“I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.”

I'm a big fan of the Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel The Godfather and the movie that was made from it in 1972.

I am also a big fan of vintage men’s adventure magazines. In fact, I write a blog about them (MensPulpMags.com).

I also co-edit anthologies of classic men’s adventure magazine stories for the Men’s Adventure Library book series published by New Texture Books.

If you’re not a fan of those venerable periodicals from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, you may not know that Mario Puzo made his living writing wild action and adventure stories for them before The Godfather made him famous.

Puzo wrote some of his men’s adventure yarns under his own name. But the majority were written under the pseudonym “Mario Cleri.”

And he wrote a lot of them. I’d guesstimate around 200. (An example of a men’s adventure yarn Puzo wrote under the pen name Mario Cleri, featuring artwork by Gil Cohen, is shown below.)

Most of those stories appeared in men’s adventure magazines published by subsidiaries of Magazine Management, the publishing company owned by Martin Goodman.

Magazine Management put out some of the best men’s adventure mags, such as Action for Men, For Men Only, Male, Man’s World, Men and Stag. (It also launched Marvel Comics.)

Puzo was hired as a Magazine Management writer around 1959 by Bruce Jay Friedman, another talented writer who worked for the company before he became a world famous novelist (and playwright and scriptwriter). At the time, Friedman was the editor of several of the company’s men’s adventure magazines and its Playboy competitor, Swank. 

Puzo had written one novel before joining the Magazine Management staff. He wrote several others in his spare time while working for the company in the 1960s.

But he didn’t become successful as a novelist until 1969, when his fifth novel, The Godfather, was published on March 10 of that year by Putnam’s.

The iconic cover of the novel with the hand holding the marionette control bar (later used for the movie posters) was designed by S. Neil Fujita.

Not long after The Godfather was published, Puzo stopped writing for men’s adventure magazines. But he maintained warm relations with Magazine Management.

In August 1969 an abridged version of The Godfather was featured in the August 1969 issue of Male, along with an outstanding Godfather-themed cover painting by Mort Kunstler (shown at right) and equally cool interior illustrations by Earl Norem (shown below).

Puzo didn’t reach the height of his fame until a few years later, after the movie became a critical smash and box office blockbuster.

Although the movie is a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel by Hollywood standards, largely because Puzo co-wrote the script with director Francis Ford Coppola, there are some differences. One is related to the movie’s best known line.

Early in the novel, the Italian singer and actor Johnny Fontane tells Mafia “Godfather” Don Vito Corleone that a Hollywood movie executive had refused to give him a role he wanted in an upcoming film.

Don Corleone tells Johnny he’ll convince the studio executive to change his mind. When Johnny seems skeptical, Corleone gives a simple explanation of why he’s confident:

“He’s a businessman,” the Don said blandly. “I’ll make him an offer he can't refuse.”

Corleone sends his consigliere, Tom Hagen, to visit the studio exec and make a seemingly polite request to have Johnny reconsidered for the movie role.

The studio exec refuses, haughtily and hotly.

Soon after that, he finds the severed head of his prized stud racehorse in his bed—and quickly decides to give Johnny the role.

Later in the novel, after Vito’s son Michael Corleone takes over the family business, Michael predicts that another mobster who had declined the family’s offer to buy his casino will change his mind.

Echoing his father, Michael says simply: “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Soon, that mobster is dead and Michael’s family owns the casino.

As you probably know, these same events are played out in the movie version of The Godfather, which was released in the USA on March 15, 1972.

In the movie, the famous “offer” line used by Marlon Brando, as Don Vito Corleone, is not quite the same as in the book.

Brando says: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Later in the film, Al Pacino, as Michael, says the same line that Vito and Michael say in Puzo’s novel: “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

When The Godfather debuted in movie theaters, it was an immediate hit. It was soon a huge one that broke multiple box office records.

Almost overnight, “an offer he can’t refuse” became a national catchphrase.

Of course, in the novel and film the “offer” is a veiled threat used with chilling effect.

As part of our language, mentions of offers that can’t be refused are now typically used more for humorous effect.

One mob-related example is in HBO’s mob family series The Sopranos.

In Episode 4, the character Uncle Junior (played by Dominic Chianese) tells what he views as a funny joke:

“You hear about the Chinese Godfather? He made them an offer they couldn’t understand.”

If any members of a Chinese Tong are reading this, please don’t send me any offers.

I admit Junior’s quip did make me chuckle a little when I watched that episode. But I know it’s not funny at all and I promise never repeat it again. I swear.

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“I coulda been a contender!”

When On the Waterfront was first released to American movie theaters on July 28, 1954, the film’s director, Elia Kazan, was worried about how well it would do on opening day.

