The Cast that Dreams Are Made Of

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Speaker 5 Al Ruddy is besieged with phone calls from actors, agents, shop clerks, and Hollywood extras. Big names and unknowns alike are vying for roles in The Godfather.

Speaker 5 Everyone who would read the book

Speaker 5 had their own opinion who should be the boss. Keep people not in the business.
People stop me on the street. You know, I have an idea for Michael.
He only is

Speaker 5 that skate jammy guns. Everyone had an opinion.
He did it to himself. He told the Hollywood Reporter that no part will be played by any actor who has an instantly recognizable face.

Speaker 5 Well, of course, a producer always has an ulterior motive, and that motive is usually money. Unknowns are cheaper than stars, and the godfather, of course, is on a shoestring budget.

Speaker 5 Robert Evans poured gas on the flames when he announced in a press conference that that there was, quote, a good chance that they would cast Italian-American actors.

Speaker 5 Paramount starts getting letters from across the country. Italian Americans with Hollywood dreams feel that they're owed a part.

Speaker 18 I mean, everybody was reading The Godfather, and of course, everybody wanted to know who was going to play which role. And so it became a really...

Speaker 18 Big deal, the casting of The Godfather.

Speaker 5 Things reach a fevered pitch when picketers assemble outside of the gates of Paramount.

Speaker 5 Determined to ensure that Paramount made good on their commitment, their signs read, Italian actors for Italian roles.

Speaker 5 And worlds collide as shady characters make their Hollywood dreams known.

Speaker 20 This brought to my attention that he should be in the picture. It's important he is.
Important to who? It's important to friends downtown.

Speaker 5 To friends downtown. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And so the circus begins, bringing together one of the most iconic casts in Hollywood history.

Speaker 5 I'm Mark Seale.

Speaker 21 And I'm Nathan King.

Speaker 5 And this is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli.

Speaker 21 This episode, we're casting the Godfather with the mob family we know and love.

Speaker 5 From New York to L.A. and up to San Francisco, the excruciating casting process somehow produces a perfect ensemble.

Speaker 21 Mark, casting the Godfather with all the stars we now know and love seems like an impossible feat.

Speaker 5 Yes, it seems impossible now, doesn't it? But remember, stars were born from the Godfather. Most of them weren't even known before.

Speaker 21 So casting begins rather chaotically, with big names, unknowns, and even mobsters all vying for parts in the movie.

Speaker 21 And people are taking every possible avenue to gain audience with anyone connected to the film.

Speaker 5 That's right, Nathan. Even poor Mario Puzo, who had next to no say on casting, was getting besieged with phone calls and telegrams.

Speaker 5 And shockingly, three men dressed in 1940s mob attire show up at his office one day asking for Puzo. How Ruddy's assistant had to scare them off with a prop gun.

Speaker 21 And isn't there a story about a casting director getting sent a dead fish?

Speaker 5 I think that was in New York, Lou Giamo, who told me that he would interview all the extras, and there were so many people that wanted to be in the movie that someone sent a dead fish, which is like a scene out of the book and later in the movie, to impress upon the studio that they knew the way things worked.

Speaker 21 So if all this is happening behind the scenes, when does the official casting process begin?

Speaker 5 Things really got going when Coppola joined the film. He was so determined to assert control over the casting process, just as he had over the script.
So he hires Fred Ruse as casting director.

Speaker 5 The two had never met in person, but Coppola liked his reputation and frequently called him up to chat about actors.

Speaker 19 Before I ever met him, the person would call me up from time to time on the phone, just cold call me. And just want to schmooze about actors.

Speaker 19 What do I think of so-and-so? These were just long kind of phone conversations that didn't have any end result or any point to them other than to guy schmoozy.

Speaker 5 Fred Ruse is now a Hollywood legend, of course, but back then he had fewer credits to his name.

Speaker 5 However, he had worked with Jack Nicholson on the classic film Five Easy Pieces, and he had cast Tulane Blacktop, starring James Taylor and the Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson.

