Anthony
Colombo, a mobster’s son who successfully agitated to keep out even a
single reference to the Mafia during the entire 175 minutes of the film
“The Godfather,” died on Jan. 6 at his home in San Diego. He was 71.
The cause was complications of diabetes, his son Joseph A. Colombo said.
Mr.
Colombo was a 26-year-old military school graduate in 1971 when he
helped persuade the producer of “The Godfather,” the sponsors of the
network television series “The F.B.I.” and even the Nixon
administration’s Justice Department under Attorney General John N.
Mitchell to expunge the term Mafia and its Sicilian counterpart, La Cosa
Nostra, from the screenplay, weekly scripts and official lexicon.
At
the time, Mr. Colombo later said, his power of persuasion was derived
from his position as the vice president of the Italian-American Civil
Rights League, the anti-discrimination group founded by his father, the
organized crime figure Joseph A. Colombo Sr.
Had
the Mafia withheld its unofficial blessing from the film, any number of
unexpected impediments might have interfered with the production of
“The Godfather,” like labor troubles, missing scenery or even missing
cast members.
The
author and screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi wrote in The New York Times in
1971 that film’s producer, Albert Ruddy — threatened with boycotts,
wildcat strikes and demonstrations only weeks before shooting was to
begin — “was uncertain whether he would be able to make the movie at
all.”
Anthony
Colombo reflected later that solely on the basis of his civil rights
group’s power of peaceful protest, “if we didn’t want it made in New
York, it wouldn’t have been made, period.”
The Mafia was mentioned dozens of times in the Mario Puzo novel on which the film was based.
The
TV series “The F.B.I.” sanitized future scripts after Mr. Colombo
contacted Lee A. Iacocca, the president of Ford Motor Company, which was
one of the show’s sponsors.
The
league also lobbied against other stereotypical portrayals, like an
Alka-Seltzer commercial in which a man says, “Mama Mia, that’s-a some-a
spicy meatball.” And it claimed credit for hampering production of The
Times for one day by blocking delivery trucks, all in an effort to
discourage the paper from making indiscriminate references to the two
Italian terms for organized crime.
The
league’s campaign was criticized by State Senator John J. Marchi, a
Staten Island Republican, as based on “a preposterous theory that we can
exorcise devils by reading them out of the English language.”
Anthony
Edward Colombo Sr. was born in Brooklyn on Feb. 25, 1945, to Joseph A.
Colombo Sr., who described himself as a real estate broker, and the
former Lucille Faiello. Anthony grew up in Orange County, N.Y., in the
Hudson Valley and graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in 1965.
In
addition to his son Joseph, he is survived by his wife, the former
Carol O’Brien; another son, Anthony Jr.; two daughters, Lucille and
Cristine Colombo; four grandchildren; his brothers, Vincent and
Christopher; and his sister, Catherine.
Joseph
Colombo was gunned down at a Unity Day rally in Columbus Circle in
Manhattan on June 28, 1971, in what Anthony later suggested was a
conspiracy by law enforcement.
The
elder Colombo, who never completely regained consciousness and died
seven years later, insisted publicly that the Mafia was a myth. Anthony
sued WCBS-TV in 1971 (and later settled for undisclosed terms) after he
was identified as a reputed member.
In
1986, though — “to save my family and four children the agony” of a
trial, he said — Anthony pleaded guilty to a federal racketeering
conspiracy charge that involved running an illegal gambling club. His
plea agreement included a 14-year sentence.
While
he maintained that he was not a Mafioso, the conspiracy count to which
he pleaded guilty accused him and the other defendants of belonging to a
“secret criminal organization known as the Colombo organized crime
family of La Cosa Nostra.”
After
his father died and the Italian-American Civil Rights League largely
faded from public debate, Anthony Colombo owned or operated catering
halls, dry cleaning businesses and construction companies.
“Colombo:
The Unsolved Murder” (2013), written by Don Capria in collaboration
with Mr. Colombo, offered an explanation of why Mr. Colombo had embarked
— reluctantly, the book said — on a criminal career himself after his
father’s death.
“He
felt he needed to make certain sacrifices to protect his family,” Mr.
Capria wrote. “He has paid for his lawlessness and has since abandoned
his belief that crime is a necessary evil in life.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/24/nyregion/anthony-colombo-dies-at-71-helped-get-mafia-out-of-the-godfather.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fnyregion&_r=0
