A childhood marred by domestic abuse and violence.
Substance abuse problems.
A promising career cut short by cancer.
The Godfather may be one of the most beloved films ever made, but the lives of the film's
cast were marked by loss and tragedy.
By the time he was cast in The Godfather, Marlon Brando already held the reputation
of a brilliant, if troublesome, actor.
It was a status many leagues away from his working-class background in Omaha, Nebraska,
a past Brando was happy to shroud in tall tales according to Stevan Riley.
Riley was the director of Listen to Me Marlon, a 2015 documentary on Brando largely built
from the actor's own words.
Writing for the Telegraph, Riley cut through the evasions and divulged some of the truth
about Brando's upbringing.
If Brando wanted to keep his childhood private, he had good reason.
In personal recordings used for Listen to Me Marlon, Brando recalled a father, Marlon
Sr., who was often away from home on benders of booze and extramarital affairs, and abusive
to his wife and children when he was home.
To cope, his wife Dorothy, or "Dodie" as she was referred to, drank to the neglect of her
children.
Brando frequently had to collect her from bars and sometimes had to revive her.
The parents' misbehavior tarnished the reputation of the Brando family wherever they moved.
Brando took to acting out, attracting more scorn from his father.
But Marlon Sr.'s abuse of Dodie became so severe that Brando threatened to kill his
father if he ever did it again.
And when Brando became a father himself, he told himself he would never let Marlon Sr.
near his children.
At the age of 66, Marlon Brando admitted a difficult truth.
"I think that perhaps I failed as a father.
I’m certain there were things I could have done differently if I had known better at
the time."
Many parents look back with a few regrets, however minor.
But Brando didn't say these words in a private recollection or a conversation with a close
friend or counselor.
They were said at the 1990 trial of his son, Christian, for the muder of Dag Drollet, the
boyfriend of Christian's half-sister Cheyenne.
And the death happened in Brando's own home.
Cheyenne had always struggled with her mental health, even more so after a car accident
in 1989.
When she, Drollett, and Christian all came together in Brando's Hollywood home on May
16, she was allegedly taking psychedelics despite being eight months pregnant.
Christian had his own struggles with drugs, alcohol, and gun violence.
Both had issues with their father.
At dinner with her half-brother, Cheyenne claimed Drollet beat her.
That night, Christian indisputably put a bullet in Drollet's head, though little else about
the violent incident is known for certain.
In the trial, the defense eventually accepted a plea of voluntary manslaughter after Cheyenne
was deemed too unstable to testify for the prosecution's charge of murder.
While her half-brother served his sentence, Cheyenne — who may have lied about Drollet's
abuse — hanged herself in 1995.
Unlike Michael Corleone, Al Pacino did not grow up with a loving but powerful father.
He grew up without any father at all.
Writing for the "This Much I Know" series in the Guardian, Pacino recalled that his
parents divorced when he was only 2 years old, and after the split, his father was an
absentee figure.
Pacino wrote:
"The conclusion of my teachers was that I needed a dad."
But he didn't lack for family.
He grew up impoverished but cared for by his mother Rose, his aunt, and his maternal grandparents
according to Interview Magazine.
It was Grandma who ruled the roost, but Pacino was closest to his mother and grandfather.
If Pacino's family weren't enthusiastic about his becoming an actor, they accepted his choice.
He called Rose his first "and indeed my best audience" in an interview with the New Yorker,
and credited her with introducing him to the theater.
Rose had Pacino at a young age, and struggled between a playful side and serious depression
as he grew up.
She became addicted to barbiturates and died in 1962 at just 43 years old, possibly of
suicide.
Pacino was 21 at the time.
His grandfather died not long after.
Pacino told the New Yorker:
"I think that was my darkest period.
I felt lost."
When asked what his favorite part of acting was, Sir Laurence Olivier once said "the drink
after the show," according to the Independent.
Booze was a fashionable recreation among theater performers when Al Pacino came on the scene.
And he had a head start, having picked up the bottle at 13 years old.
By the time he reached 31, it started to affect his work.
He turned up to his audition for The Godfather hungover and tried improvising, to cover up
not knowing the scene.
If Francis Ford Coppola hadn't had his heart set on Pacino for the role of Michael Corleone,
he wouldn't have been in the film.
As Pacino's fame rose in the wake of The Godfather, so did the amount of alcohol he put back.
He worked drunk on Dog Day Afternoon, after almost turning it down during a London bender.
"Attica!
Attica!
Attica!"
He later credited inebriation with facilitating a key decision for his character, but Pacino
had reached a point where he valued his drinks more than his career.
As of 2022, Pacino has been sober for over 40 years.
All the Corleone sons met with unhappy fates in The Godfather trilogy, but Fredo led the
most outwardly unhappy life.
He was sweet and dutiful as a son, but also inept and dim-witted.
His marriage was loveless, he failed to stop the assassination attempt on his father, and
after Sonny's death, Fredo was passed over in favor of Michael.
"I can handle things, I'm smart!
Not like everybody says, like dumb, I'm smart and I want respect!"