Speaker 19 One day he calls,

Speaker 19 they've hired me to do this this book, this Godfather book, which is a big bestseller. I guess I'm going to do it.

Speaker 19 I mean, he didn't talk out like he had been hired to do a great piece of literature, right?

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 19 I think, you know, do something with it. And would you like to cast it for me with me? Right.
I said, yeah, you know, great. So we'll get over here and you know, make your deal, and let's go to work.

Speaker 5 Coppola gave Ruse a mandate, as many Italian Americans in Italian-American roles as possible.

Speaker 19 His theory was that if you grew up in an Italian household, Italian-American, there are certain behavioral characteristics that are just ingrained in you.

Speaker 5 Ruse and Coppola kicked off casting in the Gulf and Western building on November 20th, 1970. They saw 600 actors and then moved on to L.A.
to see 500 more.

Speaker 19 He was willing to go deep into the casting process, not try to do shortcuts or do it quickly or whatever. So that was cool with me because that's how you get quality.

Speaker 21 So Coppola and Fred Russ are going deep. Is that how they found the legendary Gianni Russo?

Speaker 5 Well, not at all. Gianni Russo played the godfather's fiery son-in-law, Carlo Rizzi, and probably has the best casting story.
He was also one of my favorite people to interview.

Speaker 19 No, I'm saying, when you heard the terminology, crime don't pay,

Speaker 19 crime pays.

Speaker 5 We met at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and from there, we went all around New York.
We shopped for suits, we went to lunch. And somewhere along the way, somebody was serving champagne.

Speaker 19 Gina, have some more champagne, sweetie.

Speaker 22 No, I want to grab mine.

Speaker 19 Grab some cheese. That's a plate.
What are we doing?

Speaker 21 Gianni is one of those people who just jumps out at you as a true character.

Speaker 5 What's his story?

Speaker 21 Where did he come from?

Speaker 5 Russo survived polio as a child, and he told me that like everything else, he used it to his advantage. He had, as he described it, a gimp arm.

Speaker 5 And as a 12-year-old, he started selling ballpoint pens outside of the Sherry Netherlands Hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Speaker 19 I picked the best corner.

Speaker 5 Selling pens.

Speaker 19 You know, the plaza across the street, the Sherry Netherlands, the Pierre. I'm right there.
On that corner with my GIMP arm. I used to even make it a little more worse.

Speaker 19 And I had a cigar box selling these new ballpoint pens. And somebody would give me 50 cents.
They were 15 cents. And that's how I met Costello.

Speaker 5 Every day, my boss, Frank Costello, would walk by and give Gianni a $5 bill. And one day, he stopped by to talk to Gianni.

Speaker 19 He says, what's your name? I said, Gianni. He says, but what's your listening? What's your heritage? I said, Mattaya, he says, here's $100.

Speaker 19 Tomorrow, meet me at the Warville at 11 o'clock in the morning. He said, okay.
Where? He's just being a lobby. And from that day on, I was with him every day.

Speaker 21 Do you have any sense of what he was doing for Frank Costello?

Speaker 5 Everything. Apparently, he told me that he was a messenger delivering duffel bags and shoeboxes, which might have contained cash around the world.

Speaker 19 They trusted me. They said, you take this there.

Speaker 19 I take it. No matter how, where it got there.
I used to go to Switzerland once a month with a nine and a half Gucci shoebox. And I'd take the plane out of here, land,

Speaker 19 and most of the time I was on the same plane going back. I get off, go to the bank, put the money in, go back, and go to sleep.

Speaker 19 I guess.

Speaker 21 How did Russo hear about the film in the first place?

Speaker 5 Well, he'd heard of the book, of course, and then, of course, because of Al Ruddy and Bob Evans' press antics, he heard they were casting unknowns.

Speaker 5 So Gianni, who apparently had always wanted to be an actor, set about making a 37-minute screen test.

