“I’m going to make him an offer he won’t be able to refuse”: the phrase of Don Corleone, played by Marlon Brando in “The Godfather” would have a surprising origin, which comes from Frank Sinatra.
“I’m going to make him an offer he won’t be able to refuse…” Let it be said: this line from The Godfather is one of the most famous in the history of cinema. In 2005, moreover, it was classified by the AFI (the American Film Institute) second among the 100 greatest lines in the history of American cinema; just behind the “Frankly my dear, that’s the least of my worries!” thrown by Clark Gable at Vivien Leigh at the very end of Gone with the Wind.
Don Corleone in the text
This line, spoken by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola’s film, takes place at the beginning of the film. Johnny Fontane (Al Martino) confides his anxieties to Don Corleone (Brando): his singing career is in decline. To relaunch it, he needs a role in the war film produced by Jack Woltz (John Marley).
Don Corleone: This Hollywood boss will give you what you want.
Johnny Fontane: It’s too late, filming starts in a week!
Don Corleone: I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.
Inflexible, producer Woltz refuses to give in to Fontane’s request… Until early in the morning when he discovers in his bed, screaming, the head of his racehorse Khartoum…
For the pleasure of seeing the scene again…
A line inspired by Frank Sinatra?
Behind the story of the singer – Crooner Fontane in The Godfather, some at the time believed they were reading an episode from the life of Frank Sinatra. While his career was in decline, thanks to his mafia friends (especially Sam Giancana, the godfather of the Chicago mafia), he obtained the role of Maggio in the film As Long as There Will Be Men , a role that won him the Oscar and boosted his popularity.
There is also an even older story: in 1942, Sam Giancana forced a jazz bandleader, Tommy Dorsey, to release Frank Sinatra from the contractual obligations that were holding back his career…
In her unauthorized biography of Frank Sinatra, the famous American journalist Kitty Kelley tells a tasty anecdote about the actor-singer. During his 1974 world tour, Sinatra fell out violently with the Australian press, to the point of seriously insulting them.
Paramount Pictures
He then alienated the Press Union, followed by the machinists, while hotel employees and transport workers decided to boycott him. The situation was very tense: to be able to leave Australia, Sinatra had to make a public apology.
Actor-singer Bob Hope, who knew Sinatra well, summed up the matter this way: “They ended up letting Frank leave the country the morning the Syndicate leader woke up to a Kangaroo head on his pillow…”
The fact remains that this anecdote, insofar as it was authentic, was out of the picture anyway, since it supposedly occurred two years after the film’s release. Sinatra has always denied having inspired the crooner’s sequence in The Godfather and the line that follows. But given the shady (and very powerful) associations of the person concerned, we can also legitimately doubt it.