John Cazale never reached the same level of fame as James Caan and Al Pacino, but he never
expressed any resentment over it.
He never inadvertently abetted a hit on Pacino, either.
And, quite unlike Fredo, Cazale was brilliant in his profession and universally respected
by his peers.
"I think I learned more about acting from John than anybody."
If not a household name, he was an accomplished character actor on screen and stage; it was
his work in "Horovitz's Line" off-Broadway, with friend and one-time housemate Pacino,
that caught Francis Ford Coppola's eye.
But for all his talent, Cazale only appeared in five movies.
It was all he had time for.
Cazale was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 1977.
He maintained that he could recover and kept working on The Deer Hunter, but the cancer
spread to his bones, and he passed away at 42.
For years after The Godfather, James Caan dealt with members of the public who assumed
he was as hot-tempered and violent as Sonny Corleone.
He was even barred from a country club when the board assumed he was a genuine mobster.
Caan did have a tough streak in him growing up, and there were rumors of violence around
him — but he was never a real gangster.
He did have a connection to the Mafia, though, courtesy of Andrew Russo.
But instead of pulling him into crime, Russo helped lead Caan out of a very dark period
in his life.
Caan was already living fast after his success in the 1970s, but the death of his younger
sister Barbara in 1981 sent him spiraling downward.
Caan told the Independent:
"Barbara was like my best friend.
When she died, passion became this whole thing with me [...] I started doing cocaine, which
is like a death sentence."
As Caan used drugs to cope with his loss, he also lost his home and most of his fortune.
His passion for acting left him, and he spent six years away from the cameras.
Coaching boys baseball gave Caan something to do and gave him his first wake-up call
about cocaine.
His teenage son chased off a drug dealer with a baseball bat.
Caan turned to Russo, who researched rehab centers to get him clean.
Caan died at age 82 in July of 2022.
One of the most colorful supporting roles in The Godfather is Clemenza, played by Richard
Castellano.
A younger version of the character appeared in the Vito storyline of The Godfather, Part
II, played by Bruno Kirby.
As originally conceived, Clemenza played a substantial role in the Michael storyline
too.
He was meant to be the loyal captain manipulated into betraying Michael and testifying before
the U.S. Senate.
Yet in the final film, that role is filled by Frank Pentangeli, with the only mention
of Clemenza in Michael's story being that he died.
What happened?
Castellano's answer and Francis Ford Coppola's are irreconcilable.
Coppola has long maintained that Castellano wanted approval of his character's dialogue,
an untenable demand.
But Castellano told the New York Post that he was willing to play both the old and young
Clemenza before hitting an artistic block — he just couldn't believe that Clemenza
would turn rat.
When he decided to pass, Castellano claims he had a promise from Coppola that he would
chalk it up to creative differences.
Instead, Coppola went with his story.
Whatever the truth about Clemenza's role in Part II, Castellano's career dried up afterwards.
He was taking work answering phones by 1981 and made only one more movie before dying
at age 55 of a heart attack.
"Leave the gun.
Take the cannolis."
Robert De Niro is a notoriously private man.
Journalist Patricia Bosworth of Vanity Fair wrote of how impossible it was to make contact
with the actor in 1987, who hates interviews and their frequent focus on his personal life
rather than his work.
When De Niro filed for divorce from his wife of 21 years, Grace Hightower, he appealed
for privacy in a statement published by People.
One imagines he wasn't happy when details of his and Hightower's legal battles made
it to the press.
He and Hightower disputed how much he was obligated to pay her before their 2004 prenup
went into effect.
In April 2021, Page Six quoted De Niro's lawyer telling a New York judge that her client was
suffering from overwork, a necessity to maintain Hightower's opulent lifestyle.
Hightower's lawyer countered that De Niro ran up his own heavy expenses, that he'd unfairly
cut back his payments to Hightower, and that he was prepared to force his ex-wife and their
children out of their Manhattan apartment.
There were outrageous extravagances claimed by both sides.
De Niro was alleged to take helicopters to Sunday brunch in Connecticut, and Hightower
was said to spend $1.2 million on a diamond.
The court ultimately ruled on De Niro's behalf.
Michael's storyline in The Godfather, Part II depicts the fall of the Batista regime
in the Cuban Revolution.
The rise of Fidel Castro and the communist government would have brutal consequences
for a future Godfather cast member.
Andy García, who starred in The Godfather: Part III, was just 5 years old in 1961, the
son of an English teacher and an attorney-slash-avocado farmer according to Kingdom Magazine.
They were a well-off family, and like many such families, in danger of ending up on the
bad side of the new government.
The Garcías became part of the Cuban diaspora that fled to the United States.
García revealed to the outlet that they left everything behind as they fled.
Despite his young age at the time his family fled, García retains strong memories of his
home and a fierce love of Cuban culture, particularly its music.
When he made his directorial debut in 2006 with The Lost City, he told the Chicago Tribune
that music was "the protagonist of the movie."
The film was a passion project of García's since the 1980s, and besides celebrating Cuban
music, a key theme of the story for him was the loss of his home country.
If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National
Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233.
You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.