Angered that his first two critically-acclaimed novels had failed commercially, Mario Puzo managed to get a $5K advance from G.P. Putnam's Sons for his proposed Mafia novel and set his sights on nothing short of a best-seller, writing "The Godfather" in a rage to be accepted. Though he was nearly 50 at the time of its publication, Puzo put poverty behind him forever, subsequently pulling down tons of money as an Oscar-winning screenwriter and novelist (the paperback rights to "Fools Die" sold for an astonishing $2.5 million in 1978).

Along with director Francis Ford Coppola, Puzo crafted the screenplays for all three "Godfather" movies, sharing Best Screenplay Oscars with the director for both "The Godfather" (1972) and "The Godfather, Part II" (1974). He collaborated on the scripts for the grandly entertaining "Superman" (1978) and its nearly as successful sequel "Superman II" (1980) before demanding $1 million to write a screenplay for which he had no interest, "The Cotton Club" (1984). Puzo got his money and his credit, though what finally ended up on screen bore little resemblance to what he had written. He also entrusted rogue director Michael Cimino with the film adaptation of his novel "The Sicilian" (1987), and the resultant bomb could not overcome Cimino's lack of humor or Christopher Lambert's wooden performance.

Puzo nearly died of a heart attack in Las Vegas, NV in 1991 but bounced back from quadruple-bypass surgery to write his comeback novel "The Last Don" (companion Carol Gino made suggestions and put it all on the word processor). CBS outbid Coppola, paying $2.1 million, and turned it into the miniseries "Mario Puzo's 'The Last Don'" (1997). Before that, NBC had aired the miniseries "Mario Puzo's 'The Fortunate Pilgrim'" (1988), based on his 1964 novel and starring Sophia Loren, and he had appeared in the HBO documentary, "The Godfather Family: A Look Inside" (1990), about the making of the movies.