![]() “You never know what you’re going to find, but this collection is in great shape and in good order,” she says. “The collection is comprised of somewhere around 50 Bankers Boxes, so that’s a lot of material if you imagine how many pieces of paper it takes to fill up one of those boxes,” Cordova says. Her work involves surveying, cataloging, and organizing every document in the collection. While the exhibit is on view this spring, Rauner archivist Elena Cordova will finish preparing the full collection for research use. ‘I Work My Whole Life’ (Vito Corleone, The Godfather) “He even says in an essay published after The Godfather, ‘I’m no longer a novelist-I’m a junior partner in The Godfather business,’” says Dumpert. “Documents in the collection show him literally plotting out the sex scenes through the novel for maximum effect,” says Satterfield, of outlines for what became The Godfather.īut for Puzo, the downside of financial success was that he never was taken seriously as a literary writer again. “In his mid to late 40s, he owed tens of thousands of dollars to family members, to tax collectors, and, because he was an inveterate gambler, to bookmakers,” Dumpert says.Ĭash-strapped, Puzo consciously set out to write a bestseller. Though Puzo’s early work received good reviews, he didn’t make much money. “He was almost 50 when The Godfather was published, and he had had a long career as a writer before then,” Dumpert says-literary novels, pulp fiction published under a pseudonym, even a children’s book called The Runaway Summer of Davie Shaw, which Dumpert calls “funny and sweet, and still completely Puzo.” Together, the papers are a detailed record of the professional life of a working writer, documenting how Puzo made a calculated shift late in his career from serious literary novelist to founder of a pop-culture phenomenon. ‘It’s Strictly Business’ (Michael Corleone, The Godfather) My guess is that there might still be some people who at least knew the family,” Dumpert says. “I’m dying to know who his host family was. Although she hasn’t pinpointed exactly where he stayed, Hanover seems a plausible guess. “I thought, I bet he was a Fresh Air Fund kid.”ĭumpert was able to confirm that Puzo-the son of Italian immigrants who grew up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City in the 1920s-did, in fact, spend summers in New Hampshire through the Fresh Air Fund. “One of the characters gets sent to live in New Hampshire via the Fresh Air Fund”-a nonprofit that helps New York City children spend summer vacations in the country. Indeed, Godfather protagonist and Mafia boss Michael Corleone is portrayed in the book and films as a Dartmouth graduate, and Hanover and Dartmouth appear in many of Puzo’s writings-a puzzling detail, considering Puzo himself was not an alumnus.Įxhibit curator Hazel-Dawn Dumpert found a clue in The Fortunate Pilgrim, Puzo’s fictionalized memoir. “We love the fact that Puzo’s papers document the creation of Dartmouth’s most famous fictional alumnus, Michael Corleone, and that they will live for centuries to come with the papers of so many prominent, and real, alumni!” says Bruce Rauner, who is the governor of Illinois. “We are thrilled to place the Puzo collection at Dartmouth, where it will be available to the worldwide scholarly community and integrated into the curriculum to create immediate and lasting benefits for students,” says Diana Rauner. Tickets for the film are $8/$5 with a Dartmouth ID.ĭiana and Bruce Rauner ’78 (Photo courtesy Diana and Bruce Rauner)įor their part, the Rauners see Dartmouth as the perfect home for the collection. Paganucci Professor of Italian Literature and Language and director of the Leslie Center for the Humanities. Saturday, May 12, in Loew Auditorium at the Black Family Visual Arts Center, introduced by Graziella Parati, the Paul D. ![]() And in celebration of the gift, the Hopkins Center for the Arts will be screening The Godfather at 4 p.m. Selections from the papers will be on display from April 5 to June 30 in the Berry Main Street lobby of Baker-Berry Library. The papers, which will be housed at Rauner Special Collections Library (named by a gift from the Rauners that created a permanent home for Dartmouth’s special collections), include draft manuscripts, correspondence, and other records from Puzo’s long career as a novelist and screenwriter-even the 1965 Olympia typewriter on which he likely wrote The Godfather. When Diana and Bruce Rauner ’78 offered their collection of The Godfather author Mario Puzo’s papers to Dartmouth Library, the answer was an emphatic yes. It was, ahem, an offer they couldn’t refuse.
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