Hollywood Swinging

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Speaker 5 It's spring of 1964. Mario Puzzo walks into the Plaza Hotel, sweating in an overcoat with slick black hair and a copy of his best-selling novel tucked under his arm.
He's feeling skeptical.

Speaker 5 A producer from Paramount wants to turn his 448-page novel into a movie, and they want him, a novelist who's never written a screenplay, to write the script.

Speaker 5 It's been a year since The Godfather came out. Mario assumed Paramount wasn't interested in the option anymore.
He wasn't sold either. For the first time in his life, Mario Puzzo is not broke.

Speaker 5 Adapting his novel into a screenplay sounds like work. He sits down with a thin man named Al Ruddy and Ruddy's wife, Francoise.

Speaker 5 Ruddy cuts to the chase and tells him he's out on a limb for Mario. No one in Hollywood trusts authors to adapt their own books.
He's worried Mario will be too precious with the novel.

Speaker 5 Mario is ready to walk away. It's just not worth it.
Just then, Francoise opens her purse and pulls out a miniature poodle who lets out a little yip. Mario is enchanted.
Suddenly, he wants the job.

Speaker 5 He throws his copy of The Godfather onto the carpeted floor and says to Ruddy, you have my word of honor, I'll never look at that book again.

Speaker 5 Ruddy extends his hand and says, Mario, you just got the job.

Speaker 7 I'm Mark Seal and I'm Nathan King.

Speaker 5 This is Leave the Gun, Tate the Cannoli.

Speaker 7 In this episode, we'll chronicle the rise of the Godfather Stalwart producer Al Ruddy.

Speaker 5 And check in on our lovable author, Mario Puzzo, and see how he's adjusting to his new life in Hollywood.

Speaker 7 So Mark, if Mario Puzzo was an unlikely screenwriter, then Al Ruddy was an even more unlikely producer.

Speaker 5 Yeah, very much so.

Speaker 5 When Al Ruddy got the job to produce The Godfather, he was known as the guy to get things done, but his path to Hollywood was extremely roundabout yeah like so many other characters in this story al ruddy was an immigrant as well yes he was from canada and he immigrated with his mom and two siblings when he was seven and i was lucky enough to speak with him on the phone and in person a few times over the course of my reporting and he told me many stories including their immigration story when she came to the united states My mother took three kids.

Speaker 5 She stuck over the border. She had it with my father, who was an alcoholic and abusive.

Speaker 5 He threw us in a car. We drove over the border one night.
We ended up in New York, and that's where we settled. My mother told us.
Remember, she was afraid of being deported.

Speaker 5 They asked you where you were born, say you don't know.

Speaker 7 So what was Ruddy's upbringing like in New York?

Speaker 5 Well, he went to Brooklyn Technical High School and then worked his way through school at USC as an architecture major of all things.

Speaker 7 So very applicable to the movie business.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I don't think show business was even on his radar yet. But after college, he ended up in a job that would be surprisingly relevant to his later career.

Speaker 5 He moves back east and gets a job supervising construction crews on a housing development in New Jersey.

Speaker 7 That's a great connection. He's orchestrating all these huge groups of people and dealing with unions, trying to stay on a budget.
A housing development is pretty much like a movie.

Speaker 5 Yeah, but not nearly as glamorous, right?

Speaker 7 Did he know at this point point he wanted to be a producer?

Speaker 5 I don't think so. At this point, Ruddy didn't know what he wanted, but he did know what he didn't want.

Speaker 5 He told me that when he went to quit, his boss tried to offer him more money, but he just wasn't having it. I said, see, if you don't get it, I'm not leaving because of the money.

Speaker 5 I just didn't want to grow up to be you one day. And budding boots 20 years from now, walking down another street in New Jersey.

Speaker 7 So he moves back to California, and this is when he starts working at the Rand Corporation. It was a military think tank, which seems a little little bit strange to me.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it is a bit strange, but being alright, he promptly rose through the ranks, just as he did wherever you went.

Speaker 5 He got an assistant and started bailing on work so he could, as he put it, have his adventures in Hollywood.

Speaker 5 Well, once Jack Packet started over,

Speaker 5 I had time to roam around Hollywood.

Speaker 7 What kind of adventures are we talking?

Speaker 5 So at this point, he knew he wanted to work in show business, but he had no idea about how to break in. Naturally, he buys a Jaguar XK-120 and starts roaming around town.

Speaker 7 Now he's sounding like a movie producer. But what did he expect? Just to drive a fancy car around town and someone would point him out and invite him to come work in the movies?

