Did you know that The Godfather did not fall out of the sky as a perfectly formed completed motion picture? Furthermore, did you know that not only did it have to be produced for a major movie studio, but said production was in fact quite contentious and difficult? It’s true!

In fact, the woes of The Godfather’s making – young maverick director Francis Ford Coppola’s battles with the Paramount brass over his wishes to cast a group of unknowns (including Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, and Diane Keaton) and known troublemaker Marlon Brando, his fight to keep the penny-pinchers from modernizing the period tale, his tension with the New York mob bosses who inspired it and the Italian-American groups who objected to it, a whisper campaign to replace the director mid-production – have been pretty well-documented!