Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [151]
When I was nominated for The Godfather, it seemed absurd to go to the Awards ceremonies. Celebrating an industry that had systematically misrepresented and maligned American Indians for six decades, while at that moment two hundred Indians were under siege at Wounded Knee, was ludicrous. Still, if I did win an Oscar, I realized it could provide the first opportunity in history for an American Indian to speak to sixty million people—a little payback for years of defamation by Hollywood. So I asked a friend, Sacheen Little Feather, to attend the ceremony in my place and wrote a statement for her to deliver in my name denouncing the treatment of American Indians and racism in general. But Howard Koch, the producer of the show, intercepted her and, in his wisdom, refused to let her read my speech. Instead, under great pressure she had to adlib a few words on behalf of the American Indian, and it made me proud of her.
I don’t know what happened to that Oscar. The Motion Picture Academy may have sent it to me, but if it did I don’t know where it is now.
Mario Puzo sent me a copy of The Godfather shortly after it was published, along with a note saying that if a movie was ever made from the book, he thought I should play Don Corleone, the head of the New York Mafia family he had written about. I read the note but wasn’t interested. Alice Marchak remembers my throwing it away and saying, “I’m not a Mafia godfather.” I had never played an Italian before, and I didn’t think I could do it successfully. By then I had learned that one of the biggest mistakes an actor can make is to try to play a role for which he is miscast. You have to take a few risks now and then, but some parts you shouldn’t play no matter how much they pay you, just as some roles are best left alone because they’ve already been done unforgettably by someone else. Only a foolish actor, for example, would try to succeed Jimmy Cagney as George M. Cohan, Robert Donat as Mr. Chips or Charles Laughton as the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
But Alice took the book home, read it and said she thought I should take the part if it was offered me. She didn’t change my mind, though I did call Mario without having read the book and thanked him for his note. Mario, who had sold the film rights to Paramount, began writing a screenplay based on the book and called me from time to time and encouraged me to reconsider, without telling me that he was lobbying on my behalf at Paramount, where, he later informed me, executives were dead set against my playing the role. The principal resistance came from Charles Bluhdorn, head of Paramount’s parent company, Gulf + Western, and Robert Evans, the chief of production. Bluhdorn believed some of the stories he’d read about my supposed excesses on Mutiny on the Bounty, and since Paramount had lost a lot of money recently, he didn’t want to risk losing more on the The Godfather. To Evans I looked too young to play Don Corleone, who aged in the story from his late forties to his early seventies. I was then forty-seven.
When Mario sent me the finished screenplay, I read both it and his book and liked them. By then Francis Coppola had signed on as director and was beginning to rewrite portions of Mario’s script. He also said that he wanted me to play the part, and suggested that I audition for it to convince the executives at Paramount. I told him I had my own doubts, but said I’d let him know.
I went home and did some rehearsing to satisfy my curiosity about whether I could play an Italian. I put on some makeup, stuffed Kleenex in my cheeks, and worked out the characterization first in front of a mirror, then on a television monitor. After working on it, I decided I could create a characterization that would support the story. The people at Paramount saw the footage and liked it, and that’s how I became the Godfather.
A month or two before we were scheduled to start shooting, someone at Paramount—I think it was Evans—said that I looked too heavy to play the part,