8/1/2023 0 Comments The valachi papersIn fact, Puzo is known to have drawn inspiration from the Valachi Hearings and interviews that formed Maas’ book. However, reportedly De Laurentiis bought the rights to The Valachi Papers before Mario Puzo released his book, The Godfather. The former was released in America after the latter, so The Valachi Papers’ publicity campaign made the most of the comparisons and The Godfather’s success clearly helped boost box office takings. Now, it’s up to debate as to whether or not The Valachi Papers was a cash-in on The Godfather. However, I soon realised they were actually released in the same year. Whilst watching Young’s film, I thought to myself, ‘this feels like it might have been quite influential on Coppola’s beloved film series (and the books that inspired them)’. There’s an elephant in the room when discussing The Valachi Papers and that’s The Godfather. The film flashes back to these times, showing the audience the world of the criminal underground, through the eyes of a low-level ‘soldier’. O’Loughlin), relating his decades of service for cosa nostra. So, Valachi spends many days speaking with FBI agent Ryan (Gerald S. His boss, Vito Genovese (Lino Ventura), believes Valachi is an informant (which reportedly wasn’t yet true at this time), so had put a price on his head.Īfter the incident, hearing first hand from Genovese that he doesn’t trust him and receiving the ‘kiss of death’, Valachi decides to get his own back on Genovese by bringing him down through giving information to the authorities. The Valachi Papers begins with the gangster’s time in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, mentioned earlier, when he murders a man he thinks is trying to kill him. First, let me briefly skim over the plot of The Valachi Papers, which is being released on Blu-ray by Powerhouse Films, as part of their excellent Indicator collection. An Italian-French co-production starring Charles Bronson (as the eponymous mobster) and directed by Brit Terence Young, the film was both helped and hindered by another gangster movie released in 1972, that we’ll get to later. It was a big success, so it’s no surprise that, shortly afterwards, the ambitious producer Dino De Laurentiis bought the rights to make it into a film.Įventually finished and released in 1972, the film adaptation of The Valachi Papers, was also quite successful. So, in 1968, ‘The Valachi Papers’ was released. Maas was, however, allowed to publish a third-person account of his interviews with the gangster. Johnson about it and soon after decided to call on the district court to prevent the book from being released. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach spoke to President Lyndon B. However, before the book was released, the American Italian Anti-Defamation League appealed against it being published, claiming it would unfairly develop negative ethnic stereotypes. This became a sprawling 1,180-page manuscript Valachi called ‘The Real Thing’.Īuthor Peter Maas was hired to edit this hefty tome into something more palatable and he was granted access to interview Valachi further. In 1964, the US Department of Justice talked Valachi into writing down the personal history of his long service within the mafia. Something that big was never going to end there though. These were broadcast on American television, so his testimony became big news and opened the public’s eyes to the supposed truth about cosa nostra. This culminated in him testifying in front of a special committee, in what would become known as The Valachi Hearings. In 1963, a year after that incident, Valachi began cooperating with the U.S. Whilst serving a 15-year prison sentence for drug trafficking, Valachi murdered an inmate he thought was sent to kill him by his boss Vito Genovese, who was also in the same prison, and ended up with a life sentence. cosa nostra, as he called it) to publicly acknowledge the existence of the organisation and describe its activities. Joseph Valachi was famous for being the first member of the Italian-American Mafia (a.k.a. O’Loughlin, Amedeo Nazzari, Fausto Tozzi, Pupella Maggio Starring: Charles Bronson, Lino Ventura, Jill Ireland, Walter Chiari, Joseph Wiseman, Gerald S.
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