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- [00:01]
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- [00:30]
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- [01:02]
Paige Desorbo
It'S me, Paige Desorbo and I'm so.
- [01:04]
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- [01:06]
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- [01:32]
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- [01:55]
Paige Desorbo
No purchase necessary VGW Group Void where prohibited by law. 21/terms and conditions apply. From airmail and iheartmedia this is leave the Gun Take the Cannoli the epic story of the Making of the Godfather.
- [02:19]
Mark Seal
Based on the book by the same name, this show will attempt to tell the story of the men and women responsible for the greatest film of all time and those who tried to stand in its way.
- [02:30]
Robert Evans
The five Families did not want us to shoot that picture in New York, he said.
- [02:35]
Charlie Bludorn
As long as I'm president of Paramount, there's No way that Marlon Brando will play this role.
- [02:40]
Paige Desorbo
So this is going on and on and on, and Francis just got so sick of everything. He goes, I'm going to Sicily. Just cast my fucking movie.
- [02:49]
Robert Evans
Excuse my language.
- [02:51]
Charlie Bludorn
My kids came in all hysterical. They'd heard gunshots and they went outside.
- [02:58]
Paige Desorbo
And all the windows had been shot.
- [02:59]
Charlie Bludorn
Out of the fazel vega. He was consumed with taking us down, getting Francis out of there and saving the picture.
- [03:11]
Paige Desorbo
I'm Mark Seale, author of Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, published by Simon and Schuster in 2021.
- [03:20]
Mark Seal
And I'm Nathan King, deputy editor at Airmail.
- [03:23]
Paige Desorbo
I came to this story in 2008. I was a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. What started out as a magazine assignment about the making of the Godfather turned into an all consuming hunt for the truth behind this film that took over my Life for almost 20 years and.
- [03:42]
Mark Seal
Resulted in Mark's hit book that would become known as the definitive truth behind a story filled with so many lies.
- [03:49]
Paige Desorbo
But the truth is fickle, and to this day, the principles of this story have different versions of how it all unfolded.
- [03:57]
Mark Seal
Over the next 10 episodes, we'll hear from all of them with never before heard interview tapes of the men and women Mark spoke with when writing his.
- [04:05]
Paige Desorbo
Book, as well as some brand new interviews and rarely heard archival tape.
- [04:10]
Mark Seal
The stories they tell are sometimes hard to believe and will let you be the judge of what's fact and what's not. But what we can promise is that this show will take you through everything we know about the film, from the origins of organized crime in America and the writing of Mario Puzo's novel to casting, filming, and the Godfather's rapturous premiere.
- [04:30]
Paige Desorbo
In this episode, we're starting at what might seem like an unusual place, a Hollywood producer's bedroom. This is really the first interview I've done in bed.
- [04:42]
Robert Evans
That's very funny.
- [04:44]
Mark Seal
Robert Evans was one of the most legendary producers in Hollywood history. He helped rescue Paramount from a shameful demise with pictures like Rosemary's Baby, Love Story, and of course, the Godfather.
- [04:57]
Robert Evans
It's called the Godfather's Godfather.
- [04:59]
Paige Desorbo
As the head of production, Evans was involved in every aspect of the movie.
- [05:04]
Robert Evans
I devoted my entire four years to this. There was a lot of fights and everything.
- [05:10]
Paige Desorbo
He financed the struggling author of the novel on which the movie is based.
- [05:15]
Robert Evans
A very good writer named Mario Puzo. He was real short on green.
- [05:19]
Paige Desorbo
He greenlit the film's development.
- [05:22]
Robert Evans
Nobody wanted to make it. As a matter of fact, Paramount refused to make it for a while.
- [05:27]
Paige Desorbo
He hired its producer and its director.
- [05:29]
Robert Evans
It was operatic. Francis made it operatic.
- [05:33]
Paige Desorbo
And he fostered the film's legend before and after its release.
