Death threats, shootings, strikes and bombs… How and why the mafia tried to prevent the filming of the iconic film “The Godfather”
By John Patterson
On June 28, 1971, Francis Ford Coppola was putting some finishing touches on his controversial and expensive film adaptation of Mario Puzo’s bestselling book “The Godfather.” That day, Coppola was shooting parts of the film’s famous climactic massacre, in which Michael Corleone takes over the New York Mafia, executing his rivals with a machine gun.
While Joe Spinelli, who played one of Michael’s strongmen, shot a fictional New York mob boss six times while he was trapped in a revolving door in a hotel, the incident was actually a reference to boss Joe Colombo, who was shot dead at an Italian-American gathering in Columbus Circle, not more than four blocks from Coppola’s location. The killing was the first act in a brutal war between mafia gangs, declared by a young and visionary leader named Joe Gallo. But that was the end of the strange connection between Colombo (who remained in a coma until his death in 1978) and “The Godfather,” a film that could not have been made without Colombo’s consent. As detailed in the documentary “The Godfather and the Mafia,” Colombo had implied that there was a pact between him and “The Godfather” producer Al Rudy. He demanded that the criminal organization monitor the film’s narrative, otherwise not a single scene of it could be shot.
Knowing that the film would lose all its authenticity if shot in a closed studio, Rudi had no choice but to agree to the terms, and once again the media took up this story – a handshake with the devil – and massacred it for several months.
Of course, all this gave the film a lot of publicity, and some commentators like Carlos Clarence, in his 1980 historical study of crime films, recalled that “filming under daily threats had worked wonders, bringing back to the cinema the grandeur of a gangster film like “Gateway to Hell” (1930). The details are interesting. “The Godfather” was written by Puco, an Italian-American who grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, but who had never met a mobster. He based his narrative on the latter mainly on the accounts of casino croupiers in the golden age, the Las Vegas of the ’60s of Mo Dalic and Rat Peck.
But that didn’t stop him from achieving such an impressive degree of originality that by the time the film became a hit, many real-life mobsters had begun to conform their behavior to the rituals described by Puco and Coppola – like cheek-to-cheek kissing, and the Godfather’s almost papal ring kiss, pledging loyalty.
The total immersion in the world of the mafia that the film envisioned – achieved by the effect of keeping the audience emotionally connected to the mobsters, seemed to take place in 1945, even now it is difficult to imagine that a block away from the set it was 1971 and the real New York mafia, experiencing the same turmoil as everyone else in those Martian times. Although the documentary hides much of this from us, there is no real presentation of the wealth and complexity of that period of mafia history. Colombo was the head of what had previously been the Profaci mafia family, which he inherited in the mid-60s only because Joe Gallo had been in prison for 10 years.
In the movie “Goodfellas,” teenager Henry Hill says, among other things: “It was a glorious time, before Appalachian, and before Crazy Joe started a war with his boss…” Appalachian was a reference to a sensational FBI operation on the estate of a major New York mob boss in 1957. A meeting of mob bosses was in progress when agents arrested dozens of them, as the mobsters threw guns, jewelry, and thousands of dollars in cash to the ground (the incident is indirectly mentioned in the final episode of the fifth season of “The Sopranos.”)
Meanwhile, Joe Gallo saw drugs as a major source of profit, and despite strong objections from a longtime Corleone boss, Lucky Luciano, he had no problem forming drug distribution partnerships with blacks in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, bringing in large quantities by boat. The ensuing war in the late 50s (mentioned in The Godfather Part II – “Not here, Carmine!”) tore the organization apart, grabbed headlines, and encouraged new Attorney General Bob Kennedy to relentlessly pursue the Mafia after 1960 – focusing on figures like Jimmy Hoffa, and the Mafia bosses of Chicago, Tampa, Florida, and New Orleans (who may have later helped in the murder of his brother John).
So it was a very exhausted mafia brotherhood that took on Coppola and Rudy in 1971. It was a community that had little taste for publicity. In cinema, the words “mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” were rarely heard before the 1968 film “Brotherhood.” Even J. Edgar Hoover downplayed the importance of the mafia during the 30s, 40s and 50s – exaggerating the threat of communism – perhaps because of the mafia’s financial genius Meyer Lansky (Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II) who had blackmailed Hoover over his homosexuality as early as 1935. However, in an era so tumultuous over racial and ethnic issues, Italians like Joe Colombo found a way to express their ethnic grievances. Although the Italian community had been well served by social groups such as the Knights of Columbus and the Sons of Italy, Colombo became involved in a new venture, heavily influenced by the mafia and called in the spirit of the times, the Italian-American Civil Rights League.
And the arrival of “The Godfather” in Manhattan gave the group an opportunity to raise its profile. The League requested consultation rights, and in return gave Rudy access to the area. Frank Sinatra—perhaps displeased with Puzio’s references to the way he secured his role in “From Here to Eternity”—set up a fundraiser at Madison Square Garden, while local politicians attended the League’s first rally in 1970, denouncing anti-Italian prejudice.
A thirst for headlines and camera flashes seems to have been part of Joe Colombo’s motivation for getting involved with the League and filming “The Godfather.” But it would also mark his downfall. The Mafia, which loved secrecy and hated cameras, had had enough of him. Working in partnership with the boss of bosses, Carlo Gambino, Joe Gallo, free again and no less insane, ordered a fellow black criminal, Jerome Johnson, to execute Colombo during the second annual meeting of the Italian-American League at “Columbus Circle.”
A manhunt for black gangsters followed that was completely foreign to the mob’s modus operandi, but no one was fooled. Johnson was shot by a getaway driver, but everyone suspected Gallo because of his Harlem connections. When Gallo himself was killed a year later—in a house on Mulberry Street celebrating his 43rd birthday—he had acquired his own taste for publicity; he had begun to worship writers (he had read Camus and Sartre in prison), and was writing his own collection, “A-Block.” After Joe Colombo’s fatal experience with “The Godfather,” you would think Gallo might have learned his lesson. As it turned out, he died the same way as Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo, at the hands of young assassin Michael Corleone, in an explosion of blood and gravy—just like in the movies.
(The Guardian)