The Godfather Part II


3h 20m 1974
The Godfather Part II

Brief Synopsis

The contrasting lives of Corleone father and son traces the problems of Michael Corleone in 1958 and young immigrant Vito Corleone in 1917's Hell's Kitchen. Michael survives many misfortunes, and Vito is introduced to a life of crime.

Film Details

Also Known As
Godfather 2, The, Godfather II, Godfather Part 2, Godfather, Part 2, Part II, Gudfadern - del 2, Mario Puzo's The Godfather: Part II, parrain, 2ème partie
MPAA Rating
Genre
Action
Adaptation
Crime
Drama
Sequel
Release Date
Jan 1974
Premiere Information
not available
Production Company
The Coppola Company
Distribution Company
Paramount Pictures Corp.
Country
United States
Location
New York City, New York, USA; Sicily, Italy; Nevada, USA; Sicily, Italy

Technical Specs

Duration
3h 20m
Sound
Mono
Color
Color (Technicolor)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio
1.85 : 1

Synopsis

Continuing saga of the Corleone family as they move to Nevada and make the casino business their major income source under the leadership of the increasingly paranoid and malevolent Michael, whose reign as the "Don" is juxtaposed against the parallel tale of his father's escape from Sicily as a young boy and his subsequent rise to power in New York's Lower East Side during the turn-of-the-century.

Crew

Newton Arnold

Assistant Director

B J Bachman

Script Supervisor

Howard Beals

Sound Effects Editor

Mark Berger

Sound

George Berndt

Assistant Editor

Burt Bluestein

Assistant Director

Jerry Bock

Song

Nathan Boxer

Rerecording Assistant

George Brand

Music Editor

Tony Brandt

Assistant Director

Sandra Burke

Wardrobe

James Caan

Special Thanks To

Serena Canevari

Script Supervisor

Randy B Carter

Location Assistant

Naomi Cavin

Hair Stylist

Joe Chevalier

Assistant Set Decorator

Carmine Coppola

Music Composer

Carmine Coppola

Music Conductor

Francis Ford Coppola

Producer

Francis Ford Coppola

Screenplay

Mario Cotone

Unit Manager

Valerio De Paolis

Production Supervisor

Emy Desica

Casting

Jack English

Location Coordinator

Jane Feinberg

Casting

Mike Fenton

Casting

Deborah Fine

Researcher

A. D. Flowers

Special Effects

John Franco

Script Supervisor

Gray Frederickson

Coproducer

Sonya Friedman

Other

Jim Fritch

Sound Effects Editor

Lisa Fruchtman

Assistant Editor

William Gereghty

Camera Assistant

Ralph Gerling

Camera Operator

Michael S Glick

Production Manager

Angelo Graham

Art Director

Edwin Guthman

Advisor

George Holmes

Gaffer

Larry Holofcener

Song

Alan Hopkins

Assistant Director

Mona Houghton

Location Assistant

Pat Jackson

Sound

Jim Klinger

Sound Effects Editor

Bobbe P Kurtz

Assistant Editor

Mike Kusley

Assistant Director

Henry J Lange

Assistant Director

Joe Lombardi

Special Effects

Maurizio Lucci

Casting

Douglas T Madison

Props

Barry Malkin

Editor

Richard Marks

Editor

Melissa Mathison

Location Assistant

Nancy Mcardle

Wardrobe

Walter Murch

Sound

Charles Myers

Assistant Director

George R. Nelson

Set Decorator

Tammy Newell

Other

George Newman

Wardrobe

Marie Osborne

Wardrobe

Francesco Pennini

Music

Bruno Perria

Production Assistant

Romano Pianti

Interpreter

Marilyn Putnam

Wardrobe

Mario Puzo

Screenplay

Mario Puzo

Source Material (From Novel)

Vic Ramos

Casting

Fred Roos

Coproducer

Bob Rose

Key Grip

Nino Rota

Music

Charles Schram

Makeup

Eric Seelig

Wardrobe

V Bud Shelton

Props

Nanette Siegert

Other

Mona Skager

Associate Producer

Carl Skelton

Auditor

Dick Smith

Makeup

Dean Tavoularis

Production Designer

Theadora Van Runkle

Costume Designer

George David Weiss

Song

Tommy Welsh

Wardrobe

Chuck Wilborn

Rerecording Assistant

Gordon Willis

Director Of Photography

Gordon Willis

Dp/Cinematographer

Peter Zinner

Editor

Peter Zinner

Post-Production

Film Details

Also Known As
Godfather 2, The, Godfather II, Godfather Part 2, Godfather, Part 2, Part II, Gudfadern - del 2, Mario Puzo's The Godfather: Part II, parrain, 2ème partie
MPAA Rating
Genre
Action
Adaptation
Crime
Drama
Sequel
Release Date
Jan 1974
Premiere Information
not available
Production Company
The Coppola Company
Distribution Company
Paramount Pictures Corp.
Country
United States
Location
New York City, New York, USA; Sicily, Italy; Nevada, USA; Sicily, Italy

Technical Specs

Duration
3h 20m
Sound
Mono
Color
Color (Technicolor)
Theatrical Aspect Ratio
1.85 : 1

Award Wins

Set Decoration

1975

Best Director

1974
Francis Ford Coppola

Best Music Original Dramatic Score

1975

Best Picture

1974

Best Supporting Actor

1974
Michael V Gazzo

Best Supporting Actor

1974
Lee Strasberg

Best Writing, Screenplay

1975
Francis Ford Coppola

Award Nominations

Best Actor

1974
Al Pacino

Best Costume Design

1974
Theadora Van Runkle

Best Supporting Actress

1974
Talia Shire

Articles

The Godfather: Part II - The Godfather, Part II


The Godfather (1972) had been such a box-office and critical sensation, that Paramount Studios wanted to make a follow-up quickly. Francis Ford Coppola, who had directed the first film, was not interested because the studio had nearly fired him from the first production several times. He suggested Martin Scorsese but Paramount refused. Coppola finally gave in when the studio agreed to his demands. Those demands were: "[T]hat the sequel be interconnected with the first film with the intention of later showing them together; that he be allowed to direct his own script of The Conversation (1974); that he be allowed to direct a production for the San Francisco Opera; and that he be allowed to write the screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974) - all prior to production of the sequel for a Christmas 1974 release." Coppola later remembered, "I looked at the calendar and realized that I had three months to write a two-hundred-page screenplay for Godfather II (1974), and then go right into pre-production."

