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When Evans finally agreed to cast Brando, he made a low-ball offer: $50,000 plus incentives at the distant back-end, incentives that kicked in only if the film broke the $50 million mark. He kept the stuffed cheeks and padded suit from the screen test and added a raspy voice that, for those in the know, offered a spot-on impression of the legendary New York gangster Frank Costello. To play Vito Corleone he blackened his hair with shoe polish and stuffed his cheeks with tissues to create the image of, as Brando described him, "a bulldog." Through rehearsals Brando built on his characterization of the aging mobster.
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Brando was just forty-seven when production on the film commenced and he was still quite fit. The actor got into the spirit right away.
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Coppola set the scene with a spread of Italian cheeses and expensive cigars, period clothes and props. Perhaps the veteran actor knew better, or perhaps he was just having fun as the cameras rolled, but his "screen test" is the stuff of Hollywood legend. And I agreed, even though I didn’t even know Brando.Īsking an actor of Brando’s stature to test for a role was out of the question so when Coppola called the actor he lied he asked Brando to stop by for "make-up tests" hoping to get some footage that would look enough like a screen test to satisfy the studio brass. Finally, they recanted and told me that they would consider Brando if I could meet three criteria: one was that he would do the film for "nothing," one was that he would personally post a bond to insure them against any of his shenanigans causing overages, and the third was that he would agree to a screen test. You have to remember that they were very seriously considering if they had the right director, and I brought up Marlon Brando … I was told by one of the executives – I shouldn’t say which one – "Francis, Marlon Brando will never appear in this picture, and I instruct you never to bring him up again." At which point I fainted onto the floor … My "epileptic fit" was obviously a gag and they got the point.
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As Coppola told the New Yorker’s Michael Sragow: He offers to make Woltz’s pending labour problems go away in exchange for casting Johnny in a "war picture." Kerkorian had a lot more experience doing business with the mob than Woltz, so to get him to make the deal with Korshak and Evans, no horse’s head was necessary.Įvans also opposed casting Marlon Brando, who was Coppola and Puzo’s first choice to play Vito Corleone. In "The Godfather," the attorney Tom Hagen flies to Hollywood to meet with the film producer Jack Woltz. Korshak replied: "I asked him if he wanted to finish building his hotel." ( Evans, 1994) I’ll get you for this … the midget’s yours." Evans later asked Korshak what he had said that so quickly convinced Kerkorian to release Pacino. The negotiation took all of twenty minutes, after which Aubrey called Evans on the telephone: "You no-good motherf***er, c***sucker.
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As Evans tells the story, he asked his friend, the reputed Mafia lawyer Sidney Korshak, to help negotiate a deal that might free Pacino from his obligation to MGM. At the time, MGM was owned by a new Hollywood player with alleged ties to organized crime, the corporate raider and Las Vegas hotel magnate Kirk Kerkorian, and run by James Aubrey, a notoriously foul-mouthed executive with a reputation for not playing well with others. The studio also screen tested Robert De Niro for the role of Sonny in case Caan was cast as Michael.Ĭoppola eventually convinced Evans to contact Pacino’s agent who declined the offer because his client had a scheduling conflict the actor had already signed to appear in the MGM adaptation of Jimmy Breslin’s comic novel about organised crime, "The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight" (1971). While Coppola continued to push for Pacino, the studio screen tested a number of young actors including James Caan, whom Coppola wanted to play Sonny, and Martin Sheen. The executive instead wanted to cast Ryan O’Neal, the Irish-American star of "Love Story." Evans thought that Pacino was too short (his press agent listed him at an optimistic 5'7") and inexperienced and pointed out that his three "Godfather" screen tests were awful (and they were Pacino comes off more like Woody Allen than Michael Corleone). In 1971 Pacino was a little-known New York actor with only one significant film role to his credit, the lead in Jerry Schatzberg’s "The Panic in Needle Park" (1971), a gritty realist film about heroin addicts that played to critical praise at the Cannes Film Festival but little box office in the United States. Reprinted with kind permission of the author, the British Film Institute and Bloomsbury Publishing. Excerpted from "The Godfather" © Jon Lewis (2010).