Brando didn't realize that Russo was infact a former mafioso wise guy, and was infact dead serious. He thought Russo was acting, but he was not! Needless to say Brando didn't mess with Russo again.
You can view the interview where Russo admits all this on YouTube. Film debut for Joe Spinell , in the uncredited role of Willi Cicci. The Corleone house was constructed for the film to include two stories, complete with a living room, dining room, full kitchen, panelled study, and a foyer with stairs leading to the bedroom.
A diary about the film's production, "The Godfather Journal" by Ira Zuckerman, was published as a mass market paperback by Manor in Richard Conte appears in only four scenes, and only has dialogue in one: the meeting of the Dons. Many interludes were written, but do not appear in the film: Tom Hagen on the plane to California. Carlo and Connie's wedding night.
Sonny visiting Lucy Mancini's apartment. A close-up of Vito thinking. Michael and Kay on a train to New Hampshire. Luca Brasi taking the subway to his meeting with Tattaglia. Vito embracing Tom as his new consigliere. Coppola actually released part 4 as an epilogue to part 3; in a new director's cut that was released that year.
There's also yet another iteration of these movies that Coppola released in called "The Godfather Saga" in which Coppola edited together parts 1 and 2 and added previously unreleased footage; and put it all together for a whole new longer movie which was used for network airings in the 80s. Coppola then released a VHS version of this called Godfather The Complete Epic, which was available to home viewers for rental.
Sir Laurence Olivier was originally offered to play Vito Corleone. Unfortunately, due to his failing health, he had to decline, leading to Marlon Brando being cast. Francis Ford Coppola 's mother Italia Coppola had a scene as a Genco Olive Oil Company switchboard operator, but it ended up on the cutting room floor. The first film was On the Waterfront Coincidentally, the story of both films is about organized crime set in the New York City-Hoboken area. A key difference between the two however is that Brando's character Terry Malloy in the earlier film fights against organized crime.
Whereas in the latter film, Brando's character Vito Corleone is the head of a major organized crime family. According to a interview done for the U. Visitors to the set often assumed Abe Vigoda was a Mafioso. Marlon Brando had to lose weight in order to play Don Vito Corleone. Anthony Perkins auditioned for the role of Sonny Corleone.
Evans basically optioned it for the amount of money that Puzo owed the mob. This was not production designer Dean Tavoularis ' choice, he detested the look of it, and even suggested the Warner Brothers lot as an alternative, but it was used for budgetary reasons. It was also the location for the Paramount Pictures backlot scenes in Sunset Blvd. According to a production assistant, between takes of the restaurant scene, Sterling Hayden snacked on fruit and milk, as he only ate natural foods.
He read "Dear Theo", a collection of letters from Vincent van Gogh to his brother. He then mysteriously disappeared. He had taken a stroll, fallen asleep down by the river, and was awakened by boys throwing rocks at him. In one scene, Sonny makes the expression "Going to the mattresses". This would become a popular phrase that is still being used a half century later. When Mrs. Corleone is being coaxed into singing, for a split second a bald man with a moustache is seen.
Michael V. Francis Ford Coppola was hired by Robert Evans to direct the movie after Peter Bogdanovich , among others, turned it down. Robert Evans originally wanted Henry Mancini to do the music.
The earliest known Hollywood reference to a mob boss being called a godfather was in Pocketful of Miracles , where Dave the Dude Glenn Ford is said to have a lot of experience as a godfather. This reference even predates Joe Valachi 's use of the term in his U. Senate testimony in Olivia Hussey was considered by casting director Fred Roos for the role of Apollonia.
Francis Ford Coppola originally wanted Stefania Sandrelli , but she turned it down. In the novel and the shooting script, it is Michael who tells Kay about the Sicilian tradition of never refusing a request on a daughter's wedding day.
Public Enemy sampled the line, "They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls" for their song "1 Million Bottlebags" on their album "Apocalypse The Enemy Strikes Black". Actor Richard S. Castellano Clemenza and director Francis Ford Coppola did not get along well during filming. Castellano claimed that for one sequence Coppola maliciously made him do multiple takes of Clemenza running up a flight of stairs, a rough task for an obese man. His heavy breathing in the printed take was not acting.