Coppola's idea for the sequel would be to "juxtapose the ascension of the family under Vito Corleone with the decline of the family under his son Michael...I had always wanted to write a screenplay that told the story of a father and a son at the same age. They were both in their thirties and I would integrate the two stories...In order not to merely make Godfather I over again, I gave Godfather II this double structure by extending the story in both the past and in the present."

Gene Phillips wrote in his book Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola, "Many of the actors from The Godfather reprised their roles in Godfather II: Al Pacino, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, and Robert Duvall all returned. As for new members of the cast, Coppola was at pains to find the right actor to play Vito Corleone as a young man. He tested Robert De Niro. 'I thought De Niro had a sort of stately bearing, as if he really was the young Vito who would grow into that older man who was Marlon Brando in Godfather I. He had grace.' As a matter of fact, De Niro had spent some time in his apprenticeship days as a young actor studying Brando's acting style and was able to recreate in Godfather II Brando's measured gestures and calm, convincing voice." Ironically, De Niro had auditioned unsuccessfully for a role in the first film, but when Coppola saw his performance in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) he brought him back to audition again. Because his dialogue in the film would be in Sicilian, which he did not speak or understand, De Niro prepared for his role by living in Sicily. His Sicilian was convincing enough to win De Niro a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for his performance. Interestingly, De Niro and Brando are the only two actors to date who have won an Academy Award for portraying the same character.

Casting the rest of the film was not so smooth. Marlon Brando was supposed to make a cameo appearance in the film during the scene in which the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor on his birthday, December 7th. Angered by the way he was treated by Paramount during the first film, Brando simply neglected to show up that day for filming and the lines were hastily rewritten. James Caan only appeared in flashback towards the end of the film, but he asked for (and got) the same salary he made for the entire filming of The Godfather three years before. Richard Castellano, who had been the highest paid actor in the first film, was not so lucky. He wanted a bigger salary and the freedom to have his lines written by a writer of his own choosing. Coppola refused and instead rewrote Castellano's character Clemenza as Frankie Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo, who earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Acting legend Lee Strasberg was talked out of retirement by Coppola's father Carmine, and when Strasberg's health failed, the character of Hyman Roth was rewritten to accommodate his illness. Roth was reportedly based upon real-life gangster Meyer Lansky, who actually phoned Strasberg after the film's release to congratulate him on his performance. The role of Merle Johnson went to former teen idol Troy Donahue, who had known Coppola when the two attended military school. Donahue's real name was Merle Johnson. Danny Aiello, appearing in his third film, improvised the line "Michael Corleone says hello" while committing a murder. After stopping the scene, Coppola asked Aiello what he had said in the first take and liked the line so much, he told Aiello to say it again.

Shooting for The Godfather Part II began on October 23, 1973 at Lake Tahoe, where the Fleur de Lac estate served as location for the Corleone's compound. Interiors were filmed at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Paramount had been bought by the conglomerate Gulf and Western in 1966, and part of its holdings included extensive property in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic where the Cuba sequences of the film were shot. While filming in Santo Domingo, Al Pacino developed pneumonia. During his month-long convalescence, the company moved operations to New York City where shooting began on the young Vito Corleone's flashbacks, which were filmed on East Sixth Street in Lower Manhattan, between Avenues A and B. Later filming would move to Miami, Las Vegas, New York City, Sicily and Italy.

When The Godfather Part II was released in December 1974, critics were mixed in their reception. Some, like Vincent Canby found it "a Frankenstein monster stitched together from leftover parts. It talks. It moves in fits and starts but it has no mind of its own. Occasionally it repeats a point made in The Godfather (organized crime is just another kind of American business, say) but its insights are fairly lame at this point." Roger Ebert agreed that the narrative structure was weak, but noted that Coppola "reveals himself as a master of mood, atmosphere, and period. And his exposition is inventive and subtle." Years later the film would be edited together in chronological order as The Godfather Saga and shown on television.

Like its predecessor, The Godfather Part II was a box-office hit and won several Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Robert De Niro, Best Director for Francis Ford Coppola, Best Music, Original Dramatic Score for Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Coppola and Mario Puzo, author of the original novel and co-author of the first Godfather screenplay.

Producer/Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo (based on the novel The Godfather)
Cinematography: Gordon Willis
Production Design: Dean Tavoularis
Art Direction: Angelo P. Graham
Music: Nino Rota
Costume Design: Theadora Van Runkle
Film Editing: Barry Malkin, Richard Marks, Peter Zinner
Cast: Al Pacino (Don Michael Corleone), Robert Duvall (Tom Hagen), Diane Keaton (Kay Corleone), Robert De Niro (Vito Corleone), John Cazale (Fredo Corleone), Talia Shire (Connie Corleone), Lee Strasberg (Hyman Roth), Michael V. Gazzo (Frankie Pentangeli), G.D. Spradlin (Senator Pat Geary), Bruno Kirby (Peter), James Caan (Sonny Corleone), Troy Donahue (Merle Johnson), Dominic Chianese (Johnny Ola), Joe Spinell (Willie Cicci), Abe Vigoda (Salvatore "Sally" Tessio), Leopoldo Trieste (Signor Roberto), Harry Dean Stanton (FBI agent), Fay Spain (Mrs. Marcia Roth).
C-200m.

by Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:

Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola by Gene D. Phillips

The Internet Movie Database
The Godfather: Part Ii - The Godfather, Part Ii

The Godfather: Part II - The Godfather, Part II

The Godfather (1972) had been such a box-office and critical sensation, that Paramount Studios wanted to make a follow-up quickly. Francis Ford Coppola, who had directed the first film, was not interested because the studio had nearly fired him from the first production several times. He suggested Martin Scorsese but Paramount refused. Coppola finally gave in when the studio agreed to his demands. Those demands were: "[T]hat the sequel be interconnected with the first film with the intention of later showing them together; that he be allowed to direct his own script of The Conversation (1974); that he be allowed to direct a production for the San Francisco Opera; and that he be allowed to write the screenplay for The Great Gatsby (1974) - all prior to production of the sequel for a Christmas 1974 release." Coppola later remembered, "I looked at the calendar and realized that I had three months to write a two-hundred-page screenplay for Godfather II (1974), and then go right into pre-production." Coppola's idea for the sequel would be to "juxtapose the ascension of the family under Vito Corleone with the decline of the family under his son Michael...I had always wanted to write a screenplay that told the story of a father and a son at the same age. They were both in their thirties and I would integrate the two stories...In order not to merely make Godfather I over again, I gave Godfather II this double structure by extending the story in both the past and in the present." Gene Phillips wrote in his book Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola, "Many of the actors from The Godfather reprised their roles in Godfather II: Al Pacino, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, and Robert Duvall all returned. As for new members of the cast, Coppola was at pains to find the right actor to play Vito Corleone as a young man. He tested Robert De Niro. 'I thought De Niro had a sort of stately bearing, as if he really was the young Vito who would grow into that older man who was Marlon Brando in Godfather I. He had grace.' As a matter of fact, De Niro had spent some time in his apprenticeship days as a young actor studying Brando's acting style and was able to recreate in Godfather II Brando's measured gestures and calm, convincing voice." Ironically, De Niro had auditioned unsuccessfully for a role in the first film, but when Coppola saw his performance in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) he brought him back to audition again. Because his dialogue in the film would be in Sicilian, which he did not speak or understand, De Niro prepared for his role by living in Sicily. His Sicilian was convincing enough to win De Niro a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® for his performance. Interestingly, De Niro and Brando are the only two actors to date who have won an Academy Award for portraying the same character. Casting the rest of the film was not so smooth. Marlon Brando was supposed to make a cameo appearance in the film during the scene in which the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor on his birthday, December 7th. Angered by the way he was treated by Paramount during the first film, Brando simply neglected to show up that day for filming and the lines were hastily rewritten. James Caan only appeared in flashback towards the end of the film, but he asked for (and got) the same salary he made for the entire filming of The Godfather three years before. Richard Castellano, who had been the highest paid actor in the first film, was not so lucky. He wanted a bigger salary and the freedom to have his lines written by a writer of his own choosing. Coppola refused and instead rewrote Castellano's character Clemenza as Frankie Pentangeli, played by Michael V. Gazzo, who earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Acting legend Lee Strasberg was talked out of retirement by Coppola's father Carmine, and when Strasberg's health failed, the character of Hyman Roth was rewritten to accommodate his illness. Roth was reportedly based upon real-life gangster Meyer Lansky, who actually phoned Strasberg after the film's release to congratulate him on his performance. The role of Merle Johnson went to former teen idol Troy Donahue, who had known Coppola when the two attended military school. Donahue's real name was Merle Johnson. Danny Aiello, appearing in his third film, improvised the line "Michael Corleone says hello" while committing a murder. After stopping the scene, Coppola asked Aiello what he had said in the first take and liked the line so much, he told Aiello to say it again. Shooting for The Godfather Part II began on October 23, 1973 at Lake Tahoe, where the Fleur de Lac estate served as location for the Corleone's compound. Interiors were filmed at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood. Paramount had been bought by the conglomerate Gulf and Western in 1966, and part of its holdings included extensive property in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic where the Cuba sequences of the film were shot. While filming in Santo Domingo, Al Pacino developed pneumonia. During his month-long convalescence, the company moved operations to New York City where shooting began on the young Vito Corleone's flashbacks, which were filmed on East Sixth Street in Lower Manhattan, between Avenues A and B. Later filming would move to Miami, Las Vegas, New York City, Sicily and Italy. When The Godfather Part II was released in December 1974, critics were mixed in their reception. Some, like Vincent Canby found it "a Frankenstein monster stitched together from leftover parts. It talks. It moves in fits and starts but it has no mind of its own. Occasionally it repeats a point made in The Godfather (organized crime is just another kind of American business, say) but its insights are fairly lame at this point." Roger Ebert agreed that the narrative structure was weak, but noted that Coppola "reveals himself as a master of mood, atmosphere, and period. And his exposition is inventive and subtle." Years later the film would be edited together in chronological order as The Godfather Saga and shown on television. Like its predecessor, The Godfather Part II was a box-office hit and won several Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Robert De Niro, Best Director for Francis Ford Coppola, Best Music, Original Dramatic Score for Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Coppola and Mario Puzo, author of the original novel and co-author of the first Godfather screenplay. Producer/Director: Francis Ford Coppola Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo (based on the novel The Godfather) Cinematography: Gordon Willis Production Design: Dean Tavoularis Art Direction: Angelo P. Graham Music: Nino Rota Costume Design: Theadora Van Runkle Film Editing: Barry Malkin, Richard Marks, Peter Zinner Cast: Al Pacino (Don Michael Corleone), Robert Duvall (Tom Hagen), Diane Keaton (Kay Corleone), Robert De Niro (Vito Corleone), John Cazale (Fredo Corleone), Talia Shire (Connie Corleone), Lee Strasberg (Hyman Roth), Michael V. Gazzo (Frankie Pentangeli), G.D. Spradlin (Senator Pat Geary), Bruno Kirby (Peter), James Caan (Sonny Corleone), Troy Donahue (Merle Johnson), Dominic Chianese (Johnny Ola), Joe Spinell (Willie Cicci), Abe Vigoda (Salvatore "Sally" Tessio), Leopoldo Trieste (Signor Roberto), Harry Dean Stanton (FBI agent), Fay Spain (Mrs. Marcia Roth). C-200m. by Lorraine LoBianco SOURCES: Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola by Gene D. Phillips The Internet Movie Database

TCM Remembers - Pauline Kael/Troy Donahue


PAULINE KAEL 1919-2001

Pauline Kael, who died September 3rd at the age of 82, was one of the handful of film critics who made a noticable impact on the way we view movies. Her mix of personal feelings with more abstract aesthetics inspired numerous other critics (sometimes called "Paulettes") and in a few cases even made big hits of movies like Bonnie and Clyde (1967). She claimed to never see a movie more than once or to change her mind about it later. Several collections of her work are available, most with mildly risque titles like I Lost It at the Movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Going Steady.

