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Mario Puzo

Italian American author, screenwriter, and journalist

Mario Francis Puzo (/ˈpuːzoʊ/; Italian::; October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999) was an American author, screenwriter, and journalist. He is known for his crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia, most notably The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and for Part II in 1974. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film and its 1980 sequel. His final novel, The Family, was released posthumously in 2001.

Contents

  • 1 Personal life
  • 2 Career
  • 3 Death
  • 4 Works
    • 4.1 Novels
      • 4.1.1 Series
    • 4.2 Non-fiction
    • 4.3 Short stories
    • 4.4 Screenplays and film adaptations
    • 4.5 Video game adaptations
  • 5 See also
  • 6 References
  • 7 Further reading
  • 8 External links

Personal life

Puzo was born in the Hell's Kitchen district of New York City to Italian immigrants from Pietradefusi, Province of Avellino, Campania. When Puzo was 12, his father, who worked as a trackman for the New York Central Railroad, was committed to the Pilgrim State Hospital insane asylum for schizophrenia, and his wife, Maria, was left to raise their seven children. He served in the US Army Air Forces in Germany in World War II, and later graduated from the City College of New York. Puzo married a German woman, Erika, with whom he had five children. When Erika died of breast cancer at the age of 58 in 1978, her nurse, Carol Gino, became Puzo's companion.

Career

In 1950, his first short story, "The Last Christmas," was published in American Vanguard. After the war, he wrote his first book, The Dark Arena, which was published in 1955.

In 1960, Bruce Jay Friedman hired Puzo as an *istant editor of a group of men's pulp magazines with *les such as Male, Men. Under the pen name Mario Cleri, Puzo wrote World War II adventure features for magazine True Action.

In 1969, Puzo's best-known work, The Godfather was published. Puzo stated that this story came from research into organized crime, not from personal experience, and that he was looking to write something that would appeal to the m*es. The novel remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 67 weeks and sold over nine million copies in two years. The book was later developed into the film The Godfather (1972), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The film received three awards of the 11 Oscar category nominations, including Puzo's Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Coppola and Puzo then collaborated on sequels to the original film, The Godfather Part II (1974) and The Godfather Part III (1990).

Coppola and Puzo preferred the *le The Death of Michael Corleone for the third film, but Paramount Pictures found that unacceptable. In September 2020, for the film's 30th anniversary, it was announced that a new cut of the film *led Mario Puzo's The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone would have a limited theatrical release in December 2020 followed by digital and Blu-ray. Coppola said the film is the version he and Puzo had originally envisioned, and it "vindicates" its status among the trilogy.

In mid-1972, Puzo wrote the first draft of the script for the 1974 disaster film Earthquake, but he was unable to continue working on it because of his commitment to The Godfather Part II. Work continued on the script, with writer George Fox taking the helm, with a final draft completed by director Mark Robson. Puzo retained screen credit in the completed film, and featured heavily in the advertising. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for Richard Donner's Superman, which then also included the plot for Superman II, as they were originally written as one film. He also collaborated on the stories for the 1982 film A Time to Die and the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club.

In 1991, Puzo's speculative fiction The Fourth K was published; it centres on a fictional member of the Kennedy family dynasty who becomes President of the United States early in the 2000s.

Puzo never saw the publication of his penultimate book, Omertà, but the m*cript was finished before his death, as was the m*cript for The Family. However, in a review originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Jules Siegel, who had worked closely with Puzo at Magazine Management Company, speculated that Omertà may have been completed by "some talentless hack". Siegel also acknowledged the temptation to "rationalize avoiding what is probably the correct *ysis:— that wrote it and it is terrible".

Death

Puzo died of heart failure on July 2, 1999, at his home in Bay S*, New York, at the age of 78.

Works

Novels

  • The Dark Arena (1955)
  • The Fortunate Pilgrim (1965)
  • The Runaway Summer of Davie Shaw (1966)
  • Six Graves to Munich (1967), as Mario Cleri
  • Fools Die (1978)
  • The Fourth K (1990)
  • The Last Don (1996)
  • Omertà (2000)
  • The Family (2001) (completed by Puzo's longtime girlfriend Carol Gino)

Series

  1. The Godfather (1969)
  2. The Sicilian (1984) - takes place between the 6th and the 7th books of The Godfather

Non-fiction

  • "Test Yourself: Are You Heading for a Nervous Breakdown?" as Mario Cleri (1965)
  • The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions (1972)
  • Inside Las Vegas (1977)

Short stories

All short stories, except "The Last Christmas", were written under the pseudonym Mario Cleri.

  • "The Last Christmas" (1950)
  • "John 'Red' Marston's Island of Delight" (1964)
  • "Big Mike's Wild Young Sister-in-law" (1964)
  • "The Six Million Killer Sharks That Terrorize Our S*s" (1966)
  • "Trapped Girls in the Riviera's Flesh Casino" (1967)
  • "The Unkillable Six" (1967)
  • "Girls of Pleasure Penthouse" (1968)
  • "Order Lucy For Tonight" (1968)
  • "12 Barracks of Wild Blondes" (1968)
  • "Charlie Reese's Amazing Escape from a Russian Death Camp" (1969)

Screenplays and film adaptations

  • The Godfather (1972)
  • The Godfather Part II (1974)
  • Earthquake (1974)
  • Superman (1978)
  • Superman II (1980)
  • A Time to Die (1982)
  • The Cotton Club (1984)
  • The Sicilian (1987)
  • The Fortunate Pilgrim (1988)
  • The Godfather Part III (1990)
  • Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992)
  • Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006)
  • The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone (2020)

Video game adaptations

  • The Godfather (1991)
  • The Godfather (2006)
  • The Godfather II (2009)

See also

  • The Godfather (book series)

References

    Further reading

    • Moore, M. J. (March 8, 2019). Mario Puzo: An American Writer's Quest. ISBN:9781942762638.

    External links

    • FreshAir Interview – Audio interview from Fresh Air. Originally broadcast July 25, 1996.
    • Mario Puzo at IMDb
    • Petri Liukkonen. "Mario Puzo". Books and Writers
    • Mario Puzo Books
    • The Official Mario Puzo Library
    • "Saying Goodbye to Mario Puzo", an affectionate recollection of Mario Puzo written by his friend Jules Siegel on being notified of his death.
    Film seriesCharactersTelevision
    • The Godfather Saga (1977)
    Video games
    • The Godfather (1991)
    • The Godfather (2006)
    • The Godfather II (2009)
    Non-fiction
    • The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions (1972)
    • Take the Cannoli (2000)
    • The Godfather Effect (2012)
    Related
    • Five Families
    • Corleone, Sicily
    • The Sicilian (1987)
    • The Last Don (1996)
    • Omertà (2000)
    • Sarkar (2005)
    • The Offer (2022)
    Parodies
    • Il figlioccio del padrino (1973)
    • The Funny Face of the Godfather (1973)
    • The Freshman (1990)
    • The Godson (1998)
    • Mafia! (1998)
    • Category

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