Speaker 5 Well, that's what almost happened. Being outruddy, one day on his way to work in his new Jaguar, something amazing happens.
I was driving to work one day, and there was a big discounted shoe store.

Speaker 5 And as I sounded the light, there's a sign from the window, there's a hell of water. Shit, I think we get a part-time job.
They don't pay my car roll fed. I go in there, and the guy sees me.

Speaker 5 I said, Hey, I saw your sign on the window. I'd love to get a job here part-time.
I don't want to be part-time, guys.

Speaker 8 You know, now I need a full-time guy. I said, Listen, I could sell more fucking shoes for you part-time than any guy you got selling shoes full-time.
Oh, really?

Speaker 5 And according to Ruddy, a woman walks in who needs some shoes, and he sells her 14 pairs of shoes immediately. And of course, the owner of the shop says, you got the job part-time.

Speaker 7 How's working in a shoe store going to get him a Hollywood producer job? That seems like a pretty big leap.

Speaker 5 Well, it's all about who you know, Nathan, and that store would prove to be the perfect place to meet people.

Speaker 5 One day, a friend of Al's, an agent named Elliot Kastner, comes into the store with his buddy, Brian Hutton.

Speaker 5 Elliot Kastner brings Brian Hutton around to my shoe store on Saturday to meet me because he thinks I'll be a great producer and Brian will be a great director.

Speaker 5 Brian was an actor who had secured the rights to a hit Broadway play called The Connection, and he wanted to stage it in California. So Brian and Elliot convince Al that he should produce the play.

Speaker 5 And of course, they needed help with financing. So Al says there's only one person he can think of who has any money.

Speaker 5 A young woman he went to school with who, as Al put it, had always had the hots for him. He convinced her to invest 15 grand in the production.
And just like that, Al Ruddy is a producer.

Speaker 7 God, this guy can talk his way into anything.

Speaker 5 Nathan, you have no idea. So after that play, Al and Brian Hunton go on to produce a script for Marlon Brando's studio and Universal puts it out.

Speaker 5 And then Al Ruddy meets an actor named Bernie Fine and the two are commiserating about the business and Al suggests they team up to write a half-hour comedy pilot together.

Speaker 5 Bernie, you don't have to know how to be a writer to do a half-hour script. The two decide to rent a crappy office for $50 a month.

Speaker 5 And these two guys who have never written anything in their lives sit down and write the pilot for Get Ready for This Hogan's Heroes.

Speaker 7 Oh my God.

Speaker 5 You know, it's a familiar story. It happens over and over and over again.
How many men and women are sitting in rooms in Hollywood trying to come up with something?

Speaker 5 And here Al Ruddy and Bernie Fine, who have never written anything, start batting around ideas. What about this? What about that? And they come up with the idea of a prisoner of war camp.

Speaker 5 And finally, it was set in the U.S. in the beginning.
And that's when Bernie Fine took the trip on a plane. And he saw someone reading Von Ryan's Express, the book about the German POW camp.
Exactly.

Speaker 5 When he came back, they said, hey, what about setting it in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II? And bingo, that's it. The idea for Hogan's Heroes is born.

Speaker 7 I think what's funny about this story is that not only had they never written anything before, they didn't even have an idea.

Speaker 7 So they were manufacturing an idea out of thin air, and then they spun it into this script.

Speaker 5 Yeah. They spun it into a script and then they wanted to take it to an agent.
And I think one of them knew a friend of a friend of a friend, of a friend maybe. And he said, hey, I like this.

Speaker 5 I'll take you to CBS. Meet me there.

Speaker 5 And it turns out they're going to meet with William S. Paley, the head of CBS, who was in town from New York and had decided to take a meeting from them.

Speaker 7 So they end up not only getting a meeting, but getting a meeting with one of the biggest people in the business.

Speaker 5 Yes. As Al Ruddy told me, it's like meeting God.
I mean, you know, here's William S. Paley, the head of the network.
And so they go in to the studio, and there's Paley and his executive team.

Speaker 5 Paley says, I didn't call you here to tell you what a great script you'd written, but to admonish you, because a Nazi prisoner of war camp is not funny.

Speaker 7 I mean, that's not really surprising.

Speaker 5 Not at all, but Al Ruddy doesn't care. And he proceeds to act out the entire pilot by himself, jumping up and down, using a fake machine gun, the whole thing.
And Bill Paley starts to laugh.

Speaker 5 Paley starts to laugh. Obviously, the whole room starts to laugh, right? Lave said, I don't think I could buy that show, but that's the funniest thing I've heard this year.
I said, thank you, Mr.