- [05:37]
Robert Evans
It's my most important legacy in life.
- [05:41]
Mark Seal
Like so many others involved in the movie, Robert Evans died while we were making this podcast. And we're honored to tell his story here.
- [05:49]
Paige Desorbo
Picture this. I'm in a rent car coming from Los Angeles International Airport, and I drive to Robert Evans home called Woodland. And as I pull up to Woodland, I have no idea what I'm getting into. I'm reminded of how Robert Evans described this place in his memoir. The kid stays in the picture.
- [06:11]
Robert Evans
The grounds, the trees, the acreage, the towering eucalyptus. Thousands of roses. And everything is quiet and secret behind walls.
- [06:19]
Paige Desorbo
I get out of the car, I knock on the door, it swings open and there's this butler, Alan Selka, to welcome me. Come in, Mr. Seale. Mr. Evans is awaiting you. Memorabilia from the movie is laid across the dining room table. There's pictures, there's clippings, there's plaques, maybe an award or two. And as I'm looking at all of these things, suddenly the room turns silent and Robert Evans walks in. And it's a typically grand entrance. He's 78, but I'm reminded of the actor he once was. He's wearing his trademark black sweater and bolo tie. His black hair is slick back, his face is deeply tanned. He flashes a wide, dazzling grin and stares at me through rose colored glasses. And then he speaks in his gravelly voice.
- [07:12]
Robert Evans
It's stranger than fiction.
- [07:16]
Paige Desorbo
He shakes my hand and prepares to tell me the saga of the movie that he considered both his legacy and his loss. The movie that made him and destroyed him. And then Evans, a legendary lothario, looks me in the eye and says, let's go to bed. I'll admit I was a little taken aback. I don't think I got out much, except a what? Evans explains that a fire had consumed his screening room and now he and his friends watch movies from his bed. So he leads me into the bedroom and I stare for a moment at his bed, which was large and covered in fur. And he says, would you rather watch the movie in bed or would you rather use the chair? And I say, frankly, I think I'd rather be in the chair. And he goes, take those shoes off. And pretty soon we're lying side by side on top of this fur coverlet. He calls in the butler, Alan, who arrives with food, drinks, and a huge TV is queued up with scenes from the Godfather. It's clear there's A big story to tell, and it may take a while.
- [08:32]
Robert Evans
The truth be the Godfather made by mistake.
- [08:39]
Mark Seal
Mark, you've been researching and reporting on the myth behind this film for almost 20 years, but your obsession with the movie started much earlier than that.
- [08:47]
Paige Desorbo
That's true. It really started in March of 1972, when. When I first saw the movie, I was 19 years old. And one afternoon, some friends and I decided to go see a movie. And I knew absolutely nothing about this movie except on the marquee it said two words, the Godfather. I walk into the theater, the lights go down and the music comes up. The Godfather logo comes on the screen, and the moon face of the undertaker, Buenos Serra comes out of the darkness. And he says, I believe in America. This is a movie, I soon realized, about family and expectations and legacy. And I started thinking about my own family and my own future, which was sort of unsettled then. I didn't know really what I wanted to do. But by the time the movie was over, I felt suddenly a sense of purpose, of wanting to do something in the arts.
- [09:47]
Mark Seal
Which is how you ended up in Robert Evans bed 35 years later. Exactly how did you land the Vanity Fair story? It seems like it would be a dream come true for you.
- [09:57]
Paige Desorbo
It was because at the time I was new to the magazine and the stories that I did were crime, scandal stories that would get me into the pages because they were kind of a must read story of the moment. And you couldn't hold these kinds of stories because the crime had just happened or the scandal had just occurred. The film stories, on the other hand, were for film writers. And I wasn't really a film writer at that point, certainly not for Vanity Fair magazine. So when I had the idea to do the story about the making of the movie of the Godfather, I thought I would be the most unlikely writer to get the job. I thought that the editor of the magazine, Graydon Carter, who is now the editor of Airmail, he could give it to any of his seasoned film writers, of which Vanity Fair had an abundance. But I dutifully wrote a pitch and gave it to my editor, the great Wayne Lawson. And Wayne said, we'll see what Graydon says. So he took it to Graydon, and suddenly they said, you're on.
