The Godfather’s Cat
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Link to video
So apparently the whole cat scene was unscripted and off the cuff. There was a stray cat that had appeared on the set the first day of filming. There are 3 basic stories. One says that that Coppola just had an instant revelation, picked up the cat and dropped him on Brando’s lap. The other says that Brando saw the cat, reached down and scooped him up and Coppola nodded. The third is that the cat walked across the set like he owned the joint and jumped onto Brando’s lap on his own. What all 3 stories agree on is that no verbal direction about the cat was given, that Brando and Coppola both recognized it instantly, that a stagehand came to pickup the cat but Brando stopped him, saying the cat’s the only one on the set that knows it’s cues.
The cat was purring so loud that it actually drowned out some of Brando’s lines. A sound guy was bitching about the noise but one of the grips shut him up, saying it doesn’t matter. A lot of people credit that scene with setting the tone for the entire movie. Showing a tenderness and a compassion to Corleone while calmly discussing taking a life. It both humanized Corleone and made him somehow even worse of a monster at the same time…
Nobody actually knows what happened to the cat after that…