Speaker 19 And in the beginning of it, it was me, natural. I said, hi, I'm Johnny Russo.
I know you don't know me, but I know you're making the movie The Godfather, and here's the characters I can play.

Speaker 5 He made up his own lines and commissioned a film crew to film and edit him auditioning for three roles, Michael, Sonny, and of course, Carlo.

Speaker 5 Did you do it in Costco?

Speaker 19 I did everything. I did all the makeup.
They did everything. I didn't know what a screen test was.

Speaker 19 I played the scene for Michael when he was upstairs in the room with Kay, and he goes down to get the newspaper. You know, I've improvised.

Speaker 21 He could have carried all three of those roles at the same time with the amount of personality he has.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I I think so. He's one of a kind.
Gianni Russo is one of a kind, that's for sure. And he just, he was great as Carlo.

Speaker 21 So how does he get his screen tests in front of the right people?

Speaker 5 Well, he found out that Al Ruddy apparently liked flashy cars and of course beautiful women.

Speaker 5 So he hired a showgirl from the chorus of the Tropicana, put her behind the wheel of his Bentley, and sent her to deliver his screen tests to Al Ruddy personally.

Speaker 19 I told the girls, you've got to give this to Al Al Ruddy. Nobody else.
Nobody. Al Ruddy.
Hand delivered. I want a note back.
It's okay.

Speaker 21 So what happened to the tape?

Speaker 5 Apparently it sat there for a few days and Russo got a rejection letter that read, the budget for this movie necessitates that we get proven talent for the major roles as a draw.

Speaker 19 Now my balls are in an uproar because I spent thousands of dollars on shape. Now your balls are in an uproar.
I like that.

Speaker 21 Well, we know he ends up being in the movie, so what did he do to get the part?

Speaker 5 Apparently he was able to work some connections to get an audition for the plum role of Carlo.

Speaker 19 Telly Blue Don had a lot of good friends, so I had some people call him and say, you know, this guy's a very close friend of ours.

Speaker 5 And here's how Robert Evans described it.

Speaker 20 It was brought to my attention that he should be in the picture. It's important he is.
Important to who? It's important to

Speaker 20 friends downtown.

Speaker 5 To friends downtown. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And according to Gianni, he gets invited to audition for a group of Paramount execs at the Gulf and Western building. And lo and behold, he lands the gig.

Speaker 19 So what happened? I went right to the union, got signed. That's Carlo, the character.
$17,500 for the movie.

Speaker 21 What happened in the audition?

Speaker 5 You know, he plays a pivotal scene and he just acts it out so perfectly and so compelling that I think Bob Emmons says, stop, stop, you got the job. You know, he was born to play this guy.

Speaker 5 He was born to play this errant son-in-law, Carlo.

Speaker 19 That was it. It was in a movie, obviously.

Speaker 21 And he gives an amazing performance.

Speaker 5 He does. His role as Carlo is a barn burner.

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Speaker 23 and how I was able to find the exact same edition on eBay years later. There are certain books that don't just give you information, they shift the way you see the world.

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Speaker 5 Ah,

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Speaker 21 Gianni wasn't the only cast member who had some underworld connections, right?

Speaker 5 That's right. Al Atieri, who played Virgil the Turk Salazzo, was the brother-in-law of a member of the Genovese crime family.

Speaker 5 And Al Martino, who played the Sinatra-inspired singer Johnny Fontaine, apparently used a connection to crime boss Russ Buffalino to snag the part.

Speaker 21 Which is the same thing his character Johnny Fontaine does in the movie. Another instance of life imitating art and the godfather.

Speaker 5 Exactly. He was a fantastic choice.
They wanted Vic Damone first, and apparently there's some controversy on what happened.

Speaker 5 Nobody seems to agree on why Vic Damone didn't want the role or turn down the role if he did turn down the role, which left the door open for Al Martino. Al Martino, yeah.

