Article: TV News, Nov 12 1977

Here's another article about the Saga from a midwestern TV Guide clone entitled TV News. The two page spread doesn't offer much in the way of new info, but what the heck- this is the Godfather Museum after all, and we thrive on meaningless trivia!

Keep clicking the pics to get to full size. Depending on your browser settings, you may have to right click and hit "View Image" and go from there. 

The first thing you notice about the cover is that it's not drawn (painted?) very well. One thing about all of these regional TV weeklies is that they never seem to have a very good cover artist. Why didn't they just run a still from the film instead? Reminds me of all those Monster Mags from the 60's and 70's who couldn't afford to hire Basil Gogos, so they would commission art from high school students and pay them a few cents for the rights. The better mags just stuck with color stills.

As far as I know, TV Week was only distributed throughout Indiana and Illinois. Its cover price was .25, a whole nickel cheaper than TV Guide.

I've never seen that classification before- "Mostly re-run." Despite The Saga being an all-new project, and Godfather I comprising less than half of the running time, it's mostly re-run. I guess this sounds better than saying "partially comprised of a film that was shown in a different format a couple of years ago."

I threw this back cover in just for fun. I've always had a fascination with the address labels on old magazines. Who was this person? Is Willis L. Draper still alive? How many times did Willis L. Draper read this issue before tossing it in a box in the closet? 35 years later, who found it and put it on Ebay? Oh, and completely off topic- but who would order a toupée from the back of a TV Week? Obviously not Willis L. Draper, since the coupon is still intact.

Now on to the comments. We just had one from last week:


What a great read, thanks very much for scanning and posting it. I wish they were able to show the original NBC Saga in its entirety on AMC. It's a piece of television history.

I'd really love to see all that lost footage from Godfather I and II, I'm sure it was cut for a reason but I'd love to see any extension to the story. Coppola should recover those scenes before it's too late, although I think the chances are about as slim as seeing an official release of the 5-and-a-half hour long cut of Apocalypse Now (which if there's a God in movie heaven we'll get to see in better quality one day).

Any tentative release date for the Complete Epic Trilogy? Your poster says spring 2012 and summer is nearing lol not to rush what I'm sure is a very rigorous project, but just very anxious to see it.


Thanks for writing! We were anticipating a release last month but both of us got caught up in family/work/life routines that have kept us from finalizing anything yet. We're realistically shooting for a late summer release now. We have our fingers crossed!

We too would love to see a complete, better quality Apocalypse Now restoration. I thought about doing an epic cut of that film as well, but the workprint is just so bad that I don't think any amount of restoration would make it sync up with the other footage.

There's so many "holy grails" of lost footage out there from films that I'd love to find. The lost "giant spider" scene from the original King Kong. The workprints from the Evil Dead trilogy. The original five hour rough cut of The Wild Bunch. I've never given up faith that one day, somebody somewhere will turn up some of these missing relics. In my lifetime, I've been able to witness the unearthing of Edison's 1910 Frankenstein adaptation, the (mostly complete) Metropolis, The Bat Whispers, the original version of Shadows, The World's Greatest Sinner-- all of these films that I grew up reading were lost for good eventually turned up. I'm hoping that one day, the same can be said for Francis Ford Coppola's films and fragments.



Next week, probably another article scanned and reprinted. Take care!