- [10:57]
Mark Seal
And when you started reporting the story, you started with Robert Evans.
- [11:00]
Paige Desorbo
Exactly. I started with Robert Evans. But soon all roads led to a man equally as mythic as Evans, Charlie Bludorn. He bought Paramount in 1966 and he was known as Hurricane Charlie, an Austrian born business titan. With an insatiable appetite for acquiring companies. His story begins at age 19 in 1942. Charlie was the son of a Jewish mother and he was enrolled in the Carleton School for Boys in Yorkshire, England. And his parents, who had already left war torn Europe for America, gave him a two word directive, leave immediately. So he boards the HMS Hillary bound for America and it was trailed by Nazi submarines intent on seeking it. But thankfully Charlie made it to America.
- [11:55]
Mark Seal
And so he gets to America, Mark, and what does he do?
- [11:58]
Paige Desorbo
Well, he immediately starts working. His daughter told me that there was never a day in Charlie Bludorn's life when he wasn't thinking about business or working a business. And there's a story when he was a very, very young man, he got a job as a broker in a commodities house in New York City. And he was soon bringing in a million dollars a year into this small company. And Charlie had the ability to sell anything and everything, even spaghetti, which he was selling to of all places, Italy. As if Italy didn't already have enough spaghetti. Then he got into the coffee business and then he got into the auto parts business. And really he had his hands in everything, which is how he started his company, which became a conglomerate he called Gulf and Western, which signaled his ambitions to stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the western Canadian border.
- [12:56]
Mark Seal
Bludorn had a huge appetite for what most people would consider ill advised business ventures. He loved what he called rec jobs which are businesses that are almost beyond repair. And in 1966 he bought what he thought was the biggest wreck job of them all. Paramount Pictures.
- [13:14]
Paige Desorbo
That's right. Paramount was once the fabled studio that produced so many classics. Double Indemnity, the Lost Weekend, Breakfast at Tiffany's, the list goes on and on and on. But by the 60s, Paramount was in trouble. Robert Evans famously once said there were eight major studios at the time and Paramount was ninth and Hurricane. Charlie felt like he wanted to buy something that he could revive. The only thing in this case is that Charlie knew absolutely nothing about the movie business.
- [13:46]
Mark Seal
And that fits with what Barry Diller said about him, which is that to Charlie, the only thing that was worth anything was doing the impossible.
- [13:53]
Paige Desorbo
Yes, and Paramount was the impossible job. Like so many immigrants to America, Charlie thought what could be more American than Hollywood and movies and the dreams that they sold? I mean, he loved what he called the schmaltz factor. Movies like Doctor Zhivago and the Sound of Music, all of these things represented America to him. And he thought he could identify the secret ingredient that made the Magic. So he felt like he could run the studio, at least in the beginning. And Charlie, who knew nothing about running a studio, who knew nothing about movies except what he'd seen on the screen, started getting into the editing room and saying things like, I'm gonna remake this whole goddamn town.
- [14:36]
Mark Seal
How did that work for him, thinking that he could re engineer Hollywood?
- [14:40]
Paige Desorbo
Well, as you can imagine, it really didn't work out. He produced a movie called Is Paris Burning? It premiered in Paris, no less. It was a big, big budget movie, but the reviews were quite big. Big, brutal. Mad Magazine even said it should be called Is Paris Boring? It was something of a flop. But Charlie persevered. He would walk through the back lot of Paramount and through the Bonanza set and felt like the studio was just filled with older men who were out of touch and that he was going to remake and rekindle that old Paramount magic again. And Hollywood took one look at Charlie Bludhorn and many people laughed.