Kael was born June 19, 1919 in Petaluma, California but moved with her family to San Francisco during her teens. There she majored in philosophy at University of California at Berkeley though she didn't graduate (the school later gave her an honorary degree). That's when she started to develop a serious interest in movies. In addition to the usual writer's assortment of jobs (seamstress, cook, retail clerk) she started writing about film in 1953; her first review was of Charlie Chaplin's Limelight which she disliked. She wrote for several small publications and did a radio show on the groundbreaking network KPFA before finally landing a job at the high-profile McCall's only to be fired shortly after she panned The Sound of Music (1965) (which she called The Sound of Money). During this period she was also managing and programming Berkeley Cinema Guild Theatres (one of the country's earliest repertoire cinemas despite being basically small rooms above a laundry), and was briefly married to avant-garde filmmaker James Broughton.

The turning point came in 1965 when I Lost It at the Movies not only attracted major critical attention but became a strong seller in book stores. Two years later legendary editor William Shawn hired Kael as film critic for The New Yorker, completing her jump into the limelight. Kael never shied away from controversy as two other events proved. In the early Sixties she engaged in an infamous and surprisingly bitter debate with critic Andrew Sarris among others about the merits of auteurism, the French-born philosophy that believes the director is the chief creative person behind any film. Kael's anti-intellectual streak came forward but since auteurism wasn't meant to be a genuinely rigorous theory (such attempts came later in the 70s) this was a sort of Brer Rabbit vs. tar baby fight that Kael could never win. The other notorious controversy occured in 1971 with her essay "Raising Kane" which was intended to show that screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz deserved as much if not more credit for Citizen Kane (1941) than Orson Welles. While Mankiewicz's contribution had clearly been underappreciated, most of Kael's conclusions and even some of her factual basis have been disproven though she never bothered to revise the essay.

In 1979, Kael made a detour to Hollywood by the urging of Warren Beatty. She was meant to be an "executive consultant" at Paramount but actually making movies is quite a different matter than writing about them so Kael lasted only five months. She went back to The New Yorker, eventually retiring in 1991 partly as a result of Parkinson's Syndrome. She still kept up with movies though, loving such smaller films as Vanya on 42nd Street and actors like Jim Carrey (who "has practically kept movies alive the past few years" she said in 1998).

By Lang Thompson

Troy Donahue 1936-2001

Troy Donahue died September 2nd at the age of 65. He was a fixture in movies during the 1950s, playing an assortment of heartthrobs and borderline tough guys. Donahue was actually Merle Johnson Jr, born in New York City on Jan 27, 1936. He went to Columbia University and started acting in small theatrical roles which eventually led to film appearances, the earliest ones uncredited. His first was Man Afraid (1957) but Donahue also made brief TV appearances at the time on shows like Wagon Train. He signed with Warner Brothers in 1959 and immediately jumped to stardom in films like A Summer Place and Imitation of Life (both 1959). He was busy in a variety of films during this periods - notably Parrish (1961) and Rome Adventure (1962) - but also starred in the TV series Surfside 6 (1960) and Hawaiian Eye (1962 and predating Hawaii Five-O by several years). Donahue's career declined as the Sixties became more turbulent but he still made notable appearances in The Godfather Part II (1974), playing a character with Donahue's own real name, and Monte Hellman's Cockfighter (1974). Most of Donahue's later films were direct-to-video efforts like Nudity Required and Omega Cop but trash aesthete John Waters, a huge fan, used him for Cry-Baby (1990).

By Lang Thompson

TCM REMEMBERS CARROLL O'CONNOR 1924-2001

Carroll O'Connor - who died June 21st at the age of 76 - will be best remembered for portraying Archie Bunker on TV's All in the Family but his career actually was much more extensive. Born in New York on August 2nd, 1924, O'Connor served in the merchant marine during World War II before attending the University of Montana where he worked on the school newspaper. Before graduating, he followed his brother to another college in Ireland (he would later get a Masters in speech from Montana). It was in Ireland that O'Connor started acting in several local productions. He returned to the U.S. for his Broadway debut in 1958 and shortly after started to appear on numerous TV shows like The Untouchables and Naked City. His first film was Parrish (1961) though he eventually acted in over a dozen films during the Sixties including Cleopatra (1963), Marlowe (1969), Hawaii (1966) and Point Blank (1967). O'Connor even auditioned for the part of the Skipper in the TV series, Gilligan's Island, but it was his role as Archie Bunker in a 1971 sitcom that made him a star. All in the Family was an American version of the British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part that met some initial resistance (ABC rejected the first two pilots) but quickly captivated American audiences and became the country's top-rated TV show. Archie became such an icon that his chair is now preserved in the Smithsonian. The series lasted until 1979 and brought O'Connor four Emmys, even leading to a four-year spinoff Archie Bunker's Place starring O'Connor. (It also produced one of TV's oddest spinoffs in1994's 704 Hauser about a multi-racial family living in Archie Bunker's old house. It had no cast members from the earlier series and only lasted six episodes.) In 1988, O'Connor took the role of a Southern sheriff in a TV series based on the movie In the Heat of the Night and found himself in another hit, this one lasting until 1995. He also occasionally played Helen Hunt's father on Mad About You. By all accounts, O'Connor was nothing like Archie Bunker; in fact, O'Connor was an active anti-drug crusader, partly the result of his son's drug-related suicide.

By Lang Thompson

TCM REMEMBERS JACK LEMMON 1925-2001

Whether playing a cross-dressing jazz bassist or a bickering roommate, Lemmon has kept his fans in stitches for fifty years. But beneath that comedian's facade, the actor had a very serious side, which occasionally surfaced in such films as Days of Wine and Roses (1962) or Costa-Gavras' political thriller Missing (1982). Lemmon was truly a one-of-a-kind actor and his track record for acclaimed performances is truly remarkable: 8 Oscar nominations (he won Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts (1955) and Best Actor for Save the Tiger (1973), a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, 8 British Academy Award nominations, 4 Emmy Award nominations, numerous Golden Globe nominations, a two-time Best Actor winner at the Cannes Film Festival, the list goes on and on.