Speaker 21 What was Al Martino's background?

Speaker 5 He was a very popular nightclub singer in those days. And at the time, many nightclubs where Al Martino performed had connections to the mob.
He told me this.

Speaker 5 I interviewed him at Nathan Al's Delicatess in Beverly Hills in 2007. And he told me how well he knew this world and how well he knew these people from Vegas all the way to New York City.

Speaker 5 And Martino had an excellent singing voice and speaking voice, and he really knew how to carry himself, which made him so believable as Johnny Fontaine,

Speaker 5 despite the fact that he wasn't really an actor. And it was a bit of an adjustment for Al,

Speaker 5 especially in the scene where Johnny Fontaine is in the Godfather's office, talking about that producer who won't give him the role in that hip movie, and he breaks down crying, and Brando slaps him.

Speaker 5 I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.

Speaker 5 You can act like a man. What's the matter with you?

Speaker 19 Is this how you turn out a high with Pinocchio that cries like a woman?

Speaker 5 That slap wasn't scripted, and according to the folklore of the movie, that slap really rattled Al Martino because nobody hits Al Martino.

Speaker 5 He was a really, really nice man when I interviewed him, but also I can imagine that he was a pretty tough man at the same time.

Speaker 21 So many of the smaller parts were taken by these relative unknowns, but Coppola knew who he wanted for the bigger parts in the film.

Speaker 5 Exactly. He had his list written on lined yellow paper with asterisks next to his top choices.
Al Pacino as Michael, James Kan as Sonny, and Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen.

Speaker 21 And of course, Marlon Brando as the godfather.

Speaker 5 Well, it was originally Puzzo who wanted Brando. He even wrote him a letter before Coppola came on board asking him to play the role.
But the execs were so opposed that he basically dropped it.

Speaker 5 This is how Betty McCart, Al Ruddy's assistant, remembers it.

Speaker 28 Stanley Jaffe was the president of Paramount, and he said, as long as I'm president of Paramount, there's no way that Marlon Brando will play this role.

Speaker 21 But Coppola got on board with Brando when he joined.

Speaker 5 Yes, he was torn between Brando and Lawrence Olivier. but ultimately decided that Brando was the right choice.

Speaker 21 Well, we know the executives are against it. What does Brando think?

Speaker 5 Well, Brando was in bad shape at the time. He was deep in debt, supposedly addicted to Valium, headed toward his third divorce, and determined never to work as an actor again.

Speaker 5 It was his assistant, Alice Marshak, who convinced him to even consider acting again so that he could pay off some of his debts.

Speaker 21 Wow, so I guess we can assume that Coppola pursued Brando despite the studio being against it.

Speaker 5 Yes, in traditional Coppola fashion, he moved forward defiantly. Coppola described in an interview a meeting he had with the Paramount exec basically ganged up on him.

Speaker 29 I remember in one meeting I was told by the then president of Paramount said to me, as president of Paramount Pictures, I am telling you that Marlon Brando will not appear in this motion picture.

Speaker 21 How'd he take that?

Speaker 5 Well, apparently not well. He stared down Stanley Jaffe, then the president of Paramount, and said, I give up.
You guys hired me. I'm supposed to be the director.

Speaker 5 Every idea you have, you don't want me to talk about. Now you're instructing me that I can't even pursue the idea.
At least let me pursue it.

Speaker 21 And what did Jaffe say?

Speaker 5 Well, he set up Coppola for what he thought was an impossible task.

Speaker 29 So I continued talking and arguing, and finally, they agreed to let me discuss the idea of Marlon Brando being in the movie if I honored three stipulations. A, he would do a screen test.

Speaker 29 B, he would do the film for free. And C, he would put up a bond so that if any of his shenanigans or any trouble came from him being on the set, that it would guarantee the losses.

Speaker 21 So Coppola presses on. What's his next order of business?