- [15:21]
Mark Seal
They called him a cliche, a show business neophyte who had no sense of what art is. And they sort of dismissed him as a know nothing.
- [15:31]
Paige Desorbo
Yes, but he proved him wrong. Because underneath the scorn and the laughter, Charlie was smart. He was brilliant. He knew he had to do something. And what he had to do was find what he called, and this was one of his favorite terms, a genius.
- [15:49]
Mark Seal
And by genius, he means artistic genius, right?
- [15:52]
Paige Desorbo
Well, I think he meant a business genius. Someone who could guide him through the treacheries of Hollywood, which can be a cutthroat town if you don't know what you're doing. He wanted a genius to help him revive the studio, revive the magic, to make the movies like Paramount used to make. And that's how he found the most unlikely genius of them all, Robert Evans.
- [16:17]
Mark Seal
Where did he dig up Evans?
- [16:19]
Paige Desorbo
Funny enough, he found him in the New York Times. It was an article written by Peter Bart, a young reporter who we'll talk about later. And the story was about this rising producer who was on the lookout for books and scripts and properties that he could make into films. And the headline was, and I love this one. I like it, I want it. Let's sew it up.
- [16:41]
Mark Seal
Mark. That headline sort of gives you a hint as to what Robert Evans was doing before he got in the producing business.
- [16:47]
Paige Desorbo
Exactly. So Evans was in the clothing business. He and his brother, Charlie Evans were partners in a company called Evan Bacone Clothing Company. And so Bob traveled to LA often, and one day he's sitting out by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel. And this shows how lucky Evans was. Norma Shearer, the famous actress, was on the lookout for the perfect actor to play her late husband, the producer Irving Thalberg, in a movie called the Man With a Thousand Faces. And she took one look at Evans by the pool, who was so handsome and deeply tanned, and said, that's him. So she sends her new husband over to make an introduction. The three of them get to talking and Shearer asks Evans if he's an actor. And Evans, being Evans, says, no, I'm in ladies pants.
- [17:40]
Mark Seal
It's 1956 and just like that, Robert Evans is an actor.
- [17:45]
Paige Desorbo
It's as easy as that. He stars in the movie the Man With a Thousand Faces, with no less than James Cagney. And pretty soon he's in other films, including the Sun Also Rises. And according to Evans, the cast and crew were so skeptical about his acting abilities that some of them threatened to walk off the set over it. And Daryl Zanuck, the producer, heard about it. And in a classic scene with a bullhorn while Evans is in the bullfighting ring, Zanuck yells out, the kid stays in the picture. And that becomes the title of Robert Evans autobiography.
- [18:26]
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- [19:55]
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- [20:57]
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- [21:00]
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- [21:02]
Paige Desorbo
Yep.
- [21:03]
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Paige Desorbo
Wow.
- [21:21]
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- [21:38]
Paige Desorbo
Okay, then. So the first room we're looking at is for guests coming over.
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- [21:56]
Mark Seal
So he's working as an actor. How does he get into production?
- [22:00]
Paige Desorbo
Well, you can say a lot of things about Robert Evans, but one thing is he's really smart. He's a businessman, first of all. And he started acquiring properties, including a novel, the Detective, which he produced. And it was a fairly substantial hit starring Frank Sinatra, of all people. And suddenly, Evans is a producer, and he became a man about town.
- [22:21]
Mark Seal
And this is when Peter Bart Starts to take notice. He's a young writer fresh from New York in Hollywood to write stories about the town.
- [22:29]
Charlie Bludorn
They wanted a young guy to come out here like this. It was a great job.
- [22:34]
Mark Seal
He keeps hearing about Robert Evans and he thinks to himself, this is the perfect story.
- [22:39]
Charlie Bludorn
I wrote kind of a snarky piece about how this guy from the garment business was buying books and making deals for himself. And he was sort of a glam story about how somebody at a time when Hollywood was in its doldbrooks, could come in and have an impact.