Lemmon entered the world in a completely novel fashion; he was born prematurely in an elevator in Boston in 1925. The son of a doughnut manufacturer, Lemmon later attended Harvard University but was bitten by the acting bug and left the prestigious college for Broadway. Between theatrical gigs, he played piano accompaniment to silent films shown at the Knickerbocker Music Hall in New York. Later, Lemmon claimed that he learned more about comic technique by watching these Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd two-reelers than acting school could have ever taught him.

From Broadway and early TV appearances to Hollywood, Lemmon moved West to make his screen debut in It Should Happen to You (1954), opposite Judy Holliday in a variation of her 'dumb blonde' persona that had won her an Oscar for Born Yesterday (1952). In It Should Happen to You, Holliday plays a struggling actress who soon wins fast fame as the product of promotion. Lemmon plays her levelheaded boyfriend but finds himself on the sidelines when the suave and sophisticated Peter Lawford appears on the scene. It Should Happen to You, directed by George Cukor, was a popular success and Lemmon and Holliday were quickly teamed again in Phffft! (1954), another lightweight romantic comedy. A year later, Lemmon hit the major leagues when he supported Hollywood heavyweights Henry Fonda, James Cagney and William Powell in Mister Roberts (1955). As Ensign Pulver, a deckhand who avoids work whenever possible, Lemmon won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar®.

Onscreen, Lemmon's characters often found that they were the wrong men for their jobs. In Cowboy (1958), Lemmon plays a city slicker venturing out on the wild frontier. His romantic visions of the West are soon changed by the hard-living, hard-drinking reality. Cowboy is based on the autobiography of Frank Harris, and, like the author, Lemmon found himself adapting to the rough and tumble lifestyle on the trail.

Lemmon brought a new comic persona to Hollywood films. He combined elements of screwball and slapstick comedy with his own self-deprecating humor to create satiric portraits of the contemporary American male. The sometimes cynical comic sense of director Billy Wilder provided Lemmon with the perfect complement. Together they made seven films, but it was their first, Some Like It Hot (1959), that captured the sheer comic genius of their collaborations together.

From sexual antics to social critique, Lemmon and Wilder sharpened their comic knives on the hypocrisies they saw in American culture. The Apartment (1960) focused on a working stiff who lends his home to his supervisors for their extramarital affairs. Problems arise when Lemmon falls for his boss's paramour - it gets even more complicated when she tries to kill herself in his pad! Though The Apartment was a comic success, with each passing year the film's serious side seems even more dark and derisive. Illicit love and the corruption of big business might not seem to be the stuff of hit comedies, but Wilder and Lemmon found humor in the most unlikeliest of places. Director and comic star went on to make five more films: Irma la Douce (1963), The Fortune Cookie (1966), Avanti! (1972), The Front Page (1974) and Buddy Buddy (1981).

Billy Wilder and Lemmon's lifelong comic foil Walter Matthau (nine collaborations with Lemmon in 32 years, including their most popular film, The Odd Couple, 1968) brought some of the comedian's finest funny moments to the screen. But there was a serious side too. Lemmon waived his salary to act in Save the Tiger (1973), the 'great American tragedy' of a businessman at the end of his rope. Lemmon won his second Academy Award for the film. In Missing (1982), directed by the uncompromising Costa-Gavras, Lemmon played a patriotic father searching for his kidnapped son in Latin America. The closer he gets to his goal, the clearer it becomes that a government conspiracy is behind his son's disappearance. Missing was inspired by a true story - the production was condemned by the Reagan administration and awarded the Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival.

Very few actors today can match Lemmon's range on the screen. He has acted in everything from lightweight sex farces (How to Murder Your Wife, 1965) to musicals (My Sister Eileen, 1955) to social dramas (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) to political thrillers (The China Syndrome, 1979). Turner Classic Movies cherishes the memory of this remarkable talent.

By Cino Niles & Jeff Stafford

ANTHONY QUINN, 1915-2001

Not many actors can boast that they've inspired a Bob Dylan song but Anthony Quinn - who passed away June 3rd at the age of 86 - was one of the select few. But that's just one of many incidents in a life that can only be described as colorful. If a novelist had invented a character like Quinn, she would be accused of unbelievable invention. But in Quinn's case, it's all true.

Quinn was born April 21, 1915 in Mexico. His parents were involved in Pancho Villa's revolutionary struggle and must have made a striking couple since the father was half Irish and mother Mexican Indian. The couple were married on a train of rebel soldiers. After Quinn's birth, the family soon moved to East Los Angeles (after a quick Texas detour) where Quinn grew up in the shadow of Hollywood. (A branch of the Los Angeles County Public Library now occupies the site of Quinn's childhood home; in 1981 it was renamed in his honor.) At the age of 11 he won a sculpture award and shortly after began studying architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Wright in fact who suggested the possibility of acting to Quinn and even paid for an operation to cure a speech impediment. Along the way, Quinn also dabbled in professional boxing (he quit after his 17th match, the first he lost) and street-corner preaching. He continued to sculpt and paint for the rest of his life while also becoming a noted art collector.

Quinn's acting debut was in 1936 initially in a handful of barely noticable spots as an extra until he landed a speaking role in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman, supposedly on the recommendation of the film's star, Gary Cooper. One unanticipated result was that Quinn married DeMille's daughter the following year; they appeared together in Phil Karlson's Black Gold (1947) and had five children. Quinn also appeared on stage in 1936 playing opposite Mae West. Quinn continued in film parts that gathered acclaim: Crazy Horse in They Died With Their Boots On (1941), a gambler in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), a soldier in Guadalcanal Diary (1943).

But it was the 1950s when Quinn broke out. Viva Zapata!(1952) provided him a wonderful role which he used to win a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. Oddly enough, in Viva Zapata! Quinn worked with Marlon Brando who he had replaced in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. (Director Elia Kazan tried to start a rivalry between the two actors but they were great admirers of each other.) Quinn again won Best Supporting Actor playing painter Paul Gauguin Lust for Life (1956) which at the time was the shortest on-screen time to win an acting Oscar. The following year came was a Best Actor nomination for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind (1957). As he did throughout his career, Quinn rarely hesitated to take work whereever he found it, which resulted in dozens of potboilers like Seven Cities of Gold (1955) but also a few cult favorites like Budd Boetticher's The Magnificent Matador (1955). It was a trip to Italy that brought Quinn one of his most acclaimed roles: a simple-minded circus strongman in Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954). Quinn directed his only film in 1958, The Buccaneer, a commercial failure he later attributed to producer Cecil DeMille's interference. Towards the end of that decade he appeared in Nicholas Ray's The Savage Innocents (1959) as an Eskimo, inspiring Bob Dylan to write "Quinn the Eskimo" (a Top Ten hit for Manfred Mann in 1968). In 1965, his relationship with an Italian costumer created a minor scandal when it was revealed that the couple had two children. Quinn divorced DeMille's daughter and married the costumer.