Speaker 5 Well, he has to somehow do a screen test with the great Marlon Brando without calling it that. Here's Fred Ruse.

Speaker 19 The word screen test was never mentioned to Marlon. He was Marlon Brando.
I mean, he is in a dip in his career at that point, but he was still the iconic actor.

Speaker 19 So you don't just

Speaker 19 audition him.

Speaker 19 So Francis did it under the guise of, let's experiment for your own sake, not just for me, to prove anything to me, for your own sake, on how you would change yourself over to become this older man that, you know, quite a bit older than you are.

Speaker 5 And did it work? It worked great. Coppola had no idea, but Brando had been preparing.

Speaker 5 He got to his house up in Malholland Drive, and right there in front of his eyes, Marlon Brando transformed into Vito Corleone.

Speaker 29 He walked out and he put on a jacket and he picked up a cigar and he started to gesture with it and use it as a prop.

Speaker 29 And he rolled up the ponytail and he kind of pinned it up and he took some shoe polish and he darkened it. And while he's doing this, we're photographing.

Speaker 29 Then he took some tissue paper and he said, he should have the face of a bulldog.

Speaker 29 He said, and he stuffed the tissue paper in his jaw and then he said well if he's shot in the throat he ought to have a talk like that a little bit

Speaker 5 he became don vito corleone right there in that room and coppola was amazed and astonished so the screen test or not a screen test is a success what's next well coppola decides he's going to take the tape not to evans and jaffe the executives in la

Speaker 5 he's going to go straight to the top and and take it to Hurricane Charlie Bludorn, who, by the way, was just as opposed to Brando as everybody else.

Speaker 5 So Coppola flies to New York and sets up in an office in the Gulf and Western building with the tape playing on a monitor and waits for Bludorn to walk by. And here's how Dean Tavalares remembers it.

Speaker 5 Mr. Bluedorn, walking down the corridor, could kind of look into offices.
And that's when he saw Marlon on the monitor. He said, who is that? He said, this is the godfather.
Who is that actor?

Speaker 5 Who is that man? And Francis said, the man I'm not supposed to mention, Marlon Brando. And that worked? It sure did.
Charlie was as amazed by Brando's transformation as Coppola.

Speaker 29 And Charlie just looks astounded and he says, that's incredible.

Speaker 5 That's incredible.

Speaker 5 And soon everybody else, of course, agreed. Evans, Bart, Jaffe, they offered Brando the role, and the rest is history.

Speaker 21 What happened to that tape?

Speaker 5 No one knows. It's lost to history.
You know, it's like something out of the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Speaker 5 Maybe it's in a warehouse somewhere, and nobody seems to know where it is, but I really hope it surfaces one day because it's one piece of film I would love to see.

Speaker 4 Are your AI agents helping users or just creating more work?

Speaker 6 If you can't compare your users' workflows before and after adding AI, how do you know it's even paying off?

Speaker 8 Pendo Agent Analytics is the first tool to connect agent prompts and conversations to downstream outcomes like time saved, so you know what's working and what to fix.

Speaker 11 Start improving agent performance at pendo.io slash podcast.

Speaker 12 That's pendo.io slash podcast.

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Speaker 23 Some moments in your life stay with you forever.

Speaker 23 In a special segment of On Purpose, I share a story about a book that changed my life early in my journey and how I was able to find the exact same edition on eBay years later.

Speaker 23 There are certain books that don't just give you information, they shift the way you see the world. I remember reading one when I was younger that completely changed me.

Speaker 23 Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again. I wanted the same edition back.
Not a reprint, not a different cover, that exact one.

Speaker 23 So I started searching and that's when I found it on eBay. That's what I love about eBay.
It's not just a marketplace, it's a place where stories live.

Speaker 23 Shop eBay for millions of finds, each with a story. eBay, things people love.

Speaker 23 Listen to on purpose on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 5 Ah,

Speaker 15 greetings from my bath, festive friends.