A promotional board game titled "The Godfather Game" was released in Francis Ford Coppola wanted to cast Timothy Carey , but Carey turned the part down, so he could film a television pilot. Al Lettierri who played the Turk was a very powerfully built man. Francis Ford Coppola said that shaking hands with him was like putting your hand in a vice. When Michael goes to Las Vegas to see Moe Greene, if you look carefully in the car at the beginning of the scene, the guy in the front seat is dressed like and is supposed to be Fredo, but you can clearly see that it's not John Cazale.
Then in the next moment in the hallway leading to the hotel room it's clearly John Cazale again. Vic Damone was originally cast as Johnny Fontaine, but dropped out, ostensibly because he couldn't in good conscience play a character so anti-Italian-American. He later revealed it was because of the poor pay.
The film that inspired Chris Columbus to become a filmmaker when he first saw it at the age of fifteen. She turned down the offer as she was not interested in an acting career. The role ultimately went to Diane Keaton. Contrary to the information in "Filming Locations," the scene where Don Corleone leaves the hospital in the ambulance is not the "new" Lincoln Hospital on St.
The ramp where the ambulance is located was the entrance to the Emergency Room where ambulances would bring the patients as they were the night they were setting up the shoot. The building is no longer there.
Francis Ford Coppola initially offered the part of Don Vito Corleone to retired Maltese actor Joseph Calleia , but the offer was turned down by Calleia due to health reasons. John Cassavetes and Peter Falk also sought the role.
Sidney J. Furie was originally in line to direct. Ruddy had just come off Little Fauss and Big Halsy with Furie, and was handed the task of producing after that film had been brought in under budget and under schedule. Ruddy personally requested Furie to direct the picture, but Francis Ford Coppola 's Italian heritage won the day.
William Devane was in the running for the part of Moe Greene. William Reynolds edited the first half of the film, Peter Zinner the second. The actual backstage of the Corleone house set served as the set for the backstage of Woltz International Pictures. The town square in Sicily is central in all three movies. In the Godfather, Michael passes by it when he is "banished" to Sicily.
Simonetta Stefanelli who played Michael Corleone's first wife, Apollonia, in Sicily who also appears topless in the film was only Her birth date is November 30, and principal photography for the film took place from March to July , making Simonetta age Sterling Hayden wandered off set between takes of the restaurant scene. He was found asleep by a river where children were throwing rocks at him.
As Michael and Apollonia are strolling they are followed by a herd of female chaperones. The herd joke is reinforced by the sound of goat bells. When the phone rings and Connie answers it In the scene where Connie is beat up by Carlo, the voice on the other end of the phone is that of Talia Shire who plays the role of Connie. So she's speaking to herself.
Bill Butler did some uncredited cinematography for the film, namely in the scenes shot in Los Angeles, as director of photography Gordon Willis was busy filming in the main locations in New York City. Frank Puglia was originally cast as Bonasera, but had to back out due to illness.
Peter Bogdanovich was approached to direct, but he also declined the offer because he was not interested in the Mafia. In addition, Richard Brooks , Sidney J. Schaffner , and Fred Zinnemann were all offered the position, but declined. Aram Avakian was originally hired as the film's editor, but was fired after disagreements with Coppola. Just like in the movie, James Caan Sonny is older than Al Pacino Michael though it was only for a month both actors were born in Also, Marlon Brando born who played their on-screen father is only 16 years older than both of them and only 11 years older than John Cazale, who also played one of his on-screen son Fredo.
Al Martino , who plays Johnny Fontane in the movie, was not director Francis Ford Coppola 's first choice for the role. However, Martino used his connections with organized crime boss Russell Bufalino to get the role. Salvatore Corsitto was hired from an open casting call. The man wearing the yellow jacket and who appears to be Fredo, is not actually actor John Cazale.
Similarly, the scene also shows a stand-in for Tom emerging from the vehicle, as the man has gray hair and is clearly not Robert Duvall. For some reason, when this exterior scene was scheduled to be shot, John Cazale and Robert Duvall either weren't available or stand-ins were used to save costs.