He continued the same mix of classics and best-forgotten quickies throughout the 1960s and '70s. A key role in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) only confirmed his talents while he again earned a Best Actor nomination for the unforgettable lead role in Zorba the Greek (1964). The gritty crime drama Across 110th Street (1972) is one of the best American movies of its decade, enhanced by Quinn's turn as an embattled police captain. Quinn was a pope in The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), an Islamic leader in The Message (1976), a thinly disguised Aristotle Onassis in The Greek Tycoon (1978) and an assortment of gangsters, con men, military leaders and what have you. The rest of his career might be summed up by the year 1991 when he gathered critical acclaim for his appearance in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, was nominated for a Razzie as Worst Actor in Mobsters, co-starred with Bo Derek in Ghosts Can't Do It, worked beside John Candy and Macaulay Culkin in Chris Columbus' Only the Lonely and made a film so obscure it appears to have never appeared on video. Quinn married his third wife in 1997; they had one son. He had just completed the title role in Avenging Angelo (with Sylvester Stallone) at the time of his death.

By Lang Thompson

TCM Remembers - Pauline Kael/Troy Donahue

PAULINE KAEL 1919-2001 Pauline Kael, who died September 3rd at the age of 82, was one of the handful of film critics who made a noticable impact on the way we view movies. Her mix of personal feelings with more abstract aesthetics inspired numerous other critics (sometimes called "Paulettes") and in a few cases even made big hits of movies like Bonnie and Clyde (1967). She claimed to never see a movie more than once or to change her mind about it later. Several collections of her work are available, most with mildly risque titles like I Lost It at the Movies, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Going Steady. Kael was born June 19, 1919 in Petaluma, California but moved with her family to San Francisco during her teens. There she majored in philosophy at University of California at Berkeley though she didn't graduate (the school later gave her an honorary degree). That's when she started to develop a serious interest in movies. In addition to the usual writer's assortment of jobs (seamstress, cook, retail clerk) she started writing about film in 1953; her first review was of Charlie Chaplin's Limelight which she disliked. She wrote for several small publications and did a radio show on the groundbreaking network KPFA before finally landing a job at the high-profile McCall's only to be fired shortly after she panned The Sound of Music (1965) (which she called The Sound of Money). During this period she was also managing and programming Berkeley Cinema Guild Theatres (one of the country's earliest repertoire cinemas despite being basically small rooms above a laundry), and was briefly married to avant-garde filmmaker James Broughton. The turning point came in 1965 when I Lost It at the Movies not only attracted major critical attention but became a strong seller in book stores. Two years later legendary editor William Shawn hired Kael as film critic for The New Yorker, completing her jump into the limelight. Kael never shied away from controversy as two other events proved. In the early Sixties she engaged in an infamous and surprisingly bitter debate with critic Andrew Sarris among others about the merits of auteurism, the French-born philosophy that believes the director is the chief creative person behind any film. Kael's anti-intellectual streak came forward but since auteurism wasn't meant to be a genuinely rigorous theory (such attempts came later in the 70s) this was a sort of Brer Rabbit vs. tar baby fight that Kael could never win. The other notorious controversy occured in 1971 with her essay "Raising Kane" which was intended to show that screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz deserved as much if not more credit for Citizen Kane (1941) than Orson Welles. While Mankiewicz's contribution had clearly been underappreciated, most of Kael's conclusions and even some of her factual basis have been disproven though she never bothered to revise the essay. In 1979, Kael made a detour to Hollywood by the urging of Warren Beatty. She was meant to be an "executive consultant" at Paramount but actually making movies is quite a different matter than writing about them so Kael lasted only five months. She went back to The New Yorker, eventually retiring in 1991 partly as a result of Parkinson's Syndrome. She still kept up with movies though, loving such smaller films as Vanya on 42nd Street and actors like Jim Carrey (who "has practically kept movies alive the past few years" she said in 1998). By Lang Thompson Troy Donahue 1936-2001 Troy Donahue died September 2nd at the age of 65. He was a fixture in movies during the 1950s, playing an assortment of heartthrobs and borderline tough guys. Donahue was actually Merle Johnson Jr, born in New York City on Jan 27, 1936. He went to Columbia University and started acting in small theatrical roles which eventually led to film appearances, the earliest ones uncredited. His first was Man Afraid (1957) but Donahue also made brief TV appearances at the time on shows like Wagon Train. He signed with Warner Brothers in 1959 and immediately jumped to stardom in films like A Summer Place and Imitation of Life (both 1959). He was busy in a variety of films during this periods - notably Parrish (1961) and Rome Adventure (1962) - but also starred in the TV series Surfside 6 (1960) and Hawaiian Eye (1962 and predating Hawaii Five-O by several years). Donahue's career declined as the Sixties became more turbulent but he still made notable appearances in The Godfather Part II (1974), playing a character with Donahue's own real name, and Monte Hellman's Cockfighter (1974). Most of Donahue's later films were direct-to-video efforts like Nudity Required and Omega Cop but trash aesthete John Waters, a huge fan, used him for Cry-Baby (1990). By Lang Thompson TCM REMEMBERS CARROLL O'CONNOR 1924-2001 Carroll O'Connor - who died June 21st at the age of 76 - will be best remembered for portraying Archie Bunker on TV's All in the Family but his career actually was much more extensive. Born in New York on August 2nd, 1924, O'Connor served in the merchant marine during World War II before attending the University of Montana where he worked on the school newspaper. Before graduating, he followed his brother to another college in Ireland (he would later get a Masters in speech from Montana). It was in Ireland that O'Connor started acting in several local productions. He returned to the U.S. for his Broadway debut in 1958 and shortly after started to appear on numerous TV shows like The Untouchables and Naked City. His first film was Parrish (1961) though he eventually acted in over a dozen films during the Sixties including Cleopatra (1963), Marlowe (1969), Hawaii (1966) and Point Blank (1967). O'Connor even auditioned for the part of the Skipper in the TV series, Gilligan's Island, but it was his role as Archie Bunker in a 1971 sitcom that made him a star. All in the Family was an American version of the British sitcom Till Death Do Us Part that met some initial resistance (ABC rejected the first two pilots) but quickly captivated American audiences and became the country's top-rated TV show. Archie became such an icon that his chair is now preserved in the Smithsonian. The series lasted until 1979 and brought O'Connor four Emmys, even leading to a four-year spinoff Archie Bunker's Place starring O'Connor. (It also produced one of TV's oddest spinoffs in1994's 704 Hauser about a multi-racial family living in Archie Bunker's old house. It had no cast members from the earlier series and only lasted six episodes.) In 1988, O'Connor took the role of a Southern sheriff in a TV series based on the movie In the Heat of the Night and found himself in another hit, this one lasting until 1995. He also occasionally played Helen Hunt's father on Mad About You. By all accounts, O'Connor was nothing like Archie Bunker; in fact, O'Connor was an active anti-drug crusader, partly the result of his son's drug-related suicide. By Lang Thompson TCM REMEMBERS JACK LEMMON 1925-2001 Whether playing a cross-dressing jazz bassist or a bickering roommate, Lemmon has kept his fans in stitches for fifty years. But beneath that comedian's facade, the actor had a very serious side, which occasionally surfaced in such films as Days of Wine and Roses (1962) or Costa-Gavras' political thriller Missing (1982). Lemmon was truly a one-of-a-kind actor and his track record for acclaimed performances is truly remarkable: 8 Oscar nominations (he won Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts (1955) and Best Actor for Save the Tiger (1973), a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, 8 British Academy Award nominations, 4 Emmy Award nominations, numerous Golden Globe nominations, a two-time Best Actor winner at the Cannes Film Festival, the list goes on and on. Lemmon entered the world in a completely novel fashion; he was born prematurely in an elevator in Boston in 1925. The son of a doughnut manufacturer, Lemmon later attended Harvard University but was bitten by the acting bug and left the