Speaker 7 Paley. And two weeks later, Ruddy gets the call that they've decided to do the show.
So all of a sudden, he's a wildly successful television writer. And what comes next?

Speaker 5 So he still wants to be a movie producer, and now he actually knows people in Hollywood and is considered to be some kind of a genius.

Speaker 5 He gets a meeting at Paramount and he sits down with our friends, Robert Evans and Peter Bart. And what do they think of him? They love him.
I think Evans related to him a bit.

Speaker 7 Well, they both had unlikely backstories.

Speaker 5 Evans came from the ladies' pants business and Ruddy worked in a shoe store. Bob Evans told me, he said, you know what? Everyone laughed at me when I got this job.
I was in the dress business.

Speaker 5 And no one because I didn't have any background. I think the same thing about you, Ruddy.
I got a good feeling from you. You have no background, but I want to give you a shot.

Speaker 7 So they give him a job.

Speaker 5 Yep, and an office on the Paramount lot.

Speaker 8 And so they gave me an office.

Speaker 8 So now I'm sitting on the lot, like every other smart client, trying to figure what the fuck to do.

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Speaker 7 So what does Ruddy do?

Speaker 5 Well, he produces a movie, a motorcycle movie called Little Faust and Big Halsey. It stars Robert Redford, and it stays under budget and grosses $2 million,

Speaker 5 earning Ruddy a reputation as a producer who can get movies made on the cheap.

Speaker 7 I'm sure Evans loved that.

Speaker 5 Yes, of course. And it wasn't long before Evans and Peter Bart were considering Ruddy to produce The Godfather.

Speaker 5 I get a call one time. Do I want to produce The Godfather? I thought it was a joke.
Well, yes, of course. That's my favorite book.
I never read it.

Speaker 5 He's when he had to go to New York to meet Charlie Bluedorn. He has to prove the director and the producer.

Speaker 5 So he runs down, he said, to Barnes and Noble, buys a copy of the book, and reads it on the plane to meet Charlie Bledorn. But then comes the man Arsh here, Charlie Bluedorn.
Hello, Charlie Bluedorn.

Speaker 5 Hello, I'm Al Ruddy. The next line, the next line, now forget it.
How would you play? Are you okay? The next line,

Speaker 5 I was funny.

Speaker 5 What do you want to do with this movie? I looked at him and I looked at the book and said, I want to do an ice-blue, terrified movie. The people you love.

Speaker 7 What did he mean by that, the people you love?

Speaker 5 Well, I think he was inferring that, you know, the movie was about organized crime figures and maybe figured Charlie had known one or two of them in his lifetime in business.

Speaker 7 Well, in any case, Charlie was thoroughly convinced and gave him the job.

Speaker 5 Charlie figured he was the right man for the job and also I believe Charlie knew that, you know, Ruddy could bring it in on a budget.

Speaker 5 And also I think he respected Ruddy's toughness and honesty and directness.

Speaker 7 Isn't there a story about him putting his foot in his mouth on his way out the door?

Speaker 5 Yeah, so on his way out, Ruddy wants to make a clean escape after getting the job.

Speaker 5 You know, he says he wants to get in the elevator and get out of there and charlie blue comes walking down the hallway with a guy in tow and he points to me this man's a genius he puts his arm around me now and wrestles me down the hallway but before he does he notices a poster of the adventurers which was like the steamy thriller starring candace bergen i pressed the elevator i just want to get out i got the job i didn't want to talk anymore right so Charlie says, I like that poster, buddy.

Speaker 5 I said, Charlie,

Speaker 5 I think the last thing you have to worry about is the poster.

Speaker 5 You met the best one, so the movie this week. I said, I did, Charlie.
And to be very candid, I was about the only guy left in the theater after the intermission. Oh, my.

Speaker 5 But you know what?

Speaker 5 I have personally cut 20 minutes out of that movie.

Speaker 8 Just at the elevator door, open as a Charlie. Cutting 20 minutes out of that movie is like dying of cancer and trimming your toenails.
He looked at me.

Speaker 8 I swear to God, Mark, the door closed, and I was out.

Speaker 5 The elevator doors closed. Boom, Al Ruddy makes it to the street.
He still has the job.

Speaker 7 Wow, that's a lot different than today's Hollywood. People really didn't mince their words back then.
Okay, so against all odds, Al Ruddy's the new producer of The Godfather.

Speaker 5 Yes, and his first task is to find a screenwriter, which leads him to the Plaza Hotel in New York to meet with our very own Mario Puzzo.

Speaker 7 And Ruddy was the one pushing for Puzzo to write the script.

Speaker 5 That's right.