Director Francis Ford Coppola or the Assistant Director wisely shot the scene with the focus on Al Pacino as Michael, and avoided frontal camera views of Fredo and Tom to maintain the illusion that the original actors were appearing in the scene.
Throughout the film series, MIchael Corleone only kills two people Captain McCusky and Solazzo. This was also the first time Michael kills anyone. When Marlon Brando, as Don Corleone, purchases some oranges on the street just before the gunmen attack him a storefront sign advertises a fight featuring Jake LaMotta.
Rudy Vallee coveted the part of Tom Hagen, but was deemed too old. Al Pacino was called "sonny" by his friends growing up, just like his fictional brother Santino 'Sonny' Corleone. Aldo Ray was considered for the role of Sonny Corleone. Debut of actress Morgana King. As the Corleones prepare for the hit on Sollozzo and McCluskey, they face a problem because they don't know where the meeting between them and Michael will be held, and they won't know where to plant the gun.
Sonny then suggests they "just blast whoever's in the car. Vito Corleone after killing the neighborhood extortionist Don Fanucci became a Black Hander but not nearly as predatory as was his predecessor. This was before the formation of Cosa Nostra "crime families" that came decades later. Due to increasing age and medical issues, San Simeon became too remote, and Hearst moved to this home in with his mistress actress Marion Davies. He lived here until his death at age 88 in Author and screenwriter Mario Puzo and actors Michael V.
Gazzo , G. Army Air Forces. Sofia Coppola's debut as an actress. Vito refuses to get into the narcotics business after the war, not only because he knows his political friends would abandon him but because he believes in the future that the drug business could kill the Mafia.
In Real Life, the Mafia has been crippled since The '70s mostly due to the war on drugs bringing federal attention to mafia activities. The church baptism scene was filmed in two locations on Staten Island, NY. The interior scenes were filmed inside of St Patrick's church in the Richmond Town section.
The exterior scene was shot at The Old Church of St. Joachim and St. This church burned down in and a new church was rebuilt in its place in using the old facade. Sonny and Fredo are never shown speaking directly to each other in the first film, even when they appear together in the bedroom scene where Sonny puts his arm around Fredo and explains to Vito that they're sending him to Las Vegas, both of their responses are directed towards their father, not each other.
Is this interesting? The explanation of the Sicilian tradition of a father not refusing any request on his daughter's wedding day was originally from Michael to Kay.
One could argue this makes more sense than Tom Hagen explaining it to his own Sicilian wife. When Vito addresses Tom as "Consigliere of mine," he pronounces the g, something an Italian native speaker wouldn't do. When Michael asks permission to leave for the toilet, Mc Cluskey says "If you gotta go, you gotta go. Spoilers The trivia items below may give away important plot points.
Because Corleone, Sicily, was too developed, even in the early s, the Sicilian town of Savoca, outside Taormina, was used for shooting the scenes where Michael is in exile in Italy.
During filming, James Caan and Gianni Russo did not get along, and were frequently at loggerheads. During filming Sonny's beating of Carlo, Caan nearly hit Russo with the stick he threw at him, and broke two of Russo's ribs, and chipped his elbow. The scene in which Enzo comes to visit Vito Corleone in the hospital was shot in reverse, with the outside sequence shot first. Gabriele Torrei Enzo had never acted in front of a camera before, and his nervous shaking, after the car drives away, was real.
Animal rights activists protested the horse's head scene. Francis Ford Coppola told Variety, "There were many people killed in that movie, but everyone worries about the horse. It was the same on the set. When the head arrived, it upset many crew members who are animal lovers, who like little doggies. What they don't know is that we got the head from a pet food manufacturer who slaughters two hundred horses a day just to feed those little doggies. According to interviews in the Coppola Restoration DVD set, the film was originally planned with an intermission due to its three-hour length.