prestigious college for Broadway. Between theatrical gigs, he played piano accompaniment to silent films shown at the Knickerbocker Music Hall in New York. Later, Lemmon claimed that he learned more about comic technique by watching these Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd two-reelers than acting school could have ever taught him. From Broadway and early TV appearances to Hollywood, Lemmon moved West to make his screen debut in It Should Happen to You (1954), opposite Judy Holliday in a variation of her 'dumb blonde' persona that had won her an Oscar for Born Yesterday (1952). In It Should Happen to You, Holliday plays a struggling actress who soon wins fast fame as the product of promotion. Lemmon plays her levelheaded boyfriend but finds himself on the sidelines when the suave and sophisticated Peter Lawford appears on the scene. It Should Happen to You, directed by George Cukor, was a popular success and Lemmon and Holliday were quickly teamed again in Phffft! (1954), another lightweight romantic comedy. A year later, Lemmon hit the major leagues when he supported Hollywood heavyweights Henry Fonda, James Cagney and William Powell in Mister Roberts (1955). As Ensign Pulver, a deckhand who avoids work whenever possible, Lemmon won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar®. Onscreen, Lemmon's characters often found that they were the wrong men for their jobs. In Cowboy (1958), Lemmon plays a city slicker venturing out on the wild frontier. His romantic visions of the West are soon changed by the hard-living, hard-drinking reality. Cowboy is based on the autobiography of Frank Harris, and, like the author, Lemmon found himself adapting to the rough and tumble lifestyle on the trail. Lemmon brought a new comic persona to Hollywood films. He combined elements of screwball and slapstick comedy with his own self-deprecating humor to create satiric portraits of the contemporary American male. The sometimes cynical comic sense of director Billy Wilder provided Lemmon with the perfect complement. Together they made seven films, but it was their first, Some Like It Hot (1959), that captured the sheer comic genius of their collaborations together. From sexual antics to social critique, Lemmon and Wilder sharpened their comic knives on the hypocrisies they saw in American culture. The Apartment (1960) focused on a working stiff who lends his home to his supervisors for their extramarital affairs. Problems arise when Lemmon falls for his boss's paramour - it gets even more complicated when she tries to kill herself in his pad! Though The Apartment was a comic success, with each passing year the film's serious side seems even more dark and derisive. Illicit love and the corruption of big business might not seem to be the stuff of hit comedies, but Wilder and Lemmon found humor in the most unlikeliest of places. Director and comic star went on to make five more films: Irma la Douce (1963), The Fortune Cookie (1966), Avanti! (1972), The Front Page (1974) and Buddy Buddy (1981). Billy Wilder and Lemmon's lifelong comic foil Walter Matthau (nine collaborations with Lemmon in 32 years, including their most popular film, The Odd Couple, 1968) brought some of the comedian's finest funny moments to the screen. But there was a serious side too. Lemmon waived his salary to act in Save the Tiger (1973), the 'great American tragedy' of a businessman at the end of his rope. Lemmon won his second Academy Award for the film. In Missing (1982), directed by the uncompromising Costa-Gavras, Lemmon played a patriotic father searching for his kidnapped son in Latin America. The closer he gets to his goal, the clearer it becomes that a government conspiracy is behind his son's disappearance. Missing was inspired by a true story - the production was condemned by the Reagan administration and awarded the Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival. Very few actors today can match Lemmon's range on the screen. He has acted in everything from lightweight sex farces (How to Murder Your Wife, 1965) to musicals (My Sister Eileen, 1955) to social dramas (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) to political thrillers (The China Syndrome, 1979). Turner Classic Movies cherishes the memory of this remarkable talent. By Cino Niles & Jeff Stafford ANTHONY QUINN, 1915-2001 Not many actors can boast that they've inspired a Bob Dylan song but Anthony Quinn - who passed away June 3rd at the age of 86 - was one of the select few. But that's just one of many incidents in a life that can only be described as colorful. If a novelist had invented a character like Quinn, she would be accused of unbelievable invention. But in Quinn's case, it's all true. Quinn was born April 21, 1915 in Mexico. His parents were involved in Pancho Villa's revolutionary struggle and must have made a striking couple since the father was half Irish and mother Mexican Indian. The couple were married on a train of rebel soldiers. After Quinn's birth, the family soon moved to East Los Angeles (after a quick Texas detour) where Quinn grew up in the shadow of Hollywood. (A branch of the Los Angeles County Public Library now occupies the site of Quinn's childhood home; in 1981 it was renamed in his honor.) At the age of 11 he won a sculpture award and shortly after began studying architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Wright in fact who suggested the possibility of acting to Quinn and even paid for an operation to cure a speech impediment. Along the way, Quinn also dabbled in professional boxing (he quit after his 17th match, the first he lost) and street-corner preaching. He continued to sculpt and paint for the rest of his life while also becoming a noted art collector. Quinn's acting debut was in 1936 initially in a handful of barely noticable spots as an extra until he landed a speaking role in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman, supposedly on the recommendation of the film's star, Gary Cooper. One unanticipated result was that Quinn married DeMille's daughter the following year; they appeared together in Phil Karlson's Black Gold (1947) and had five children. Quinn also appeared on stage in 1936 playing opposite Mae West. Quinn continued in film parts that gathered acclaim: Crazy Horse in They Died With Their Boots On (1941), a gambler in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), a soldier in Guadalcanal Diary (1943). But it was the 1950s when Quinn broke out. Viva Zapata!(1952) provided him a wonderful role which he used to win a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. Oddly enough, in Viva Zapata! Quinn worked with Marlon Brando who he had replaced in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. (Director Elia Kazan tried to start a rivalry between the two actors but they were great admirers of each other.) Quinn again won Best Supporting Actor playing painter Paul Gauguin Lust for Life (1956) which at the time was the shortest on-screen time to win an acting Oscar. The following year came was a Best Actor nomination for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind (1957). As he did throughout his career, Quinn rarely hesitated to take work whereever he found it, which resulted in dozens of potboilers like Seven Cities of Gold (1955) but also a few cult favorites like Budd Boetticher's The Magnificent Matador (1955). It was a trip to Italy that brought Quinn one of his most acclaimed roles: a simple-minded circus strongman in Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954). Quinn directed his only film in 1958, The Buccaneer, a commercial failure he later attributed to producer Cecil DeMille's interference. Towards the end of that decade he appeared in Nicholas Ray's The Savage Innocents (1959) as an Eskimo, inspiring Bob Dylan to write "Quinn the Eskimo" (a Top Ten hit for Manfred Mann in 1968). In 1965, his relationship with an Italian costumer created a minor scandal when it was revealed that the couple had two children. Quinn divorced DeMille's daughter and married the costumer. He continued the same mix of classics and best-forgotten quickies throughout the 1960s and '70s. A key role in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) only confirmed his talents while he again earned a Best Actor nomination for the unforgettable lead role in Zorba the Greek (1964). The gritty crime drama Across 110th Street (1972) is one of the best American movies of its decade, enhanced by Quinn's turn as an embattled police captain. Quinn was a pope in The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968), an Islamic leader in The Message (1976), a thinly disguised Aristotle Onassis in The Greek Tycoon (1978) and an assortment of gangsters, con men, military leaders and what have you. The rest of his career might be summed up by the year 1991 when he gathered critical acclaim for his appearance in Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, was nominated for a Razzie as Worst Actor in Mobsters, co-starred with Bo Derek in Ghosts Can't Do It, worked beside John Candy and Macaulay Culkin in Chris Columbus' Only the Lonely and made a film so obscure it appears to have never appeared on video. Quinn married his third wife in 1997; they had one son. He had just completed the title role in Avenging Angelo (with Sylvester Stallone) at the time of his death. By Lang Thompson