Speaker 7 Okay, so Al Ruddy knew that you didn't necessarily need screenwriting experience to be a screenwriter.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I guess Hogan's Heroes had taught him that. But Puzo, of course, made a very compelling argument when he threw his book on the floor at the Plaza Hotel.

Speaker 5 He takes the book and he throws it on the floor. I don't ever have to look at this book again.
I want to work on the screenplay with you.

Speaker 5 He offers him a salary, an office on the Paramount lot,

Speaker 5 and puts him up in the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Speaker 7 Well, that sounds like something Mario Puzzo could get used to.

Speaker 5 Yes. But the first thing Al Ruddy had to do was convince the only person who had veto power over Puzzo's life, his wife Erica.

Speaker 7 And how did that go?

Speaker 5 Well, at this point, Mario and his family are living on Long Island, and Mario has diabetes. His wife Erica is really worried about his diet and doesn't want him to eat himself to death in California.

Speaker 5 So Ruddy drives out there to talk to her. I said, Mrs.
Puzo, I will pick Mario Puzzo up every morning and keep him with me all day, including dinner at night, until we do the screenplay.

Speaker 7 And that was that? She trusted him?

Speaker 5 That was that. Mario flew first class to Hollywood, where Al Ruddy was waiting to lead him into another world.

Speaker 7 And how was Puzo feeling? Was he excited, nervous?

Speaker 5 I think a little bit of both. I'll read you something he wrote years later.
Apparently, this is what he was thinking while on the plane. To quote, the godfather was their picture, not mine.

Speaker 5 I would be cool. I would never get my feelings hurt.
I would never get proprietary or paranoid. I was an employee.

Speaker 7 He had no idea what he was getting into, did he?

Speaker 5 I don't think so.

Speaker 7 So he lands in Hollywood and then what? Straight to work?

Speaker 5 Well, straight to the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Pink Palace itself.

Speaker 7 And it could be argued that between the pool and the polo lounge, the Beverly Hills Hotel is one of the most popular off-campus places to conduct business in Hollywood.

Speaker 5 Yet, they're both storied places, but of course, Mario Puzzo found his real home, not in his suite, which was pretty great, but on the tennis court.

Speaker 7 Mario was a big lover of tennis, wasn't he?

Speaker 5 Yes, he felt like that was his exercise.

Speaker 5 I don't know exactly how great of a tennis player was, but he loved the game, and that's what he concentrated on as much as screenwriting when he was in Los Angeles.

Speaker 7 So Paramount puts him up at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Speaker 5 They also gave him an office on the Paramount lot and hired him an assistant.

Speaker 7 The one and only Janet Snow, who you spoke to for the book and the podcast.

Speaker 8 It's so nice to see you, Mark. I always enjoy talking about this.
It was one of the most exciting times of my whole life.

Speaker 7 Mark, why don't we start with how Janet came to work for Mario? Because as much as this was a life-changing time for Mario, it was also a life-changing time for Janet.

Speaker 5 Of course. So Janet was a young woman living in Los Angeles.
And like so many LA success stories, her story starts at a party.

Speaker 8 A dear friend of mine invited me to watch the Oscars at a friend of his home in Holmby Hills, which is our most exclusive area in Los Angeles.

Speaker 5 And who does she meet standing at the buffet?

Speaker 7 but Gray Frederickson, the godfather's newly minted associate producer.

Speaker 5 And Gray only has one qualification in mind for Mario's new assistant.

Speaker 8 And he said, by any chance, do you happen to play tennis? And I said, I do play tennis. And he said, oh my gosh, well, I have just been hired to be the associate producer on The Godfather.

Speaker 8 And Mario Pusso, the writer, just came into town and we need to find an assistant for him.

Speaker 8 Would you be interested in coming coming to Paramount Pictures tomorrow and meeting Al Reddy, the producer, and Mario Pusso?

Speaker 8 And I said, sure, that would be wonderful. I'm just reading the book now.
I love this book and I'd love to meet Mario.

Speaker 7 What are the chances?

Speaker 5 Well, Janet's luck is seemingly unending. They set the date for the meeting at 9.30 the next morning.

Speaker 5 Janet goes out to the famous nightclub called Pips with her friends and sort of forgets about the meeting.

Speaker 8 And the next morning, I woke up. It was late.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 I remembered the meeting with Gray. And I looked at my clock and I went, oh my God, it's 9.30.
And I called him because I wasn't sure that he really meant it.

Speaker 8 And I called him and I said, Gray, hi, this is Janet. And he said, where are you? The heads of the studio are here.
Mario's here. Oh, my God, you were supposed to be here at 9.30.

