'The Godfather' was released 50 years ago. Here are 17 surprising things about the making of the film.

• "The Godfather" was released on March 24, 1972, and is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

• Studio executives did not want Al Pacino or Marlon Brando to play the lead roles.

• Francis Ford Coppola's directing choices included lighting scenes poorly and encouraging mistakes.

Francis Ford Coppola wasn't the first choice of director and nearly got fired several times during filming.

Noteworthy directors Elia Kazan, Arthur Penn, Peter Yates, Costa-Gavras, Sergio Leone, Otto Preminger, Franklin J. Schaffner, and Richard Brooks were all considered and declined the job before Paramount executives picked Francis Ford Coppola.

Things didn't come easily for Coppola after this though. Although he co-wrote the screenplay, executives took issue with many of his casting decisions and stylistic choices.

With rumors swirling that he'd be fired, Coppola took it upon himself to fire his assistant director and reshoot scenes that executives were unhappy with, according to Time. His masterpiece was then finally understood.

Al Pacino was not the first choice for Michael Corleone, and he said he was also almost fired during filming.

Executives wanted a notable actor to play the breakout role, like Robert Redford, according to the Washington Post. But Coppola saw Al Pacino on Broadway and knew he had found his Michael Corleone. Reluctantly, the studio agreed.

But it wasn't smooth sailing from there. Apparently, the studio executives thought Pacino was doing a poor job and described his performance as "anemic," he told the Washington Post. He added that they tried to fire him three times during filming.

The studio also didn't want to cast Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone, but then they saw his legendary screen test where he stuffed his mouth with Kleenex.

The studio thought Marlon Brando would be a problem on set and thought of him as "toxic," according to The Hollywood Reporter. But Coppola made a strong case for the actor by going to his house and helping him create an audition tape.

Coppola said in an interview cited by THR that he remembers Brando stuffing his mouth with Kleenex and smearing shoe polish in his hair to transform into Don Vito Corleone. Once the studio saw the tape, he was given the role.

Brando won an Academy Award for playing the crime boss, which he subsequently turned down.

The longstanding belief that Brando stuffed cotton balls in his mouth while filming is a myth.

While Brando stuffed his mouth with Kleenex for his screen test, he didn't use this technique while filming. A dentist created a custom mouthpiece for the actor that helped give the same effect of protruding cheek jowls.

Today, the lopsided prosthetic can be found in the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York, according to Britannica.

Studio executives felt the film was lit too darkly, and they had to be convinced that the artistic choice would work.

"The Godfather" is famously dark — literally — thanks to cinematographer Gordon Willis, who became known as the "Prince of Darkness." He purposefully lit each scene dimly to mirror the shady and dark events happening in the script.

Executives at Paramount felt Willis went too far and that the movie was poorly lit. Coppola and Willis had to convince them otherwise.

A civil-rights league ensured the words "mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" were excluded from the film.

With concern that the film would portray harmful Italian stereotypes, the Italian-American Civil Rights League held a rally in 1970 to protest and halt the production.

"The Godfather's" producer Albert Ruddy attended a meeting with League members, including New York mob boss and founder Joseph Colombo Sr. Ruddy made a deal with the League to omit the words "mafia and "Cosa Nostra" – a term used for the broad grouping of mafia "families" – from the script.

Beyond this, members of the League hung out on set to ensure the rule was enforced. Actor James Caan apparently picked up on their nuances to better help him play his role, according to CBS News.

James Caan had his fair share of improvisation that added authentic details to the film.

Speaking to the New York Post on March 21, 2022, James Caan reminisced on his improvisational contributions and scenes in "The Godfather."

In the scene where his character, Sonny, beats up his sister's husband Carlo, Sonny first throws a stick at Carlo. "That wasn't in the script," Caan told the Post. "I took one of those industrial brooms and cut the end off and put it under my seat [...] I knew that's what a lot of guys did in my neighborhood."

Caan also broke the FBI character's camera after getting genuinely heated. From his upbringing, he instinctively pulled out money to pay for the damages and walked away.

Lastly, going above budget, the actor purchased a pair of wing-toed dress shoes for the opening wedding scene, even though he was told not to. He said, "A lot of Italian guys in my old neighborhood, they have maybe two suits to their name but they've got 10 pairs of shoes." So he bought them and wore them.

Brando didn't memorize any of his lines for the film. Instead, he relied on cue cards.

Brando was well-known in the industry for using cue cards instead of memorizing his lines, and that is also true for his role in "The Godfather." The actor said the technique helped him be more spontaneous instead of having to think about each line, Time reported.

At times, the cue cards would be taped to lamps or even other actors in the scene to hide them from the camera.

