Paramount Really Didn’t Want Marlon Brando in ‘The Godfather’

The Big Picture

• Marlon Brando’s reputation in the 1970s suffered due to box office flops and difficult behavior on set.
• Paramount Pictures initially did not want Brando in The Godfather, but Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo insisted on casting him as Vito Corleone.
• Brando’s on-set difficulties continued in later projects, but his portrayal of Vito Corleone in The Godfather remains iconic and a testament to his talent.

Today, it’s impossible to separate Marlon Brando‘s performance as Vito Corleone from The Godfather. This Francis Ford Coppola feature is one of the most famous and beloved pieces of American art ever created and Brando is undeniably the face of that production. The image of him clutching a cat dominates posters for The Godfather, while merchandise related to this title tends to fixate on Brando’s character above all others. Combined with Brando’s legendary reputation as an actor, Marlon Brando’s work as Vito Corleone is nothing short of iconic. That fact makes it staggering to try and comprehend that, originally, Paramount Pictures wanted nothing to do with Brando being in The Godfather.

For modern-day viewers, that very concept sounds impossible. Not only did Brando do an outstanding job in the role, but the actor is such an esteemed performer, revered for his work in titles like A Streetcar Named Desire. One would imagine studios would be throwing themselves at Brando just to get a glimmer of hope of casting him in their movies. That wasn’t the status quo at the dawn of the 1970s, though, when Coppola was trying to get a cast assembled for The Godfather. Initially, Brando was seen as persona non grata for Paramount Pictures, a total non-starter for the role of Vito Corleone.

Marlon Brando’s Reputation in the 1970s Wasn’t Great

In the 1950s, titles like On the Waterfront propelled Brando to a mythic status among moviegoers and actors alike. By the time the 1960s rolled around, though, Brando began headlining a series of box office and critical flops that tarnished his reputation. Projects like One-Eyed Jacks and A Countess from Hong Kong quickly faded away from the box office and the minds of moviegoers. Then there was the fact that, per publications like The Smithsonian Magazine, Brando had developed a reputation for being enormously difficult on set and brushing up against studio executives. The Godfather was already a deeply challenging project to put together, Paramount didn’t want further obstacles created by the participation of Brando.

This was a problem because, per that Smithsonian piece, Coppola and Mario Puzo (the latter figure responsible for writing the original Godfather novel) desperately wanted Brando to play the role of Vito Corleone. He was their only choice to play the role. It would take some craftiness to make their ambitions a reality. Per texts like the Robert Evans autobiography The Kid Stays in the Picture, the casting of Brando was secured through a piece of trickiness on the part of Coppola and company. First, Brando was recorded in heavy makeup (a necessary element to play a man that was 20 years the actor’s senior) performing Vito Corleone in a screen test. This is where the specific voice and many of the physical mannerisms of Brando’s Corleone performance would come from.

Marlon Brando’s Vito Corleone Recording Impressed Paramount

This test was then shown to the head of Gulf+Western, the owner of Paramount Pictures at the time, without telling him what actor was in the screen test. The owner was so transfixed by the screen test that he immediately begged to know who the performer was. With that development, the magic of Brando’s gifts as an actor was reaffirmed. It also guaranteed Coppola and the other Godfather producers a high-profile supporter of their dream casting. Brando was guaranteed the part of Vito Corleone.

However, even after Brando secured his role in The Godfather, his troubles associated with the role weren’t over. At the time of the film’s release, The New York Times reported that Brando was the one actor involved in the feature who had a back-end deal that would guarantee him a portion of the enormous box office profits The Godfather was taking in. However, the 2021 Mark Seal book Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli (which chronicles the making of The Godfather) features an anecdote revealing that the cash-strapped Brando made a deal with Paramount before The Godfather’s release to trade in his back-end profits for some quick cash upfront. This maneuver left Brando without untold riches from the profits of The Godfather. Even after he beat the odds to secure a seemingly impossible role, Brando couldn’t reap all the rewards from his work as Vito Corleone.

Marlon Brando Was Constantly Difficult on Set

In the wake of The Godfather, Brando wouldn’t work super-frequently as an actor. One of his few acting roles after taking on Vito Corleone was playing Colonel Walter E. Kurtz for Coppola in Apocalypse Now. As chronicled in retrospective pieces and the documentary Hearts of Darkness, Brando derailed the shooting of Apocalypse Now by arriving days late. Even once he was on set, Brando and Coppola had heavy disagreements over how Kurtz should be portrayed while Brando and co-star Dennis Hopper were constantly at each other’s throats. The kind of on-set chaos Paramount had been worried Brando would stir up defined some of the worst weeks during the chaotic Apocalypse Now shoot.

In the decades that followed, Brando’s few acting roles would be overshadowed by the kind of on-set antics that so concerned studio executives in the pre-production phase of The Godfather. The 1996 feature The Island of Dr. Moreau, for example, was frequently rocked by Brando’s strange creative impulses and erratic behavior. In hindsight, it’s clear Brando’s acting style and the actor’s general attitude towards others was always a ticking time bomb. That makes it all the more miraculous that audiences got to witness Brando delivering such unforgettable work as Vito Corleone as The Godfather.

After years of box office misfires, Brando got to remind the world why he became such a legend in the first place with a character totally unlike any other in his filmography. Brando’s general demeanor on film sets over the years doesn’t make the initial concerns of those dubious Paramount Pictures executives unwarranted, but one can’t argue with the final results of casting Brando, which created a performance for the ages.

The Godfather is available on Paramount+ in the U.S.

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