Mario Puzo

Mario Francis Puzo (October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999) was an American author and screenwriter. He wrote crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia, most notably The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and for Part II in 1974. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film and its 1980 sequel. His final novel, The Family, was released posthumously in 2001.

Personal life

Puzo was born in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City to Italian immigrants from the Province of Avellino; his father was from Pietradefusi and his mother from Ariano Irpino. When Puzo was 12, his father, who worked as a trackman for the New York Central Railroad, was committed to the Pilgrim State Hospital for schizophrenia, and his wife Maria was left to raise their seven children.

Mario Puzo served in the United States Army Air Forces in Germany in World War II, and later graduated from the City College of New York. Puzo married a German woman, Erika Lina Broske, with whom he had five children. When Erika died of breast cancer at the age of 57 in 1978, her nurse, Carol Gino, became Puzo’s companion.

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