Trivia

Was writing a story outline for a fourth "Godfather" film before he died.

In the foreword of his 1972 autobiography, "The Godfather Papers & Other Confessions", he explains that "The Godfather", though a best seller, was his least favorite book, but hated when people knocked it solely because it was a best seller.

In the 1950s and 1960s he worked at Magazine Management which was owned by Martin Goodman, whose company also owned Timely Comics, which later became known as Marvel Comics. He decided to try his hand at writing a comic book, but told Stan Lee that he couldn't meet the monthly deadlines. Stan Lee had the opposite problem: he could work under pressure to produce a monthly comic, but didn't have the discipline to write a novel. While Puzo became better known for writing novels, he did eventually succeed in the comic book genre by writing the first two Superman films.

Early in his career, he worked for a NYC company called Magazine Management that among other things actually wrote fake celebrity stories for fan magazines. His co-workers there included not just one but two other writers who went on to pen their own best-sellers, Bruce Jay Friedman and Dorothy Gallagher.

Wrote the first draft of Earthquake (1974) in mid-1972. When the film was pushed into production in mid-1973, Puzo had to quit the project due to his commitment to writing The Godfather Part II (1974). As the final script featured elements of his original, he was one of the two writers credited for Earthquake (1974). In 1975, a minor legal dispute arose between Puzo and Universal over his share of the profits, which was quickly settled.

He had five children: Anthony, Joseph, Dorothy Ann Puzo, Virginia and Eugene.

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, Vol. 131, pages 366-373. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 494-496. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.