Family Secrets

[Jules Siegel]

At 04:21 PM 05/13/97 -0400, "Meg Larson" <mgl at tardis.svsu.edu> wrote:

>Jules, I went to the URL below, and read your "interview."  Out of
curiosity, I would like to know what you mean(t) when you say (said), and
I'm paraphrasing here, that you gave Mario Puzo the research materials,
along with the story of your petty criminal uncle

My father.

(?), which he used to write _The Godfather_.

He didn't use anything I gave him to write The Godfather (although some of
it did point him in the right direction) but it mainly inspired some aspects
of the character of Don Vito Corelone, especially his intelligence and
sensitivity and his love of family.

>Exactly what kind of research material? 

Mario and I worked at adjacent desks for about a year in a company called
Magazine Management Company, which published Marvel Comics, and a very
extensive line of men's adventure magazines. Bruce Jay Friedman was
Editorial Director of our division. Mario was the star writer. I used to
tell him stories such as the following (which I wrote for Bruce Appelbaum in
response to the strange coincidence in his message a couple of weeks ago
about Jean Valjean):

One of my father's aliases was Jean Valjean. My father, Eli "Jimmy" Siegel,
was a lifelong professional criminal who in his youth served eight years in
special solitary confinement in Danemorra, the New York State maximum
security prison at Clinton, NY, like the Bird Man of Alcatraz. I was told by
his brother, that he had been convicted of participating in the armed
robbery of a factory payroll. The security patrol arrived ahead of schedule
and the other bandits fled with the loot while my father shot it out with
the police to cover them. He was sent to Danemorra because he got into a
fight with a guard at Sing Sing and almost killed him.

In Danemorra he refused to work in the cotton mill because it meant a 50%
chance of dying from brown lung disease. After three consecutive turns in
solitary, he was assigned his own cell and did not see another prisoner for
almost eight years, during which the only person he saw was the guard who
brought him his meals and took him out to an enclosed yard so he could
exercise. A prisoner who had been there at the same time told me that before
my father's rtelease release at the end of his term, he was allowed finally
to mingle with the prisoners in the main yard and was given a prolonged
ovation by guards and prisoners alike.

Mario used to urge me to write a novel about him and he often jokingly said,
"If you don't do it, I will." I very sincerely told him to go ahead. I knew
very little about my father and was reluctant to invent anything, as I held
his memory sacred and cherished every little scrap I knew about him. He was
a great man.

In 1970, I expanded these stories into "Family Secrets," published in New
American Review #10, using up almost all the information I had. I learned a
little more after the story was published from friends and relatives who
volunteered some anecdotes.

In 1964 or 65 I gave Mario a book called The Honored Society by Norman Lewis
and some excerpts from Congressional hearings that I came across while I was
free-lancing for North American Newspaper Alliance. I suggested he write an
adventure story on the Mafia.

Mario used these as the inspiration for a completely made-up adventure story
presented as fact about the Mafia in Sicily. It was a great piece and it
went through the ceiling on all the topics in the monthly market research
surveys.

At the time, I was living with Nina Watkins, who was a reader in a $230,000
novel contest sponsored by McCall's Magazine, Joe Levine and Putnam. Nina
came home and told me that they were unable to find a book that would
satisfy all the sponsors. She thought that Mario could come up with
something. I told Mario that he should do something on the Mafia. She
mentioned this to Saul Braun, the contest editor, and Saul told Mario that
they would hold the contest open another year if he felt he could produce a
novel.

Mario wrote a 5,000-word outline, which Saul showed to William Targ, then
Putnam editor-in-chief. They decided to skip the contest and they
commissioned The Godfather. I think they gave him a $5,000 advance and then
William Morris sold the screen rights for another $12,000 on the basis of
the first 100 pages.

>Was this before or after you gave Pynchon research material for _V._? 

Well after. Four or five years later. I gave Pynchon the material on
Alderson Research's radiation dummies in 1959, I believe. I didn't hand it
to him and say, "Tom, here's something that would make a great scene in
whatever you're writing." It was a press kit I had lying around at home when
he visited me and my then-wife, Phyllis DeBus. He picked it up and studied
it and asked if he could take it.

I am going to put "Family Secrets" online tonight at
http://wwwyucatanweb.com/siegel/secrets.htm

It sometimes takes the webmaster a while to get to these things, so try
again tomorrow.

After the reaction to the Pynchon memoir, I feel like kind of a fool for
doing this, but I feel it might settle some of the doubts about my skill as
a writer. Dale wrote me today and told me to stop defending myself, that I
don't have to. If I don't, who will?

>If I spelled anything wrong, or referred to the wrong TRP book, well, I'm
just a MidWestern PYNhead, fer chrissakes.

Then wise up and get things right. Do you think Giordano would accept that
kind of excuse from me?

--
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