If there’s one thing people know about Italians, it’s the hearty, tasty, and filling Italian food that graces their plates and tables. The Godfather has plenty of opportunities to show off pasta, bread, wine, and even some tasty oranges. There’s even one point in the first film when an overweight capo rattles off a tasty-sounding recipe for great tomato sauce.
In fact, not only is this recipe real (we can neither confirm nor deny that it tastes good) but it’s an old Coppola family recipe. If you happen to whip up a batch, let us know how it is!
Two Actors and Two Oscars
Robert De Niro winning the Oscar for Best Actor thanks to his role as Vito Corleone in "The Godfather Part II". He and Marlon Brando were the first time ever – and the only time since – when two actors have both won Oscars for portraying the same character in two different films.
In addition, both "The Godfather" and "The Godfather Part II" are also the only first two films of a trilogy that have both won an Oscar for Best Picture. They were so close to the three-peat, but, well, then "The Godfather Part III" happened.
The Biggest Surprise of His Life
Perhaps the most famous moment in the entire trilogy is when Jack Woltz, defiant film mogul, wakes up to find his beloved horse's severed head in his bed. Everybody who's seen the scene can picture it pretty accurately, but there's one person who never forgot it until his dying day, and that's John Marley, the actor who played Woltz.
You see, Marley thought he would “wake up” next to a fake, dead horse. Instead, when the cameras started rolling and Marley went through his steps, he found a real severed horse head and real horse blood. The screams you hear in the film are perfectly real.
An Offer He Couldn't Refuse
Francis Ford Coppola, in the midst of making this famous film, found himself at odds with certain Italian-American groups, such as The Italian-American Civil Rights League. They in particular took umbrage with the terms “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” (another term for the Sicilian Mafia) used in the film, as they might have ended up stereotyping Italian-Americans (though the stereotyping happened anyway).
Coppola had to rewrite the script after these groups fought the use of these terms, by which we mean made direct threats. But no stereotyping, you know? We don't want anybody doing that sort of thing. Fuhgeddaboutit.
Real-Life Extras
It's pretty commonly known that Coppola took out the terms “Mafia” and “Cosa Nostra” taken out of the movie. However, there was some pressure on set, thanks to the movie extras who were, it turns out, actually part of the Mafia. This is due mostly to the influence of The Italian-American Civil Rights League, which was actually run by mob boss Joe Colombo.
While none of these extras had much of a role, appearing as little more than muscle, background characters, or maybe conversation partners that other characters interact with. Coppola was probably happy with the authenticity but might not have liked the implicit threats.