Mario Puzo

Mario Puzo was born in a poor family of Neapolitan immigrants living in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York. Many of his books draw heavily on this heritage. After graduating from the City College of New York, he joined the United States Army Air Forces in World War II. Due to his poor eyesight, the military did not let him undertake combat duties but made him a public relations officer stationed in Germany. In 1950, his first short story, The Last Christmas, was published in American Vanguard. After the war, he wrote his first book, The Dark Arena, which was published in 1955.

At periods in the 1950s and early 1960s, Puzo worked as a writer/editor for publisher Martin Goodman’s Magazine Management Company. Puzo, along with other writers like Bruce Jay Friedman, worked for the company line of men’s magazines, pulp titles like Male, True Action, and Swank. Under the pseudonym Mario Cleri, Puzo wrote World War II adventure features for True Action.

Puzo’s most famous work, The Godfather, was first published in 1969 after he had heard anecdotes about Mafia organizations during his time in pulp journalism. He later said in an interview with Larry King that his principal motivation was to make money. He had already, after all, written two books that had received great reviews, yet had not amounted to much. As a government clerk with five children, he was looking to write something that would appeal to the masses. With a number one bestseller for months on the New York Times Best Seller List, Mario Puzo had found his target audience. The book was later developed into the film The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The movie received 11 Academy Award nominations, winning three, including an Oscar for Puzo for Best Adapted Screenplay. Coppola and Puzo collaborated then to work on sequels to the original film, The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III.

Books in order of publication:

Novels

The Dark Arena (1955)

The Fortunate Pilgrim (1965)

The Runaway Summer of Davie Shaw (1966)

Six Graves to Munich (1967), as Mario Cleri

Fools Die (1978)

The Fourth K (1990)

The Last Don (1996)

Omertà (2000)

The Family (2001) (completed by Puzo’s longtime girlfriend Carol Gino)

Series

The Godfather (1969)

The Sicilian (1984) – takes place between the 6th and the 7th books of The Godfather

Non-fiction

“Test Yourself: Are You Heading for a Nervous Breakdown?” as Mario Cleri (1965)

“The Six Million Killer Sharks That Terrorize Our Shores” as Mario Cleri (1966)

“Choosing a Dream: Italians in Hell’s Kitchen” (1971)

The Godfather Papers and Other Confessions (1972)

Inside Las Vegas (1977)