The intermission would have happened immediately after Michael murders Solozzo and McClusky, which explains the operatic instrumental that begins playing when Michael is shown fleeing the restaurant, as well as the ensuing "newspaper" montage, which would have been the first scene post-intermission. During rehearsals, a false horse's head was used for the bedroom scene. For the filmed shot, a real horse's head was used, acquired from a dog food factory.
According to John Marley , his scream of horror was real, as he was not informed that a real head was going to be used. Gordon Willis insisted that every shot represent a point of view, usually setting his camera about four feet off the ground, keeping the angle flat and even. Francis Ford Coppola managed to get him to do one aerial shot in the scene when Don Vito Corleone is gunned down, telling Willis that the overhead shot represented God's point of view.
At the meeting in the restaurant, Sollozzo speaks to Michael in Sicilian so rapidly that subtitles could not be used. He begins with, "I am sorry. What happened to your father was business. I have much respect for your father. But your father, his thinking is old-fashioned. You must understand why I had to do that. Now let's work through where we go from here. I respect myself, understand, and cannot allow another man to hold me back. What happened was unavoidable.
I had the unspoken support of the other family dons. If your father were in better health, without his eldest son running things, no disrespect intended, we wouldn't have this nonsense.
We will stop fighting until your father is well and can resume bargaining. No vengeance will be taken. We will have peace.
But your family should interfere no longer. Don Corleone's death scene, while it featured in the novel, was originally not to appear in the film because studio executives felt that the audience would see the funeral and know what had happened. Francis Ford Coppola shot the scene with three cameras in a private residence on Long Island the makeshift garden itself was created from scratch and torn down immediately after shooting , with Marlon Brando ad-libbing his lines.
The three-year-old child actor, Anthony Gounaris , responded best when his real name was used while shooting the film. That is why Michael's son's name is Anthony. Al Pacino wore a foam latex facial appliance that covered his entire left cheek and was made up with colors to match his skin tone and give the effect of bruising, to simulate the effect of having his jaw broken by Captain McCluskey.
Francis Ford Coppola shot Sonny's assassination scene in one take with different cameras positioned at each shot. This was because there were one hundred forty-nine squibs taped onto James Caan 's body to simulate the effect of rapid machine gun fire, and they couldn't shoot another take. James Caan was angry that scenes giving Sonny more depth such as his reaction to his father's shooting were cut from the film.
He confronted Robert Evans at the premiere and yelled at him, "Hey, you cut my whole fuckin' part out". Caan claimed that forty-five minutes of his character were cut. Moe Greene was modelled after Jewish mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, although Siegel was not known for wearing glasses. Both were assassinated with a shot through the eye, with the glasses worn by Greene being necessary in order to accomplish the special effect eye shot. During the scene in the study when the family decides Michael Corleone needs to kill Sollozzo and McCluskey, Santino Corleone is seen idly toying with a cane.
The cane belonged to Al Pacino , who had badly injured his leg while filming Michael's escape from the restaurant.
In many of the Sicily scenes, Michael wipes his nose with a handkerchief. The novel explains that McCluskey's punch did damage to his sinuses. According to Francis Ford Coppola on the DVD commentary, the intercutting of the baptism scene with the gang killings during the movie's climax did not really work until editor Peter Zinner added the organ soundtrack.
Francis Ford Coppola didn't care for the horse head scene in the novel, but recognized that it was too iconic to delete. Ruddy , Marlon Brando "loved the people on Mott Street and they loved him". An enormous crowd gathered to witness the scene of the Don's attempted assassination. When he collapsed, those assembled gasped, then cheered wildly. Reports suggest that the scene had to be re-shot numerous times, as the audience couldn't control their applause at Brando's performance.
When it was completed, Brando bowed to a cheering crowd. The scene where Michael visits his father in the hospital was scheduled to be Marlon Brando 's first. However, he missed his plane, and arrived on-set at 2 p. At the time, Paramount Pictures executives only saw the early scenes of Michael at the wedding and were exclaiming, "When is he going to do something? McCluskey's death was achieved by building a fake forehead onto Sterling Hayden 's head.
