Puzo was born in a poor family of Neapolitan immigrants living in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York. Many of his books draw heavily on this heritage. After graduating from the City College of New York, he joined the United States Army Air Forces in World War II. Due to his poor eyesight, the military did not let him undertake combat duties but made him a public relations officer stationed in Germany. In 1950, his first short story, The Last Christmas, was published in American Vanguard. After the war, he wrote his first book, The Dark Arena, which was published in 1955.At periods in the 1950s and early 1960s, Puzo worked as a writer/editor for publisher Martin Goodman's Magazine Management Company. Puzo, along with other writers like Bruce Jay Friedman, worked for the company line of men's magazines, pulp titles like Male, True Action, and Swank. Under the pseudonym Mario Cleri, Puzo wrote World War II adventure features for True Action.Puzo's most famous work, The Godfather, was first published in 1969 after he had heard anecdotes about Mafia organizations during his time in pulp journalism. He later said in an interview with Larry King that his principal motivation was to make money. He had already, after all, written two books that had received great reviews, yet had not amounted to much. As a government clerk with five children, he was looking to write something that would appeal to the masses. With a number one bestseller for months on the New York Times Best Seller List, Mario Puzo had found his target audience. The book was later developed into the film The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The movie received 11 Academy Award nominations, winning three, including an Oscar for Puzo for Best Adapted Screenplay. Coppola and Puzo collaborated then to work on sequels to the original film, The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III.Puzo wrote the first draft of the script for the 1974 disaster film Earthquake, which he was unable to continue working on due to his commitment to The Godfather Part II. Puzo also co-wrote Richard Donner's Superman and the original draft for Superman II. He also collaborated on the stories for the 1982 film A Time to Die and the 1984 Francis Ford Coppola film The Cotton Club.Puzo never saw the publication of his penultimate book, Omertà, but the manuscript was finished before his death, as was the manuscript for The Family. However, in a review originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Jules Siegel, who had worked closely with Puzo at Magazine Management Company, speculated that Omertà may have been completed by "some talentless hack." Siegel also acknowledges the temptation to "rationalize avoiding what is probably the correct analysis -- that [Puzo] wrote it and it is terrible."Puzo died of heart failure on July 2, 1999 at his home in Bay Shore, Long Island, New York. His family now lives in East Islip, New York.
Early in his career, he worked for a NYC company called Magazine Management that among other things actually wrote fake celebrity stories for fan magazines. His co-workers there included not just one but two other writers who went on to pen their own best-sellers, Bruce Jay Friedman and Dorothy Gallagher.
Was writing a story outline for a fourth "Godfather" film before he died.
He had five children: Anthony, Joseph, Dorothy Ann Puzo , Virginia and Eugene.
Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, Vol. 131, pages 366-373. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.
Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 494-496. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Wrote the first draft of Earthquake in mid-1972. When the film was pushed into production in mid-1973, Puzo had to quit the project due to his commitment to writing The Godfather: Part II . As the final script featured elements of his original, he was one of the two writers credited for Earthquake . In 1975, a minor legal dispute arose between Puzo and Universal over his share of the profits, which was quickly settled.
In the foreword of his 1972 autobiography, "The Godfather Papers & Other Confessions", he explains that "The Godfather", though a best seller, was his least favorite book, but hated when people knocked it solely because it was a best seller.
In the 1950s and 1960s he worked at Magazine Management which was owned by Martin Goodman, whose company also owned Timely Comics, which later became known as Marvel Comics. He decided to try his hand at writing a comic book, but told Stan Lee that he couldnt meet the monthly deadlines. Stan Lee had the opposite problem: he could work under pressure to produce a monthly comic, but didnt have the discipline to write a novel. While Puzo became better known for writing novels, he did eventually succeed in the comic book genre by writing the first two Superman films.
The best way to launch an Italian restaurant is to have it raided,because the Mafia eats there. Everybody knows they eat well.
Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
I have no such powers. If I did I would be more merciful than God, believe me.
Michael could never remember his father ever having uttered a word about death, as if the Don respected death too much to philosophize about it.
Not to be rich, but to have money; to have money like a wall to put your back to, and then face the world.
Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.
The fact of the matter is that I wanted to hold a grudge in some funny kind of way. Against everybody.
Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .
Preparing the communal evening meal sometimes caused arguments. Every village in Sicily had a different recipe for squid and eels, disagreed on what herbs should be disbarred from the tomato sauce. And whether sausages should ever be baked.
And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man.
What would the world come to if people kept carrying grudges against all reason? That has been the cross of Sicily, where men are so busy with vendettas they have no time to earn bread for their families.
Behind every successful fortune there is a crime.
I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.
The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed.
Don had made a fewer mistakes and learned from every one of them,At that moment Sonny noticed that the other car had not kept going but had parked a few feet ahead, still blocking his way. At that same moment his lateral vision caught sight of another man in the darkened tollbooth to his right. But he did not have time to think about that because two men came out of the car parked in front and walked toward him. The toll collector still had not appeared. And then in the fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone he knew he was a dead man. And in that moment his mind was lucid, drained of all violence, as if the hidden fear finally real and present had purified him.
At that moment Sonny noticed that the other car had not kept going but had parked a few feet ahead, still blocking his way. At that same moment his lateral vision caught sight of another man in the darkened tollbooth to his right. But he did not have time to think about that because two men came out of the car parked in front and walked toward him. The toll collector still had not appeared. And then in the fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man. And in that moment his mind was lucid, drained of all violence, as if the hidden fear finally real and present had purified him.
Kurt Cilke liked dogs because they could not conspire. They could not hide hostility, and they were not cunning. They did not lie awake at night planning to rob and murder other dogs. Treachery was beyond their scope.
Never show anger at slight,Tell nothing. Earn Respect from everyone by deeds,not Words. Respect the members of your Blood Family. Gambling was Recreation,Not a way to earn a Living. Love your Father,your Mother,your Sister but beware of Loving any other Woman than your Wife. And a Wife was a woman who bore your Children. And once that happened to You,your Life was Forfeit to give them their daily bread,Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.
Friendship and money: oil and water.
A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns. .
