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Mario Puzo
said
The horse's head in the producer's bed was totally my imagination. I made it up based on Sicilian folklore.
— Quoted in James Bone, '‘Godfather’ tale was based on Mob links', The Times (May 16, 1998), p. 4
Mario Puzo
American author, screenwriter, and journalist
- Fame63.0
- Momentum0.3
- Writers rank#237
Source-basedStable
- Fame63.0
- Momentum0.3
- Writers rank#237
- Wikipedia43.1K
Lived 1920–1999, aged 79United States
Summary
Updated 2026-06-08
He wrote The Godfather to get out of debt, then won two Oscars adapting it with Coppola. The novel that defined how the world pictures organized crime came from a guy who'd never met a mobster.
Biography
About
Mario Francis Puzo was born October 15, 1920, and spent decades writing without much money or notice. The Godfather arrived in 1969—a crime novel about the Italian-American Mafia that he'd researched entirely from books and news clippings, no field work. It became a sensation. Francis Ford Coppola brought him in to co-write the screenplay, and they won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1972, then again for Part II in 1974. Between Mafia sequels Puzo wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film and its 1980 follow-up. He continued writing crime novels about the Sicili…
Voice
In their own words
Sourced, dated quotes from Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo
said
I'm fascinated by the movies simply because it is an enormous machine for making money and no matter how badly they run it, it still makes money.
— Quoted in Ivor Davis, 'Hollywood: still a money spinner', The Times (September 26, 1978), p. 21
Mario Puzo
saidundated
The Mafia liked the book. They come out looking good. Of course, it's a romantic novel and the Mafia is romanticized.
— The first interview he granted after the publication of The Godfather, quoted in Jacquin Sanders, 'Mario Puzo: Author of ‘The Godfather’',
Mario Puzo
saidundated
I thought of it as a man's book. I have no idea why women like it, too. The book is an ironic commentary on romantic love.
— The first interview he granted after the publication of The Godfather, quoted in Jacquin Sanders, 'Mario Puzo: Author of ‘The Godfather’',
Mario Puzo
saidundated
I think of Wall Street guys as the crookedest in the world... They're [judges] the most corrupt part of the system...
— The first interview he granted after the publication of The Godfather, quoted in Jacquin Sanders, 'Mario Puzo: Author of ‘The Godfather’',
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By the numbers
Score breakdown
The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.
Fame
Stable63.0
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum0.3
Historical25.6
Source confidence70.0
Completeness80.0
Receipts
Sources
- WikidataHigh confidencewikidata · wikidata.org
- WikipediaHigh confidencewikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
- Pantheon 2.0High confidencedatabase · pantheon.world
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