A gap was cut in the center and filled with fake blood, then capped off with a plug of prosthetic flesh. When the scene was being filmed, the plug was quickly yanked out using monofilament fishing line which doesn't show up on film. The effect was to make it look like a bloody hole suddenly appeared on Hayden's head. In the infamous horse head scene, an Oscar statue can be seen on Jack Woltz's nightstand. Fabrizio, Michael's Sicilian bodyguard who planted the bomb that killed Appolonia, was supposed to be found by Michael at a pizza parlor he opens in America, and subsequently blown away with a shotgun at the end of the movie as per the novel.
This scene was filmed, but ultimately cut because the make-up artists plastered Angelo Infanti with so much fake blood that the scene looked ridiculous. Photos of Michael Corleone with a hat, shotgun blazing, appeared in many magazines, despite the scene's eventual excision.
Fabrizio's death was filmed again, for The Godfather: Part II , this time by car bomb as the ultimate form of poetic justice , but that scene was also deleted from the theatrical version. It was restored in The Godfather Saga Sonny Corleone's death scene at a highway toll booth was to take place on the Jones Beach Causeway, but was filmed on a small airport runway at Mitchell Field on Long Island.
The large billboard next to the toll booth was set up to hide the appearance of a modern high-rise building in the background. According to Joe Gelmis, one hundred ten squibs and sacks of blood were deployed all over James Caan 's body.
Plus there were over two hundred drilled holes in his car, a Lincoln, filled with squibs to simulate the ambush attack. Sonny's death scene offers up a clue to the fact that Carlo set him up. When Sonny beat up Carlo, he finished by kicking him in the face. After Sonny has been shot dead, one of his killers kicks him across the face. His longtime makeup wizard, Philip Rhodes, was ready to prep him, and Coppola had arrived at 7 a.
Coppola and Narita arrived at Bob Hope Airport, in Burbank, on the early-morning flight from San Francisco and climbed into a white van with their equipment and aspirations. They were accompanied by a San Francisco barber, who had cut hair for the first screen tests, and an assistant or two.
Arriving at the back door, everyone removed their shoes and entered. When she returned to the kitchen, Rhodes had arrived. She sent him to the bedroom and served Coppola and his crew some coffee. Coppola had brought along some props: Italian prosciutto, cheese, and cigars, which he thought might help Brando get into character. He instructed Corsitto to wait outside, until it was time to deliver his lines.
Then, into the all-white living room—white carpet, white walls, white drapes—walked the man of the house: dressed in a Japanese kimono, his hair long and blond. Brando nibbled on the prosciutto and cheese. Then, to the astonishment of everyone in the room, he began the transformation into Don Vito Corleone. He tied back his ponytail, darkened his blond hair with shoe polish, jutted out his jaw, and wrinkled the tips of his shirt collar. Then he reached for the Kleenex, stuffing it into his cheeks to give himself jowls.
Brando moved to the living room couch. Coppola called for silence. Brando began moving this way and that, experimenting with his posture and mumbling to himself. Finally, after fifteen or twenty minutes, he looked up. The director nodded to Narita to begin rolling, and Marlon Brando, supposedly washed up and finished as an actor, began to turn forty-seven years of preparation, experience, and talent into art.
At one point Brando dipped the end of the cigar into the wine. The phone rang unexpectedly. Brando calmly picked it up, staying in character, and mumbled a few words as if talking to someone on the other end of the line. Then he hung up and continued his pantomime. Coppola felt the moment was right to spring his surprise. It was my shot. The thing worked. I had it down on tape. It was fantastic. Printed by permission. All products featured on Vanity Fair are independently selected by our editors.
However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission. The director spoke glowingly about how Brando set out a wide array of props, from Italian meats to kleenex and some shoe polish.
And then he started acting but not saying anything. The Guardian notes that Don Vito Corleone is one of the most iconic movie characters in Hollywood history. While Brando remained notoriously hard to work with, his eccentricities sometimes led to some of the most powerful performances in his year career.
Brando had several memorable roles, including his follow-up with Coppola in Apocalypse Now. Tales of his antics on the set with Coppola, Frank Oz, and several other directors throughout his career remain as famous as his iconic roles.
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