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Arts

Ultimate box set: ‘Godfather’ author’s massive archive to hit the auction block

Author Mario Puzo’s 45-box collection covers his entire career and includes manuscripts of his early books and late-career screenplays, and even his old typewriter. It is being sold by Boston-based RR Auction on Feb. 18. There’s no doubt that its thousands of pages of “Godfather” documents are the highlight and shed light on the creative process, including the back-and-forth between Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola as they collaborated on the screenplay.

It seems that Puzo and Coppola together simplified a lot of the dialogue from the book for the screen. The way it came out in the movie makes it a little more like everyday gangster slang.

Tricia Eaton, RR’s director of specialty catalogs

The scripts include some of Puzo’s own scribbles and thoughts on what the American Film Institute called the second most famous movie quote of all time — Marlon Brando, as Don Vito Corleone, saying: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse." Another fascinating piece of the collection is a letter from Puzo to Brando dated March 1970. Puzo envisioned Brando playing Corleone in the 1972 movie, but it almost never happened. Apparently thinking that Brando was out of the project, Puzo wrote the letter expressing his disappointment.

I’m sorry I wasted your time. I still think it was a good idea. And thanks for taking the trouble to call and talk to me.