While Sonny is driving to his death, he’s listening to the October 3,1951 radio broadcast of Russ Hodges calling the decisive third game of the Dodgers-Giants playoff — a half-inning before Bobby Thomson ended the Dodgers’ season with the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World, which many consider the national pastime’s all-time greatest moment.
According to Mario Puzo, the character of Johnny Fontane was NOT based on Frank Sinatra. However, everyone assumed that it was, and Sinatra was furious; when he met Puzo at a restaurant (Ciro’s maybe) he screamed at the novelist and issued threats. Sinatra hated the movie. Rumor has it that the Johnny Fontane role was scaled down as a result.
Of the main cast, four pairs of actors share a birthday: Al Pacino and Talia Shire (April 25), Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall (January 5), James Caan and Sterling Hayden (March 26), and Abe Vigoda and Al Lettieri (February 24).
How do we know that the Godfather was born on December 7? “The nerve of them Japs. To bomb [Pearl Harbor] on Pop’s birthday.” “They didn’t know it was Pop’s birthday.”
Whether the film ranks, as it does for many of us, as one of the greatest of all movies, The Godfather is a script that the certified US male of a certain class knows much of by heart. For more exquisite Godfather trivia (Jews play Sonny and Tessio, an Italian plays the Jewish Moe Greene) go here.
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from the archive; first posted January 13, 2012
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Author: The Best American Poetry