Speaker 8 And I said, oh my gosh, you're serious. I'll be there.
I'll be there. I'll be right there.

Speaker 5 So she gets ready to go and remembers one thing, she doesn't have a car.

Speaker 8 So in desperation, out of desperation, I went upstairs and knocked on the door of the building's owner. And I said, I have a very important job interview.
And I don't have a car.

Speaker 8 I don't have a way of getting there. And he said, not a problem.
Come with me. I have a car that you can use.
And we went down into this big subterranean parking facility garage.

Speaker 8 And he said, here, how about this one? He opens the door to a beautiful new white Lincoln Continental with red leather interior. And I just went, oh my God, thank you so much.

Speaker 5 She drives to Paramount, parks her fancy borrowed car at the director's building and walks into Al Ruddy's office.

Speaker 8 It was a huge office and the shutters were closed and the lights were dim and

Speaker 8 there were about six men in the room and they all started shooting questions at me and I was just kind of answering the questions just off the cuff and all of a sudden I started to hear, oh my god, she's perfect.

Speaker 8 And I went, oh my God, I have to sit down.

Speaker 8 so just like that she gets the job not before Mario Puzzo does her the first of many favors I saw this very heavy man sitting on a leather sofa with his feet up on the coffee table and I went and sat down next to him and already was sitting behind an enormous desk and he was telling me about the project and telling me about the godfather and that Mario Puzzo had just arrived and that they needed an assistant for Mario.

Speaker 8 And would I be interested? And I said, I would be very interested.

Speaker 8 And so all of a sudden, the heavyset man next to me started pushing on my leg and saying something, but I couldn't hear him. He was whispering.
And then I finally just turned to him and said, what?

Speaker 8 And he said, the money. Asked about the money.

Speaker 8 And then I already said, what seems to be the problem? And I looked toward Mario and I said, well, he sent the money.

Speaker 7 I feel like that's so indicative of the relationship that Mario and Janet had. He was looking out for her from the beginning.

Speaker 5 Yes, the two made quite a pair because in so many ways they were both unqualified for the jobs they had. Mario had never written a screenplay and Janet had never worked as an assistant.

Speaker 5 In fact, she couldn't even type. So what did they do all day? Well, Janet talks through the money with Al Ruddy, gets hired, and her and Mario go get settled in Mario's new office.

Speaker 5 But neither one of them has any idea of what to do.

Speaker 8 So Mario came out and he said, I don't know what the heck I'm supposed to be doing in here.

Speaker 8 And I said, well, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here either. And he said, well, I'm going to give you your first assignment.
I want you to call me a cab. and have it take me to my hotel.

Speaker 5 And so she says, I don't have to call you a cab. I have a car.

Speaker 5 And so she takes him down to the director's building lot and he sees all these wonderful cars there of the director's Ferraris, probably, and Cadillacs, and who knows what else.

Speaker 5 And he sees a beat up old Volkswagen and he assumes that's Janet's car.

Speaker 8 And Mario, I noticed Mario's starting to

Speaker 8 try to open the door of the Volkswagen. I go, Mario, what are you doing? And he said, well, isn't this your car?

Speaker 8 And I said, no, no, this is my car. And he he looks at this white Lincoln Continental.

Speaker 8 And so

Speaker 8 we get in the car and we drive out of Paramount. I put the top down and we're driving along Melrose.
And he's got his arm out the window holding a cigar, leaning on the door.

Speaker 8 And he just screams, Wow!

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 then he looks down, he saw the phone, and he said, what's that?

Speaker 8 And I said, well, that's a telephone.

Speaker 8 And he said, who can you call on that phone? And I said, well, you can call anybody in the world on that phone. And he said, oh my God, get me Al Ready.

Speaker 8 I said, sure. And I called the mobile operator and got Al Ready picks up the phone and he just again screams, wow.

Speaker 7 Sumario's got a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, an office, and an assistant who can't type. What could possibly go wrong?

Speaker 5 Well, he's supposed to be writing the screenplay, but he's totally bewildered. He has no idea what to do.
So Al Ruddy tells him to get every plot point typed out on an index card.

Speaker 7 But Janet can't type.

Speaker 5 No, she cannot. But the two of them figure a way around that.

Speaker 8 Sumario came into my office and he saw me struggling as much as he was struggling in his office. And he said, what are we doing?

Speaker 8 You're more valuable on the tennis court than you are at that typewriter. And I don't want to be sitting here on this beautiful day.

Speaker 8 So let's find a typing service and we can have them type the book on three by five cards and we can go off and play tennis, of which we did.

