As Professor Jon Lewis writes in his BFI Film Classics study of The Godfather, author Mario “Puzo’s first stab at a screen adaptation … re-set the story in the 1970s. It was the Production Chief at Paramount Robert Evan’s idea, but after reading this first draft, pretty much everyone agreed that the update didn’t work. Coppola’s subsequent draft better matched the novel’s nostalgic period piece.”
And thanks to Francis Ford Coppola for that. Can you imagine a long-haired Michael Corleone? (That’s Al Pacino, right, at the film’s premiere.)