- [22:56]
Paige Desorbo
Yes. And it gets better. Charlie Bludorn reads the story about Robert Evans in the New York Times.
- [23:02]
Charlie Bludorn
What I wrote, which talked about what a self promoter Bob was. Charlie said, ah, this guy's as fucking guy as a sub promoter. He may be a good guy for me.
- [23:11]
Paige Desorbo
He gets on the phone and he says, get Evans up here. And Evans said he wasn't interested. He's out in Hollywood. What's he want to go to New York for? Especially to meet the new owner of Paramount Pictures, the last place studio. But his lawyer, the legendary Greg Baltzer, says Charlie Bludorn, he's a shrewd operator. When he wants something, he wants it. You should get up there and meet him. Evans was reluctant, of course, but he goes to New York, he meets Bludhorn, and like a miracle, like something out of the movie, Charlie Bludhorn taps Robert Evans to run Paramount, first stationing him in London and then bringing him to LA as the head of production.
- [23:54]
Mark Seal
So Charlie Bludorn picked Robert Evans to run Paramount, all on a hunch and a New York Times article.
- [24:00]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah. And Bludorn's wife would later say that maybe he picked him because he was handsome, he was glamorous, he could fit into the town. But if Bludorn was considered a laughingstock when he bought Paramount, oh my gosh. Evans was even more so because people said, what does he know about motion pictures? He's never really produced a movie.
- [24:20]
Mark Seal
What was Evans directive from Bludorn?
- [24:23]
Paige Desorbo
Nothing short of this. Save this studio green light and produce hits quick. Bludhorn told him, Bobby, I want 20 pictures a year from you. I want pictures that people in Cincinnati are gonna wanna see. I want beautiful girls, I want action, I want fun.
- [24:41]
Mark Seal
Charlie had boundless energy and enthusiasm and it seems like Evans fed off of that. His first order of business was to find his own right hand man, right?
- [24:51]
Paige Desorbo
Yes. And this is where it gets even crazier. Who does he hire as his right hand man but the author of the New York Times story about him which got him his job. The reporter, Peter Barth.
- [25:04]
Mark Seal
You get the sense that none of these people actually knew anyone. They kind of just, you know, hired the first person that came to mind.
- [25:12]
Paige Desorbo
It was a comedy of errors. It started that way anyway. Everybody was laughing about these new hires.
- [25:18]
Charlie Bludorn
I took the job because Bob was a friend of mine and he was in a bit over his head and said, you know, can't you work with me? You know, the blind will lead the blind.
- [25:29]
Mark Seal
What was their strategy? How are Evans and Bart going to save the studio?
- [25:34]
Paige Desorbo
Well, their strategy was really pretty simple. Peter Bart was a voracious reader. And Robert Evans, who might not have been, respected his taste in novels. He was looking for hot properties, best selling books that could be turned into films, you know, with all of the attributes that Bludhorn had directed him to find films that could save the studio.
- [25:55]
Mark Seal
And as it turns out, Evans hunch about Peter Bart was actually right. They started unearthing these great stories and hit books and bestsellers that they could make into films. They produced the Odd Couple, Rosemary's Baby, and then finally a Thin book which became an even thinner script which turned into a huge hit for Paramount. Love Story. Starring Evans future wife Ally McGraw.
- [26:24]
Paige Desorbo
Exactly. And love Story was a smash hit. Evans liked to say that people were crying so hard the audience turned into one big Kleenex.
- [26:33]
Mark Seal
But as big of a hit as the film was, they'd need a bigger reprieve for Paramount.
- [26:38]
Paige Desorbo
Yeah, Love Story, as I wrote in the book, was a reprieve, not a rescue. They needed another hit, an even bigger hit. And that's when they found the novel that would become the Godfather.
- [26:52]
Mark Seal
So let's talk about how Paramount came to acquire the rights to the Godfather.
