstreaming of the group, they were basically an extortionist crime syndicate exploiting new Italian immigrants….their “big time coming out” related to supplying alcohol during Prohibition (a misguided mainstream effort to deal with alcohol abuse), and the only thing positive outcome of Prohibition, was that the Mafia’s extorting of poor Italian immigrants was small pickings given the supply demands to mainstream America.