Author Biography
The son of Italian immigrants who moved to the Hell's Kitchen area of New York City, Mario Puzo was born on October 15, 1920. After World War II, during which he served as a U.S. Army corporal, he attended City College of New York on the G.I. Bill and worked as a freelance writer. During this period he wrote his first two novels The Dark Arena (1955) and The Fortunate Pilgrim (1965). When his books made little money despite being critically acclaimed, he vowed to write a bestseller. The Godfather (1969) was an enormous success. He collaborated with director Francis Ford Coppola on the screenplays for all three Godfather movies and won Academy Awards for both The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974). He also collaborated on the scripts for such films as Superman (1978), Superman II (1981), and The Cotton Club (1984). He continued to write phenomenally successful novels, Including Fools Die (1978), The Sicilian (1984), The Fourth K (1991), and The Last Don (1996). Mario Puzo died on July 2, 1999. His final novel, Omerta, was published in 2000. Robert J. Thompson is the founding director of the Center for Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, where he is also the Trustee Professor of Media and Popular Culture at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. A past president of the national Popular Culture Association, he lectures across the country on the subjects of television and popular culture. Hundreds of radio and TV programs and publications have featured Professor Thompson's commentary, and Thompson is the author or editor of five books: Television in the Antenna Age (2004), Television's Second Golden Age (Continuum, 1996), Prime Time, Prime Movers (Little, Brown, 1992), Adventures on Prime Time (Praeger, 1990), Making Television (Praeger, (1990), and Television Studies (Praeger, 1989). Peter Bart was the editor of Variety for twenty years, and spent ten years as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times before entering the motion picture industry. He joined Paramount Pictures in 1967. There he played a key role in developing and supervising such influential films as The Godfather, Paper Moon, Harold and Maude, True Grit, and Rosemary's Baby. In 1977 he became president of Lorimar Films where he fostered Being There and The Postman Always Rings Twice. He has also published five books, the most recent being Boffo! Hollywood in the Trenches. Bart was educated at Swarthmore College and the London School of Economics. He resides in Los Angeles with his wife, Leslie Bart.