The cat on Brando's lap was a stray and not supposed to be in the film. In fact, the cat's purring almost ruined the scene.

"The cat in Marlon's hands was not planned for," Coppola said, according to Time. "I saw the cat running around the studio, and took it and put it in his hands without a word."

When Coppola and the team listened back to the scene, they could barely hear Brando's dialogue because the cat was purring so loudly.

The lead actors liked to play pranks by mooning each other while filming.

Brando, Robert Duvall, and James Caan liked to pull down their pants and moon each other on set — Brando once mooned almost 500 extras.

"During the wedding scene, we all were mooning each other," Duvall said during a cast conversation at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, Business Insider previously reported. "Some woman turned to me and said, 'Mr. Duvall, you're fine.'"

Talia Shire, who played Connie, was Coppola's sister, and she had very little acting experience. She even knocked down the camera at one point.

Coppola did not want his sister, Shire, to play the role of Connie because he pictured the character to be more "'homely,' an adjective he'd never use to describe his sister," Vanity Fair wrote.

Additionally, she didn't have much acting experience.

"One of my first scenes, I walked into the camera and knocked it down," Shire said at the Tribeca Film Festival reunion in 2017. "It was Marlon Brando who said 'That's OK.'"

It all worked out in the end, as Shire was nominated for best supporting actress at the Oscars.

"Leave the gun, take the cannoli" is one of the movie's most famous lines, but it was improvised.

Based on the original script, Richard S. Castellano, who played Clemenza, was only supposed to say, "Leave the gun," after he killed Paulie, Insider previously reported. But Castellano's wife, actress Ardell Sheridan, suggested he add, "Take the cannoli." It referred to an earlier scene in which his character was asked to pick up dessert.

When Castellano added the line, Coppola decided to leave it in the film, and it has become one of the most famous lines from the movie.

Richard S. Castellano played a supporting role yet was the highest paid actor in the film.

Playing Peter Clemenza, the enforcer who ruled over the Corleones' Bronx territories, Castellano was not a main character; however, was the highest paid one, according to CBS News. Having been recognized for his previous movie "Lovers and Other Strangers" with several award nominations, he was more known and praised than Brando, Duvall, Caan, and Pacino at that point.

While it's not disclosed how much Clemenza was paid, his salary and creative control demands for "The Godfather II" were too substantial and had him removed from the sequel.

Coppola had a habit of leaving in actors' mistakes because he felt they were genuine.

Coppola is known for changing the script and adding in lines while filming. Sometimes he even kept in scenes where the actors made mistakes.

Lenny Montana was a professional wrestler and bodyguard who visited the set and was quickly casted as Luca Brasi. Without acting training, he was nervous and needed Caan to loosen him up.

Montana was so nervous during his scene with Brando that he messed up his lines. Coppola liked the nervousness and kept it in the film.

Oranges always showed up before death scenes, including the improvised one by Brando.

Oranges became a symbol of death in "The Godfather," with the fruit making appearances right before a shootout or death. However, it may have been more of a cinematic decision than a symbolic one.

In his book "The Godfather Legacy" about the making of the film, Harlan Lebo wrote, "For [production designer] Dean Tavoularis, oranges were simply another carefully chosen compliment [...] This film wasn't going to be about bright colors, and oranges make a nice contrast," as per Time.

Tavoularis said, "I don't remember anybody saying, Hey, I like oranges as a symbolic message."

Appropriately, though, Don Corelone's death scene was thought up by Brando when he put orange-peel faux fangs in his mouth to scare his grandson.

"Once I'd seen him with the orange-peel fangs, I knew I could never shoot it any other way," Coppola told Playboy in 1975.

A real severed horse head was used in an iconic and traumatizing scene.

The iconic horse head scene was traumatizing for many, and may get darker when they realize a real horse's head was used. While movie executives urged Coppola to use a prop, the director was unsatisfied and had crew find a horse ready for slaughter in New Jersey.

"One day, a crate with dry ice came with this horse's head in it," Coppola remembered, as per Time.

Since a prop was used during rehearsals, actor John Marley's genuine screams at the surprising switch were included in the film.

After filming the wedding scene, Pacino and Diane Keaton got drunk together because the actor was scared the movie would flop.

At the Tribeca Film Festival reunion, Pacino admitted that he and Keaton — who played his on-screen girlfriend — got "so loaded after that wedding sequence." They bonded over the fact that they both did stage productions before, but Pacino also talked about how much he worried the film would fail.

"We started drinking and we were just talking about 'Where do we go from here? We're done. It's the worst film ever made,'" Pacino said.

Read the original article on Insider