Mario Puzo

Mario Puzo was an American novelist and screenwriter born October 15, 1920, in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan to Neapolitan immigrant parents. His father, a railroad trackman, abandoned the family when Mario was twelve, and he was raised by his mother Maria, whose voice and manner he later said inspired the character of Don Vito Corleone.

Puzo served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, then studied at the New School and Columbia University on the GI Bill. He worked as a freelance writer and as an editor at men's adventure magazines while publishing two novels, The Dark Arena (1955) and The Fortunate Pilgrim (1965), which earned strong reviews but little money. Deep in gambling debts, he set out to write a commercial book about the Mafia.

The result was The Godfather, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in 1969. It sold nine million copies in two years and was adapted by Puzo and director Francis Ford Coppola into the 1972 Paramount film starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. Puzo and Coppola won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, then won again for The Godfather Part II in 1974. Puzo also co-wrote the screenplays for Superman (1978) and Superman II.

His later novels included Fools Die (1978), The Sicilian (1984), and The Last Don (1996). He died on July 2, 1999, in Bay Shore, New York, at age 78.

The name Mario is the Italian and Spanish form of the Latin Marius, a Roman family name possibly connected to Mars, the Roman god of war, or to the Latin mas, meaning "male."