Quotes

It made me think of what you once told me: "In five years the Corleone family will be completely legitimate." That was seven years ago.
- Kay
I know. I'm trying, darling.
- Michael Corleone
Oh, this is too violent for me!
- Don Fanucci
Our friend and associate Hyman Roth is in the news. The High Court of Israel turned down his request to live there as a returning Jew. He landed in Brazil last night offering a "gift" of a million dollars if they'd let him stay. They said no. His passport's been invalidated, except for his return trip to the States.
- Al Neri
He'll try Panama next.
- Tom Hagen
Panama won't take him. Not for a million, not for ten million.
- Michael Corleone
I don't feel I have to wipe everybody out, Tom. Just my enemies.
- Michael Corleone
I know it was you Fredo. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!
- Michael Corleone

Trivia

Martin Scorsese was a hot favorite to direct Part II. However, following the success of The Godfather, Paramount retained Francis Ford Coppola as director.

Lee Strasberg came out of retirement to play Hyman Roth after a specific request from Al Pacino. He was unwilling at first, but agreed to do it after 45 minute meeting with Francis Coppola's father, Carmine.

To prepare for his role, Robert De Niro lived in Sicily.

Co-authors Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola disagreed over whether Michael should have Fredo killed. Puzo only agreed on condition that Michael would wait until their mother was dead.

Godfather II was the last film printed in the US in the Technicolor "imbibition" printing process. The lab was held open for about three weeks for the film to be ready to print, and then it was disassembled and sent to Peking, China. The imbibition process was a three stripe dye transfer process that photochemical processes have yet to equal in richness and longevity of color rendition.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States Winter December 12, 1974

Released in United States on Video 1977 (as part of the re-edited, 450-minute "The Godfather Saga" edition)

Re-released in United States on Video May 6, 1997 (25th Anniversary Edition--digitally remastered)

Voted Best Director by the 1975 Directors Guild of America.

Voted Best Director (shared for his work in "The Conversation) and Best Cinematography (shared with his work on "The Parallax View") by the 1974 National Society of Film critics.

Released in United States December 1974

Released in United States Winter December 12, 1974

Released in United States on Video 1977

Re-released in United States on Video May 6, 1997

Sequel to "The Godfather" (1972).

"The Godfather, Part II" is the only sequel to have won an Academy Award for Best Picture in Oscar history.

Based on the Mario Puzo novel "The Godfather" (New York, 1969).

Released in USA on video.

Selected in 1993 for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.

Released in United States December 1974

Voted "Best Adapted Screenplay" by the 1975 Writers Guild of America.