Speaker 5 They outsourced it. Yes, and Janet wanted to show the completed notes to Al Ruddy on Monday, but Mario taught her something about the fine art of procrastination.

Speaker 8 We went to the studio and I said, I'm going to take this box of three by five cards down to Al. And he said, don't be a dope Janet.
We can run this thing out.

Speaker 8 Nobody could type the book over the weekend on three by five cards you have to hand in just a little bit each day.

Speaker 8 And I went, oh my gosh, Mario, thanks for guiding me. I just never would have thought of that.

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Speaker 11 A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught.
The answers were there, hidden in plain sight.

Speaker 11 So why did it take so long to catch him?

Speaker 11 I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now.

Speaker 11 Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 7 All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie.

Speaker 14 For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

Speaker 8 I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know.

Speaker 14 A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Speaker 10 Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

Speaker 14 My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

Speaker 5 I did not know her and I did not kill her.

Speaker 15 Or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her.
They made me say that I poured gas on her.

Speaker 14 From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

Speaker 5 America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happen

Speaker 5 to good people in small towns.

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Speaker 14 And to binge the entire season at free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 7 So he's found a way to put off writing the script. What's he doing in the meantime?

Speaker 5 Well, he's having a great time. He and Janet are playing tennis, he's going to restaurants, and of course, the social invitations start rolling in.

Speaker 8 The word got out that Mario was in Los Angeles and the phone started ringing. There were lunch invitations, dinner invitations.
He was very shy and he liked me being there.

Speaker 8 And I enjoyed being there because the people were fascinating and it was fun.

Speaker 7 And a big feature of his time in Hollywood is that Puzo gets to meet some of his idols.

Speaker 5 Yes, and there's a story that I just love about one day in the Beverly Hills Hotel, his phone rings with yet another social invitation.

Speaker 8 I picked up the phone and this incredible voice said, is Mario Puzo there? I said, who's calling? And he said, Orson Welles.

Speaker 8 And I said, one moment, please. I went in the other room and I said, Mario, somebody by the name of Orson Welles.

Speaker 8 And he goes, Orson Wells? And I said, yes. And he went and picked up the phone and he said,

Speaker 8 hello. And he started talking with them.
And he said, oh, my goodness, I'd love to. Yes, absolutely.
Of course.

Speaker 8 And then he hung the phone up and he turned to me and he goes, Janet, that was Orson Welles, one of the most talented people ever.

Speaker 8 And he's taken a bungalow at the hotel and he's invited us to come over.

Speaker 8 And so we get to this beautiful bungalow and the door opens and this very large man man holding a cigar welcomes us and we sat down and Mario and Orson Welles started talking and it was the most hypnotizing, brilliant, clever, creative, intelligent conversation I had ever heard and still

Speaker 8 maybe have ever heard.

Speaker 7 Sapuzo's an unlikely sensation when he hits the ground in Hollywood. He's sort of a celebrity, at least by the standards of a popular writer.

Speaker 5 He was. You know, he's going to the studio, he's going to dinner and lunch with people he had never met before.
And of course, he's always going to Vegas to indulge in his passion for gambling.

Speaker 7 And Janet Snow was sort of his chaperone this whole time.

Speaker 5 Yes, and in Janet, he had someone who knew the town, who lived there. She grew up there, and so she knew Los Angeles.
She was kind of the perfect assistant for him.

Speaker 7 Do you think Al Ruddy hired Janet because he got the sense that he wasn't wasn't going to be able to make good on his promise to Puzo's wife?

Speaker 5 I don't know about that, but there's a funny story Al Ruddy tells.

Speaker 5 You know, he's trying to watch Puzzo's weight, and he's going to breakfast and lunch with him, he says, and he's eating, you know, boiled pears and poached eggs, and they're both having grapefruit and trying to lose weight.

Speaker 5 And while Ruddy, who's already thin, keeps losing weight, Mario kept gaining weight. And one night he goes into this Los Angeles pizza parlor that he went to to all the time.

Speaker 5 And the owner of the place says, man, that Mario Puzzo's a great guy. And Ruddy says, what? How do you know Mario Puzzo? And he goes, well, I bring him a pizza every night at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Speaker 7 So he was ordering on the sly. It's incredible.
So at this point, the script that Puzzo is working on closely follows the Godfather book, right?

Speaker 5 Exactly. You can see early drafts of it in the archives at Dartmouth University.

Speaker 7 Do you think that the producers of The Godfather had any sense that Mario wasn't going to be the man to deliver the final screenplay of The Godfather?

Speaker 5 Well, I think probably so. Although early drafts of his screenplay were pretty well received by Peter Bart, he gave a lot of notes, which still exist.
He said he was off to a good start.