Speaker 24 The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling this season with PayPal and making the most of my money. Getting 5% cash back when I pay in four.

Speaker 5 No fees?

Speaker 21 No interest. I used it to get this portable spa with jets.

Speaker 25 Now the bubbles can cling to my sculpted but pruny body. Make the most of your money this holiday with PayPal.

Speaker 26 Save the offer in the app. NS1231, see PayPal.com slash promo terms.
Points can be renewed for cash and more paying for subject to terms and approval.

Speaker 27 PayPal Inc. and MLS 910-457.

Speaker 21 So let's get into the rest of the Corleone family. We know Copla is pretty set on who he wants, but Evans is not sold on Pacino, is he?

Speaker 5 Not at all. Early on, Evans and the other executives met with Coppola to discuss casting, and they all had very, very different ideas.
And who did they suggest as Michael?

Speaker 5 The blonde-haired, blue-eyed Robert Redford.

Speaker 21 Robert Redford is about as un-Italian as it gets. What happened to Italian actors for Italian roles?

Speaker 5 They said Sicilians can be blonde, so let's get Redford.

Speaker 21 And what was their reaction to Pacino?

Speaker 5 They'd never heard of him. Coppola knew him from plays in New York, but to Evans, he was a five-foot, seven-inch runt, to use this term.
A runt? That's what Evans called him.

Speaker 5 He said, Michael Corleone will not be played by Al Pacino. So what did Coppola do? Well, he stalled.

Speaker 5 He said he would go out looking for more young actors to come back with, but he already had a plan in place.

Speaker 5 Coppola had summoned Al Pacino, James Kahn, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton to the American Zoatrope studios in San Francisco.

Speaker 21 His dream cast from his original list.

Speaker 5 Yes, his plan was to shoot tests of the four actors in absolute secrecy and then use the test to convince the suits at Paramount that he knew best on who to cast for his movie.

Speaker 5 And here's James Kahn talking about that.

Speaker 19 And we flew up to Zoatrope in San Francisco. His wife Eleanor gave us a haircut with a ball on her head.
Like, you know, just put the ball on her head and clipped our hair.

Speaker 19 And we did on 60 millimeters.

Speaker 21 And what was that like?

Speaker 5 Well, the tests are just great. You can clearly see them now, and you can see the burgeoning stardom in each person.

Speaker 5 Al Pacino is the scruffy and struggling theater actor who comes to life as Michael, the college boy.

Speaker 5 James Cann, who is Coppola's friend from the Hofstra University Theater Department, is the powerfully built, hair-triggered Sonny. Robert Duvall, the perpetually calm Irish Catholic lawyer, Tom Hagen.

Speaker 5 And perhaps strangest of all, the somewhat kooky, as they called her back then, Diane Keaton, as Michael's uppercrust girlfriend, Kay Adams.

Speaker 19 So basically what I'm saying is for the price of four corned beef sandwiches we had to lunch, you know, and we shot the 16 millimeter improvisation and just screwing around, brew home, and that was it.

Speaker 19 That was the cast.

Speaker 21 And did it work? What did the executives think of the screen tests?

Speaker 5 Well, they hated him. They didn't like them at all.
They thought, well, Charlie Bluedorm summed it up when he said they can't all be bad actors. It must be bad directing.

Speaker 5 And to make matters worse, they were upset that Coppola had spent money on this, which turned out to be, as James Kahn said, the price of four corned beef sandwiches for lunch.

Speaker 5 Coppola was sure they were going to fire him, which would become a theme for his time on The Godfather. He was so discouraged that he basically fell in line and agrees to test everyone.

Speaker 5 Paramount wants to test people like Martin Sheen, Dean Stockwell, and Ryan O'Neill for Michael. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on these screen tests.

Speaker 21 Wow, that must have been so demoralizing for Coppola.

Speaker 5 He had his stars. Exactly.
It was a real disaster. Not long after, Coppola moved his entire operation, including his family, to New York to continue the screen test frenzy.

