How Godfather director made Brando an offer he DID refuse
IT’S one of the most famous lines in movie history – when Marlon Brando, as Mafia don Vito Corleone, calmly intones the thinly veiled threat towards a Hollywood hotshot: ‘I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.’
Now it has emerged that the legendary actor received an offer of his own from the director of The Godfather, asking him to reprise his role for the sequel. But this was an offer Brando could refuse – and did.
And his decision gave a big break to a then-unknown Robert De Niro.
In a previously unseen letter sent to Brando in May 1973, film-maker
Francis Ford Coppola writes: ‘I heard you were back from the South Pacific; but I didn’t want to call you because I always feel stupid bringing up the matter of the Godfather... My problem is simply that I am stalling and stalling because I have the inkling that it may be possible that you will play the young Vito Corleone.
‘I’ve seen in the past, that even a slight possibility may blossom into a fact, and so I’ve tried to kindle this as best I could.’ Coppola described himself as a ‘behind-the-scenes monster’ trying to pressure Paramount studio, explaining: ‘I tell them the movie cannot be made without you. But what it really comes down to is me.
‘Marlon, I respect you enormously; and if you told me that you did not want to do it... I would accept that, and never mention it again.’
Brando, then 49, turned down the role of 25-year-old Corleone, which Coppola then offered to De Niro, who was 30. The letter is being sold by Boston-based RR Auction, where it is estimated to fetch £6,200.