ALL IN THE FAMILY: Abe Vigoda as Tessio, Richard Castellano as Clemenza, John Cazale as Fredo, Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone, Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen and James Caan as Sonny.
IT’s an offer that moviegoers have never been able to refuse: “The Godfather,’’ the capo di tutti capo of post-World War II American movies, is celebrating its 40th anniversary Thursday.
What’s been hailed as one of one of the greatest movies ever made premiered at five Manhattan theaters and went on to win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor for Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone and best adapted screenplay for director Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, whose best-selling novel inspired the film.
The epic Mafia drama, rivaled only by “Casablanca’’ for its number of famous quotes, spawned an even more wildly successful sequel in 1974, as well as a mythology surrounding the film’s troubled production.
It’s widely known that Coppola was almost fired after battling with studio suits over casting issues and his insistence on extensive location shooting for what Paramount originally saw as a modestly budgeted movie.
But the mists of time have swallowed up Coppola’s conflict with his fourth-billed actor, who was dropped from the sequel and went on to a vastly less illustrious career than Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton — or even Abe Vigoda, who played his fellow capo Tessio.
This was despite the fact that Richard Castellano, who brilliantly played the portly under-boss Clemenza, improvised one of the film’s most famous lines after a crony shoots a traitor to death in a car.
To the scripted line “Leave the gun,’’ Castellano memorably added, “Take the cannoli.’’ Clemenza also tutored Pacino’s Michael Corleone in how to assassinate police lieutenant McCluskey (Sterling Hayden) in one the best-known scenes — and, by some accounts, the actor playing him helped Pacino understand Mafia life off-screen.
But despite the film’s popularity — and Castellano being Oscar nominated for the 1970 comedy “Lovers and Other Strangers,” which helped him land the “Godfather’’ gig — he was basically through with acting by nine years later.
When I interviewed Castellano in 1981, he was answering phones at a friend’s garage in Guttenberg, NJ, after working on two short-lived TV series, some TV films and just one obscure theatrical feature after “The Godfather.’’
During a five- hour interview, he was especially eager to talk about his clashes with Coppola on “The Godfather’’ and its sequel — and how their conflict damaged Castellano’s career.
According to the actor, the original script for “Part II” had his character testifying before a congressional committee against the crime family headed by Michael Corleone. The scene was ultimately rewritten for another character, Frankie Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo.
“I saw Clemenza as a teacher,’’ Castellano said. “He teaches how to make spaghetti, how to use the gun. [Coppola] can’t tell me that Clemenza, after years of loyalty to the old man, would go in and testify against organized crime. Not unless you proved to me . . . that he had become a fearful man, that he had become a betrayer.
“The demands on me were impossible. I had settled on a price and everybody else’s was settled upon mine. [Coppola] had me losing weight to play Clemenza as a young man. I was down to 194 pounds. When I received the script five minutes later, it had me rolling in at 300 pounds.’’
Castellano says that after he bowed out of the project — Bruno Kirby Jr,. played the young Clemenza, who is said to have died before the “Part II’’ scenes set in the 1950s — Coppola promised to tell the press he had turned down the role for artistic reasons.
“The next thing, I saw Coppola quoted as saying that I asked for more money than anyone else, that I asked to rewrite the script. Once the lie gets out, the lie is told, and it takes.’’ (Coppola said in a DVD documentary a few years ago that Castellano was dropped because he insisted on approval of his character’s lines).
The friction between actor and director began during filming of the first “Godfather,’’ when Castellano said he interceded on behalf of cinematographer Gordon Willis. According to Castellano, Coppola got his revenge while he was shooting his final scene, in which the portly actor had to walk up four sets of stairs.
“We shot the scene over and over,’’ Castellano said. “He was going to run the beast. Well, I can take it. I got myself up 75 flights of steps . . . and if we wanted to go for 100, I was ready. There are a lot of ways to kill an actor.’’
One thing Castellano wouldn’t comment on was a rumor that he had connections to organized crime. After the actor’s death, his widow wrote in a book that he was nephew to Paul Castellano, the Gambino crime family boss who was assassinated in 1985, outside Midtown’s Sparks Steak House. The hit, which also killed underboss Thomas Bilotti, was commissioned by John Gotti, who became the new head of the Gambinos.
Castellano insisted he wasn’t bitter about his underwhelming post-“Godfather’’ career.
“Does it bother me that there hasn’t been anything more for me? Yes. Not so much because I haven’t done anything, but it seems to bother the people I meet. They keep asking, ‘What’s the next thing you’re going to do’ and it begins to take its toll on me. The phone has started to ring again since I got a new agent and there’s interest again.’’
Richard Castellano made just one obscure movie after our 1981 talk. He died in 1988, at age 55, of a heart attack.
But as Clemenza in “The Godfather,’’ he had a part that will live forever, just like this timeless classic.