Speaker 5 And to make matters worse, he's broke.

Speaker 21 Didn't he get paid by Paramount?

Speaker 5 Well, his $175,000 upfront fee went toward his debts, but the bills for American Zootrope were piling up. And his wife is pregnant, of course, with their daughter, Sophia Coppola.

Speaker 21 Not an ideal time to move to New York City.

Speaker 5 No, but luckily his brother-in-law has a vacant studio apartment on the Upper West Side where the family can live.

Speaker 5 It was cramped, and Coppola said it was like living like an impoverished Italian-American family, which I'm sure gave him some inspiration for the film.

Speaker 21 Hall while screen testing everyone under the sun.

Speaker 5 Yes, he's got his team by his side, which in addition to Fred Ruse now includes Lou DiGiamo, who casts the extras, and Paramount's casting director, Andrea Eastman. Here's Andrea.

Speaker 18 You know, at first, Francis had so many problems with Paramount.

Speaker 18 I don't think I was really trusted right away because I worked for Paramount, but I never repeated anything that was ever said and so they learned to trust me and we all kind of became a big family.

Speaker 5 The team worked seven days a week doing these screen tests.

Speaker 18 So it just, it was endless. It went on and on and on.
The casting process was forever.

Speaker 5 And everyone knew it was a sham, Coppola begrudgingly running these screen tests with no intention of pushing for anyone other than who he already wanted.

Speaker 5 And Evans watching the tapes the next day from the Gulf and Western building or back in his office in Los Angeles.

Speaker 21 Like a puppet master pulling the strings.

Speaker 5 And it would soon be full-out war. Coppola and Evans each had their own vision for the movie, but neither really had ultimate authority.
That is, until Evans decided to take control. In what way?

Speaker 5 He goes to the press with somewhat of a manifesto to taking control from directors, as a variety headline from those days read, cut directors down to size. Ouch.
Coppola was furious, of course.

Speaker 5 He dug in his heels and kept going with the endless stream test with the role of Michael being the most hotly contested.

Speaker 18 Al Pacino wasn't known then, and he wasn't very good. We decided to test Jimmy Khan for Michael.

Speaker 18 So the tests were in New York, and I remember it was a scene at the wedding, which is, you know, it's a very talky scene. There's not a lot of action.

Speaker 18 And again, Al

Speaker 18 just

Speaker 18 wasn't good in the test. He just was not.
You didn't imagine him as Michael Cruglio.

Speaker 18 But Jimmy Kahn was fabulous.

Speaker 21 Does Coppola ever sway from Puccino?

Speaker 5 No, he really doesn't. But there does come a point where he just wants it finished.
So this is going on and on and on.

Speaker 18 And Francis just got so sick of everything. He goes, I'm going to Sicily.

Speaker 19 Just cast my fucking movie, excuse my language.

Speaker 5 At this point, Pacino is tested for the part a dozen times.

Speaker 21 So Coppola takes off with the role of Michael being left uncast. What decisions are being made in the meantime?

Speaker 5 Well, Diane Keaton finally gets cast as Kay Adams after about 100 screen tests. Richard Castellano is a slam dunk as Clemenza.

Speaker 5 And Salvatore Tessio goes to Abe Vogoda, who's discovered during an open casting call. And don't forget about Fredo.

Speaker 5 Fred Ruse discovered the great John Casall, the actor who would so memorably play Fredo.

Speaker 19 I got invited by an old friend of mine, Richard Dreyfus, to come see him in a play. I went to this play.

Speaker 19 And Richard, of course, was good and all that. But there was this guy in it, John Casall, who I didn't know.

Speaker 19 I hadn't even heard of him before, but I could see he was wonderful and he had all the qualities of a Fredo. And he was Italian-American.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 I remember the next day, Francis, I found Fredo.

Speaker 21 What about Talia Shire, Francis' sister, who ends up playing Connie?