Actors Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Karl Malden and Lee J. Cobb gave the film plenty of star power. And, the script was written by legendary screenwriter, producer and novelist Budd Schulberg.

But there hadn’t been as much advance publicity about the movie as Kazan had hoped for.

Richard Schickel’s biography of Kazan notes that the director was so worried on the morning of July 28th that he went to the Astor Theatre in New York’s Times Square to see how many people were coming to the film’s first showing, the early matinee scheduled for 11:00 a.m. 

Schickel says Kazan “was surprised to see something like one hundred customers in line at the box office” and “immediately guessed that his film was going to be a popular success.”

Indeed, On the Waterfront was both a commercial and critical success.

The following March, it received eight Academy Awards, including a Best Director Oscar for Kazan.

Today, it is considered one of the best movies ever made. The American Film Institute lists it as one of the 100 Greatest American Films.

It also includes one of the most famous movie quotes of all time: “I coulda been a contender!”

The line is spoken by Brando, playing the washed-up boxer turned longshoreman, Terry Malloy, to his brother Charley (Steiger). Charley is an ethically-challenged lawyer who works for Johnny Friendly (Cobb), the brutal mobster who runs the local longshoreman’s union.

After Terry witnesses a fellow longshoreman murdered by Friendly’s thugs, Friendly tells Charley to make sure Terry sticks to the union’s “D and D” code (short for “deaf and dumb”).

When Charley presses Terry about this and even threatens him with a gun, Terry is shocked. It reminds him of how Charley had forced him to throw a big match and end his boxing career years before, at the orders of the same gangster.

In one of the most memorable scenes in film history, Terry expresses the pain he feels over Charley’s betrayals:

“You was my brother, Charley,” he says. “You shoulda looked out for me a little bit. You shoulda taken care of me, just a little bit, so I wouldn't have to take them dives for the short-end money...I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am.”

Terry goes on to become a hero when he testifies against Friendly before a Congressional waterfront crime commission.

Many observers have noted that, in part, On the Waterfront seems to be Kazan’s cinematic justification for his own testimony before the McCarthy-era House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on April 10, 1952.

In the 1930s, Kazan was a member of the Group Theater, a New York City theater collective that included a number of politically progressive, left-leaning actors, playwrights and directors.

During his 1952 HUAC testimony, Kazan named eight former Group Theater members who he said had once been Communists, including Clifford Odets and Paula Miller, who later married the famed acting mentor Lee Strasberg.

Kazan also criticized the screenwriters and producers called the “Hollywood Ten” for refusing to cooperate with HUAC’s hunt for alleged Communists in the movie industry. (Often now described as a modern day “witch hunt.”)

Kazan’s testimony (online here) made him a controversial figure throughout his life. And, the controversy has continued since Kazan’s death in 2003.

His supporters feel his artistic achievements as a director outweigh the fact that he was one of many people in the film and theater world who “named names” and went along with the anti-Communist hysteria that led to the “blacklisting” of many actors, writers and directors in Hollywood.

His critics view him as a despicable snitch, who was willing to hurt former friends to protect his lucrative career.

Reading things Kazan said about the controversy himself over the years, I get the sense that he viewed his HUAC testimony as an act of conscience that was similar to Terry Malloy’s testimony to the waterfront crime commission in On the Waterfront.

For example, two days after appearing before the House un-American Activities Committee, Kazan paid for an ad in the New York Times in which he tried to justify what he had done. He said in one paragraph:

“Whatever hysteria exists — and there is some, particularly in Hollywood — is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy...Secrecy serves the Communists. At the other pole, it serves those who are interested in silencing liberal voices. The employment of a lot of good liberals is threatened because they have allowed themselves to become associated with or silenced by the Communists. Liberals must speak out.”

Decades later, in his 1997 autobiography, Kazan wrote:

“If you expect an apology now because I would later name names to the house Committee, you've misjudged my character. The ‘horrible, immoral thing’ I would do, I did out of my true self...The people who owe you an explanation (no apology expected) are those who, year after year, held the Soviets blameless for all their crimes.”

I love On the Waterfront and many other movies Kazan directed (my other special favorites are A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!  East of Eden and Baby Doll).

But I do question whether “exposing” former friends who seem to have been at worst “guilty” of having some misguided political views in their younger days is similar to exposing graft, extortion and murder committed by a gangster.

I hope that, if I had been put on the HUAC hot seat, I would have had the guts to respond like author Lillian Hellman.

In a letter she sent to HUAC Chairman John S. Wood on May 19, 1952, Hellman explained that she was willing to appear before the committee, as requested. However, she made it crystal clear that she would not name names.

Her letter includes a famous quote about acts of conscience and defiance of political witch hunters:

“To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable,” Hellman wrote. “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”

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