Mario Puzo

Mario Puzo (1920-1999) was an American author and screenwriter who wrote crime novels about the Italian-American and Sicilian Mafia, above all The Godfather (1969). He said the story came from research into organised crime rather than personal experience; the novel spent 67 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and sold more than nine million copies in two years. He co-adapted it with Francis Ford Coppola into a film trilogy and won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film and for Part II. He and Coppola preferred the title The Death of Michael Corleone for the third film, which Paramount rejected.