- [26:56]
Paige Desorbo
Well, this is another one of the biggest myths of the Godfather. And who knows what's true and what's not. But Evans knows how to tell a story. He knows how to make a myth out of reality. And this is what he told me. A guy named George Weiser, a veteran of the New York literary scene, calls him up one day and asks him for a favorite.
- [27:17]
Robert Evans
I got a call one day from George Weiser. Do me a favor, Bob. He's a pal of mine. He's a writer named Mario Puzo, a very good writer. He's real short on green. He's deep with the bookies. He owes the bookies a lot of money and he has 35 page treatment called mafia. Meet him will you please and see if you can help him.
- [27:39]
Paige Desorbo
So Evans says, okay, he'll meet with Puzo. And as Evans told me the story, this dead broke, fat writer comes into his office with a 35 page treatment under his arm, a big fat cigar hanging out of his mouth. And pretty soon, over cigars and conversation in Evans's office, the two men strike a deal.
- [28:01]
Robert Evans
35 pages isn't very much. And I didn't know him as an author really, even though he was legitimate author. Well, I'll tell you what, give me 10 GS for it as an option against, let's say, $75,000. It becomes a book. They said, could you make it 15? And then I said, how about 12? Five?
- [28:21]
Mark Seal
I mean, if true, that's really an incredible story that these two men, both desperate in their own way, came together in this twist of fate.
- [28:28]
Paige Desorbo
Exactly. And of course, Evans's version is my favorite version of the events, even though Peter Bart would remember it very differently. So this whole story of Fuso coming in with the 30 pages or whatever and Bob saying, what are you in for?
- [28:43]
Charlie Bludorn
That's nonsense. There were 60 pages. They came in. This big pile of stuff came into me and I read it. Of course, George nagged me to read it, and I thought it was really interesting stuff.
- [28:55]
Mark Seal
Well, for the sake of the story, I'll take Evans version to be true.
- [28:59]
Paige Desorbo
But no matter what, Puzo did sell the option to Paramount for $12,500.
- [29:05]
Mark Seal
And once they made the deal, was Evans hopeful that it would come through?
- [29:09]
Paige Desorbo
Not really. You know, he bought it and basically forgot about it until he heard from Puzo again.
- [29:14]
Robert Evans
A treatment to a movie ticket to a lottery.
- [29:20]
Paige Desorbo
Five months pass, Puzo calls him, says, I gotta speak to you. I'm in LA again.
- [29:25]
Mark Seal
What does he want to talk about.
- [29:26]
Paige Desorbo
The name of the book.
- [29:28]
Robert Evans
He said, would I be in breach of my contract if I changed the name of my book? I forgot he was even writing one. I don't understand. I want to call it the Godfather. I had no idea. I hadn't read one page. I didn't read the 35 page. I did it as a favor. And what became almost as a favor became the biggest favor of my life.
- [30:03]
Paige Desorbo
Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli is a production of Airmail and iHeartMedia.
- [30:08]
Mark Seal
The podcast is based on the book of the same name written by our very own Mark Seal.
- [30:13]
Paige Desorbo
Our producer is Tina Mullen.
- [30:15]
Mark Seal
Research assistants by Jack Sullivan.
- [30:18]
Paige Desorbo
Jonathan Dressler was our development producer.
- [30:21]
Mark Seal
Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our executive producers are me, Nathan King, Mark Seal, Dylan Fagan and Graydon Carter.
- [30:30]
Paige Desorbo
Special thanks to Bridget Arseneault and everyone at CDM Studios.
- [30:35]
Mark Seal
A comprehensive list of sources and acknowledgments can be found in Mark Seale's book Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, published by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster.
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Financial Literacy Advocate
Just personal they include a lot more people than ourselves, loved ones, neighbors, the.
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Paige Desorbo
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Financial Literacy Advocate
Are you still quoting 30 year old movies?
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