Speaker 5 You know, he knew the material like nobody else did. He had written The Godfather, the novel, so he knew the story best, but he needed someone with some experience writing screenplays to help him.

Speaker 5 And they were looking for a director throughout this period. They just couldn't find anyone who wanted to do the movie, which was crazy enough in itself.

Speaker 7 So as he's approaching a completed first draft of his script, what does Puzo do?

Speaker 5 So Puzo is unleashed. You know, he's able to embark upon what he calls his Hollywood adventures.
Most notably, a famous run-in with Frank Sinatra at Chasin's.

Speaker 7 This is the real-life Johnny Fontaine, the womanizing singer who appeals to the Godfather for help at the beginning of the film.

Speaker 5 And, you know, Frank Sinatra was reportedly unhappy with the depiction of Johnny Fontaine, which is much more elaborate in the book than it turns out to be in the film.

Speaker 7 And in 1969, Sinatra had just come out with My Way, so he's about as big as an artist can get at this point.

Speaker 5 Well, Frank Sinatra was a superstar, probably the greatest Italian-American singer of all time.

Speaker 7 So Mario Puzzo knew who Frank Sinatra was and probably modeled the character of Johnny Fontaine on him.

Speaker 5 Well, not only knew who he was, he adored him. He idolized him.
He said when he was growing up in Hell's Kitchen, there were two pictures on the wall, one of John F.

Speaker 5 Kennedy and the other of Frank Sinatra. He was iconic in Mario's eyes.

Speaker 7 And Sinatra was an Italian-American success story. He was from Hoboken, New Jersey, which is not far away from where Mario Puzzo grew up in Hell's Kitchen.

Speaker 7 And he represented that Italian-American way of life.

Speaker 5 Yeah, he was a huge success story.

Speaker 5 I mean, Mario surely looked up to him as a supreme entertainer and also as a success story of a young man who could come out of Hoboken and capture the hearts and minds of the world with his talent.

Speaker 5 You know, in many ways, their stories were similar, except that Mario was kind of the flip side of Frank Sinatra.

Speaker 5 He wasn't the handsome movie star, suave singer, but his talent was that he could write, you know. And so Mario Puzzo and Frank Sinatra had a lot in common and then a lot different as well.

Speaker 7 So this is all a roundabout way of saying that when Puzzo spotted Sinatra across the room in Chasin's that fateful night, he was excited and knew who he was.

Speaker 5 Right, exactly. He knew who he was.
He said in his book, The Godfather Chronicles, that he saw Frank Sinatra and John Wayne and Chasins looking like two gods.

Speaker 5 You know, they were tanned and thin and fit, and they were just movie stars. They were stars.

Speaker 7 And Janet Snow was actually there, so she has her account of what happened that evening.

Speaker 5 Yes, and this is one of those stories that has a few versions. But Janet was there, and she says that she drove them to Chasin's.
They walked in and people started flooding Mario Puzzo for autographs.

Speaker 5 And across the room, she spots Sinatra. And she already knows that Sinatra is unhappy with Mario's depiction of Johnny Fontaine in the book.

Speaker 5 So the two sit down for dinner, and here's how Janet says it happened.

Speaker 8 I excuse myself and go to the ladies' room. And I came back, and Mario was gone.
And I sat down. I thought, oh, well, maybe he went to the men's room.
So I'm just sitting there.

Speaker 8 And then it occurs to me, I look over at Sinatra's table, and oh my God, Mario standing at Sinatra's table.

Speaker 8 And so I ran over and I looked at Mario and his face was ashen and Sinatra was looking down at the table at his plate and speaking in Italian and he was very unhappy and I couldn't understand what he was saying.

Speaker 8 And I just knew I had to get Mario out of there right then.

Speaker 7 So what did Sinatra actually say to Puzzo?

Speaker 5 Well, it's kind of a mystery. But according to Mario, he approached Sinatra to meet him just as a fan, and Sinatra was very adamant that he did not want to meet Mario Puzzo.

Speaker 5 So Puzzo starts apologizing for approaching him. Well, Sinatra takes that as an apology for the Johnny Fontaine character in the book.

Speaker 5 And Sinatra asks him, who told you to put that in your book, your publisher? And Puzo sets the record straight.

Speaker 5 no one tells him what to put in his books he said he was apologizing for trying to meet sinatra nothing else which is when sinatra started yelling at him do you think mario intended johnny fontaine as a sort of admiring portrait of sinatra you know i think so but at the same time he didn't hold back When you read the parts about Johnny Fontaine in the novel, I could see why Frank Sinatra might not have been happy with it.

