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Peter Bogdanovich would be remembered today for directing THE GODFATHER had Paramount Pictures had its way 54 years ago.

The studio wanted Bogdanovich to direct the crime family drama that premiered in New York March 14, 1972 and was based on Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel. But Bogdanovich, who’d made THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, passed for lack of interest in the Mafia.

Paramount’s offer to direct was one that many top directors could and did refuse — including, Richard Brooks, Sidney J. Furie, Otto Preminger, Franklin J. Schaffner & François Truffaut. Sergio Leone, who also passed, had second thoughts later and made his own 1984 gangster epic ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, which died at the boxoffice.

Paramount’s legendary production chief Robert Evans studied the studio’s roster of earlier gangster films and found that most hadn’t done well. He believed that’s because they weren’t written or directed by Italian-Americans. When he hired Francis Ford Coppola to direct GODFATHER, Evans told him he wanted to “smell the spaghetti.” Coppola wasn’t a well known director then. Although his 1966 feature directorial debut, YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW, had been well received by the critics, he was now just writing and producing. He’d co-written PATTON, winning the best original screenplay Oscar, and he’d executive produced George Lucas’s first feature film THX 1138.

Paramount wanted to make GODFATHER as a low-budget gangster film with a contemporary setting, but Coppola rejected Puzo’s screenplay with that concept. The studio tried hard to dump him, claiming he couldn’t stay on schedule and wasted money. As it turned out, Coppola brought GODFATHER in ahead of schedule and under budget. It grossed $250.9M worldwide on a budget of just $6M.

Paramount had wanted to lose Coppola and hire Elia Kazan, an Oscar winner in 1955 for directing ON THE WATERFRONT with Marlon Brando. They thought Kazan would work well with the famously difficult Brando. But Brando insisted he’d quit if Coppola left. Paramount didn’t know that Brando was through with Kazan because the director had named names during his 1952 Hollywood Blacklist testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Orson Welles wanted to play Don Vito Corleone and even promised to knock off many pounds to get the role. But Coppola had Brando in mind from the start and didn’t feel Welles was right for the role.

Brando famously won the best actor Oscar, but skipped the event. He sent Sacheen Littlefeather to be there to accept for him if he was the winner. After Roger Moore & Liv Ullmann opened the sealed envelope, Littlefeather came up and, as Brando had instructed, refused to take the statuette. She then accused Hollywood of mistreating Native Americans for decades.