Speaker 5 Well, it was a controversial pick with some of the cast crying nepotism. But at this point, Francis thought he was getting fired anyway, so he got his sister an audition.

Speaker 22 I didn't know about the politics of... you know, what I'm going to say, filmmaking and how it could be that dicey.
I honestly didn't know that much about it. I simply just wanted an audition.

Speaker 22 I had been more of the theater person. I didn't know how to hit a mark.
I didn't know what a mark was. So I was the last person you should want on your movie.

Speaker 22 But I just like, hey, can I have an audition?

Speaker 21 And Evans liked her?

Speaker 5 He did. He saw something in her that I think Coppola didn't even see himself.

Speaker 31 Michael, you lousy bastard. You killed my husband.
You waited until Papa died so nobody could stop you and then you killed him. You blame him for Sonny.
You always did. Everybody did.

Speaker 31 But you never thought about me. You never gave a damn about me.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 21 How far are we from shooting now with no Michael?

Speaker 5 We're only a month away, and Paramount finally makes the decision. They land on Coppola's friend, James Kahn, as Michael, and the 6'4 Carmine Caridi as Sonny.

Speaker 21 That doesn't sound right.

Speaker 5 No, but after being told that he'd landed the part of Sonny, Caridi was already partying.

Speaker 19 He was running around with some guys, some friends of mine. He was celebrating, you know, and I said, hey, don't do this.
You know, they're very shaky up there.

Speaker 19 You're going to have a hard fall if it doesn't want to count.

Speaker 21 So what happened?

Speaker 5 Coppola takes off again to meet with Marlon Brando in London. And at that point, he felt the decision had been made to cast James Conn as Michael.
But while he's gone, everything changes.

Speaker 23 So I have my stuff clipped out for Jimmy. And we ran panic in Needle Park.

Speaker 18 And Al Pacino, like, jumped off the screen. He was fantastic.
I mean, he was great, which is how he wound up getting Michael.

Speaker 5 And Paramount's casting director, Andrea Eastman, saw it as an opening to push for Coppola's original vision.

Speaker 18 So we're sitting there in the screening room, and

Speaker 18 so now it's going to be Al Pacino is Michael.

Speaker 18 Jimmy Khan is not in the movie, and Carmine Cariti, which was ludicrous because you met Carmine Caridi. He was about 6'6.

Speaker 18 He kind of was like a St. Bernard.
And Charlie, for the first time ever had yelled at me before this conversation.

Speaker 18 He goes, we have this little pipsque playing Michael and this big guy, you know, Carmine Caridi,

Speaker 18 it doesn't work. And he was right, it didn't work.
So I said, well, you know,

Speaker 18 why don't we go back the way Francis wanted it? Al Pacino is Michael, Jimmy Khan is Sonny. And Bob said, no, actually, she's she's right.

Speaker 18 That's because you believe that they could be brothers.

Speaker 5 And so the deal was made that Coppola could have Pacino as Michael if he would move James Kahn over to play Sonny. And that's what Coppola wanted all along.

Speaker 5 So the cast was set, and he had the actors that he wanted from the beginning.

Speaker 21 So we end up with the exact cast that Coppola did those secret screen tests with in San Francisco for $500 eight months earlier?

Speaker 5 Yes, but for the cool price of $420,000.

Speaker 21 So smooth sailing from here, right, Mark?

Speaker 5 Yeah, right. Next episode, we're heading to New York where the real war begins.

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

Speaker 21 The podcast is based on the book of the same name written by our very own Mark Seal.

Speaker 5 Our producer is Tina Mullen.

Speaker 21 Research assistants by Jack Sullivan.

Speaker 5 Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.

Speaker 21 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 21 Excerpts from Francis Ford Coppola's 2001 DVD commentary on The Godfather were featured in this episode.

Speaker 21 A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgements can be found in Mark Seale's book, Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon ⁇ Schuster.

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