Speaker 5 And even in the movie, you know, Johnny Fontaine, he's slapped by the godfather when he starts crying about his career. So there's good and bad about Johnny Fontaine in the movie.

Speaker 5 I mean, obviously they make it clear that he's a huge star, the way he comes into the wedding scene and Connie yells, Johnny, Johnny. And the mother says, Johnny, sing us a song.

Speaker 5 And, you know, it's just so romantic. It seems like it would be like that if Frank Sinatra walked into a wedding like Johnny Fontaine did.

Speaker 7 But Puzzo certainly didn't mean anything bad to Sinatra by it.

Speaker 5 I don't think so. He's a writer.
He didn't call him Frank Sinatra. He called him Johnny Fontaine, which I love the name, don't you? It's just the perfect name.

Speaker 5 If you read the novel, there's a lot about him that I could see Frank Sinatra would not have liked, especially if he felt like it was being modeled on him.

Speaker 7 But if you look at the movie, it was worth including those Johnny Fontaine sections because they're really some of the most iconic ones in the film.

Speaker 5 Yeah, well, Johnny Fontaine the reason for the whole horse's head scene, you know, because Jack Waltz wouldn't give him the role in that war picture he was making, you know, no way Johnny Fontaine gets that part in the movie.

Speaker 5 So without Johnny Fontaine, you wouldn't have had those extraordinary scenes of the horse's head, and then all of a sudden they cut to the godfather's office and the flowers from Johnny, you know, thanking the godfather for getting him the part in that movie.

Speaker 5 I mean, without Johnny Fontaine, you'd be missing a lot.

Speaker 7 Do you think this was a wake-up call for Puzzo and sort of his first exposure to Hollywood ego?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think he probably felt like we're not in Kansas anymore, you know. But at the same time, he wasn't by any means innocent.
I think he knew what he was getting into, and he was a very smart man.

Speaker 5 He knew the town was different than where he had grown up, but he grew up in New York. Let's face it, he grew up in Hell's Kitchen.
He was used to all sorts of people, so he was not naive in any way.

Speaker 7 Well, Mark, let's talk about how Coppola came into the picture. At this point, there's a draft of the script, but there's no director attached to do anything with it.

Speaker 5 Yes, so Paramount was looking for a bankable director to direct The Godfather. It was going to be a big release, and they wanted an equally big name in charge.

Speaker 5 They went out to a bunch of directors like Sam Peckinpaugh and Otto Priminger, but they either weren't right or they didn't want to be involved.

Speaker 5 It was considered glorifying the mafia, and most Bankable directors weren't interested in that. And then one day on the drive to work together, Peter Bart and Robert Evans got to talking.

Speaker 5 And they hit upon the idea that what was missing in most of the gangster films of those days, including The Brotherhood starring Kirk Douglas and Scarface starring Jimmy Cagney, they didn't feature Italian Americans in leading roles.

Speaker 5 And so that was a difference.

Speaker 5 And so, Evans says he wants to create a movie that is so authentically Italian-American that you can smell the spaghetti, and nothing could be more authentic than having an Italian-American director.

Speaker 5 And only one name came to mind: Francis Ford Coppola.

Speaker 5 Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli is a production of Air Mail and iHeart Media.

Speaker 7 The podcast is based on the book of the same name written by our very own Mark Seale.

Speaker 5 Our producer is Tina Mullen.

Speaker 7 Research assistants by Jack Sullivan.

Speaker 5 Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.

Speaker 7 Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are me, Nathan King, Mark Seal, Dylan Fagan, and Graydon Carter.

Speaker 5 Special thanks to Bridget Arseneau and everyone at CDM Studios.

Speaker 7 A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found in Mark Seale's book, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon ⁇ Schuster.

Speaker 11 A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught.
The answers were there, hidden in plain sight.

Speaker 11 So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam.

Speaker 11 Available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 5 Call 844-844-iHearteRoll to iHeartAdvertising.com. That's 844-844-iHeart or iHeartAdvertising.com.
Malcolm Glaubau here.

Speaker 16 This season on Revisionist History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control.

Speaker 5 And he said, I've been in prison 24, 25 years. That's probably not long enough.
And I didn't kill him.

Speaker 16 From Revisionist History, this is the Alabama Murders.

Speaker 5 Listen to Revisionist History, the Alabama Murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 17 Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu every single episode.

Speaker 1 32 lost nuclear weapons.

Speaker 5 You're like, wait, stop? What? Yeah, it's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper.

Speaker 17 Listen to season four of Snafu with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.