• Born: Oct 15, 1920 in Manhattan, New York City, New York
• Died: Jul 02, 1999 in Long Island, New York
• Occupation: Writer
• Active: '70s-'90s
• Major Genres: Crime, Action
• Career Highlights: The Godfather Part II, The Godfather, The Godfather Part III
• First Major Screen Credit: The Godfather (1972)

Biography

Academy Award-winning scriptwriter Mario Puzo openly confessed to having written The Godfather for money. He had been struggling to support his family and was in need of a commercial success when he sold the script adaptation of his novel to Paramount Pictures for 10,000 dollars. What happened next is Hollywood legend. The movie earned 11 Academy Award nominations and received three, including a 1973 Best Adapted Screenplay award for Puzo. Two years later, he won another Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Godfather Part II.

Puzo was born October 15, 1920, in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen to Italian immigrants. A military stint in Germany during WWII led the way, via the G.I. Bill, to studies at New York's New School for Social Research, as well as further study at Columbia University. Puzo's first novel, The Dark Arena, was published in 1955; his second and his best, in the opinion of many, The Fortunate Pilgrim, was printed in 1964. Both met with critical but not financial success, which led to the aforementioned fiscal difficulties that forced Puzo to write his third novel, The Godfather. Although the author was not connected with the Mafia (or so he claimed), the novel was extremely popular with the people whose lifestyles it portrayed, as well as the moviegoing public. It spawned two sequels, for which Puzo supplied the screenplays. He also acted as the screenwriter for Earthquake (1974), Superman: The Movie (1978) and Superman II (1980), as well as The Cotton Club (1984), The Sicilian (a 1987 film based on his 1984 novel of the same name), and Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992). In 1997, Puzo's 1996 novel The Last Don was made into a television miniseries starring Danny Aiello and Joe Mantegna, and the same year, his novel The Fortunate Pilgrim was reprinted. Puzo died at his home on Long Island, on July 2, 1999. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide

Christopher Columbus: The Discovery Buy this Movie	The Godfather Part III Buy this Movie	The Sicilian Buy this Movie	The Cotton Club Buy this Movie
A Time to Die Buy this Movie	Superman II Buy this Movie	Superman: The Movie Buy this Movie	Earthquake Buy this Movie

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(1920-1999)

1969

The Godfather. After two previous critically acclaimed but unpopular novels, Puzo produces what has been described as the fastest-selling novel in American history. The story of Don Vito Corleone's career as a Mafia don remains number one on the bestseller list for sixty-seven weeks and sells eight million paperback copies. Puzo would share the Academy Award with Francis Ford Coppola for their screenplays for The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974), the first two films based on the novel. Puzo would follow up his success with other popular novels about organized crime: The Sicilian (1984), The Last Don (1996), and Omerta (2000).

Quotes:

"He was a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and I'll show you a loser, show me a hero and I'll show you a corpse."

"A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns."

"Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly."

"What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy."

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