50 Fun Facts About Gangster Movies

In The Godfather, film producer Jack Woltz wakes to find the severed head of which animal in his bed?

A horse named Khartoum, a racehorse Woltz valued at $600,000, pays the price for his refusal to cast singer Johnny Fontane.

The Departed remade the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs but moved the story to which American city?

Boston gave the remake an Irish mob in place of the original's triad, and the relocated story went on to win four Academy Awards.

Which actor declined his Oscar for playing Vito Corleone, sending activist Sacheen Littlefeather in his place?

Marlon Brando was only the second man to turn down the Best Actor award, after George C. Scott refused his for Patton two years earlier.

In Scarface, Tony Montana reaches Miami in the 1980 Mariel boatlift as a refugee from which country?

Cuba's Mariel boatlift brought about 125,000 people to Florida in 1980; the film, though set in Miami, was shot mostly in Los Angeles after requests to film in Miami were declined.

Which actor won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing the volatile gangster Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas?

Joe Pesci's Tommy was based on real mobster Thomas DeSimone, and in the same year, 1990, he played a bumbling burglar in Home Alone.

In The Untouchables, Eliot Ness and his team finally convict which Chicago crime boss of tax evasion?

Al Capone gets 11 years in the film, but in reality Ness's squad had very little to do with the tax case that jailed him.

Which Corleone family member betrays Michael in The Godfather Part II and is later shot on a lake?

Fredo was played by John Cazale, who appeared in only five feature films before his death at 42.

Which 1967 film stars Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as Depression-era bank robbers who die in a police ambush?

Bonnie and Clyde is counted among the first films of the New Hollywood era, and it won Oscars for supporting actress Estelle Parsons and for its cinematography.

Which director finally won his first Oscar for The Departed after losing five earlier Best Director races?

Martin Scorsese had earlier lost the directing prize for Goodfellas to a first-timer, Kevin Costner, for Dances with Wolves.

In The Irishman, hitman Frank Sheeran shoots which Teamsters union boss, a man who really vanished in 1975?

Jimmy Hoffa ran the Teamsters from 1957 to 1971 and was declared legally dead in 1982, seven years after he disappeared.

Which actor played Miami drug lord Tony Montana in the 1983 remake of Scarface, directed by Brian De Palma?

Al Pacino pushed for the remake himself after watching the 1932 original in a Los Angeles cinema.

Which actor won an Oscar for a mostly Italian-language performance as young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II?

Robert De Niro had auditioned for the first film but left it for a comedy, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight.

Which director co-wrote The Godfather's screenplay with novelist Mario Puzo and went on to make both sequels?

Francis Ford Coppola cast his sister Talia Shire as Connie Corleone, and his father Carmine wrote extra music for the wedding scene.

In The Godfather, where does Michael Corleone hide after shooting Sollozzo and a police captain in a restaurant?

Sicily is where Michael marries a local woman, Apollonia, who is then killed by a car bomb meant for him.

Which actor won an Oscar as the veteran Chicago beat cop who mentors Eliot Ness in The Untouchables?

Sean Connery won despite an accent so plainly Scottish that a 2003 Empire poll named it the worst film accent.

Which 1994 film follows hitmen Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield as they work for crime boss Marsellus Wallace?

Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and earned John Travolta an Oscar nomination for playing Vincent.

Which actor plays Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas opposite Russell Crowe's detective in American Gangster?

Denzel Washington had 64 costume changes as Lucas, who smuggled drugs home on military planes returning from the Vietnam War.

Which actor plays Irish mob boss Frank Costello, who plants a mole inside the state police, in The Departed?

Jack Nicholson's Costello plants Colin Sullivan, played by Matt Damon, in the force while the police slip their own undercover man into his crew.

Goodfellas tells the true story of which Mafia associate, who entered witness protection after informing on his crew?

Henry Hill was paid $480,000 two weeks before filming began, and Ray Liotta played him on screen.

The Godfather's climax cuts between the murders of rival bosses and Michael Corleone attending which family ceremony?

A baptism makes Michael godfather to his nephew at the very moment his hitmen kill the heads of the other New York families.

The Godfather Part II made Oscar history as the first sequel ever to win which Academy Award?

Best Picture was one of six Oscars from eleven nominations for the sequel, repeating the first film's win in the top category.

In The Godfather, lawyer Tom Hagen holds which post as chief adviser to Vito Corleone?

Consigliere Tom Hagen is an informally adopted son of German-Irish ancestry, and Vito at first hesitates to give him the post because he is not Sicilian.

Which actress played Tony Montana's wife Elvira in Scarface and a mobster's widow in Married to the Mob?

Michelle Pfeiffer was a near-unknown best known for Grease 2 when she was cast as Elvira, over the objections of both her director and her co-star.

Which actress earned an Oscar nomination as Ginger McKenna, the hustler who marries Ace Rothstein in Casino?

Sharon Stone won a Golden Globe for the part, which was based on Geri McGee, a former dancer and socialite.

Which actor played Bill the Butcher, the nativist gang leader who rules the Five Points in Gangs of New York?

Daniel Day-Lewis earned one of the film's 10 Oscar nominations, though it went home from the ceremony without a single win.

Which comedian plays the psychiatrist treating anxious mob boss Paul Vitti in the 1999 comedy Analyze This?

Billy Crystal's comedy topped the US box office on its opening weekend and led to a sequel, Analyze That, in 2002.

In Michael Mann's Public Enemies, Johnny Depp plays which Depression-era bank robber hunted by agent Melvin Purvis?

John Dillinger was shot dead in July 1934 outside Chicago's Biograph Theater, where he had gone to see the crime drama Manhattan Melodrama.

Which actor played both of London's notorious Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, in the 2015 film Legend?

Tom Hardy played both brothers himself, whereas the 1990 film The Krays cast real-life brothers Gary and Martin Kemp of Spandau Ballet.

Which actor played hot-headed Sonny Corleone, ambushed and shot at a tollbooth in The Godfather?

James Caan was first given the part of Michael, and only became Sonny once the studio agreed on another actor for the youngest brother.

Which 1997 film stars Johnny Depp as Joseph Pistone, an FBI agent undercover in the Bonanno crime family?

Donnie Brasco was the alias Pistone used in the 1970s, when he posed as a jewel thief from Florida to win the trust of an ageing hitman.

Which 2002 film stars Tom Hanks as a mob enforcer on the run with his young son in Depression-era Illinois?

Road to Perdition was adapted from a graphic novel and gave Paul Newman his final live-action cinema role, as mob boss John Rooney.

Which 2002 Brazilian film follows Rocket, a young photographer growing up amid gang wars in a Rio de Janeiro favela?

City of God drew most of its actors from the residents of real favelas, and it earned four Oscar nominations.

Which 2000 Guy Ritchie comedy mixes a stolen diamond with Brad Pitt as an Irish Traveller bare-knuckle boxer?

Snatch reused many of the actors from its director's first feature, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and added Hollywood names to the London underworld.

Which 1990 film stars Warren Beatty as a comic-strip detective battling mob boss Big Boy Caprice?

Dick Tracy was shot in a palette of just seven colours to evoke the comic strip, with Madonna as club entertainer Breathless Mahoney.

Which 1959 comedy sends two musicians on the run in dresses after they witness a Chicago mob massacre?

Some Like It Hot borrowed its two-musicians story from an earlier film, but director Billy Wilder created the gangster subplot himself.

Which 1976 musical casts only children as Prohibition-era gangsters, with guns that fire whipped cream?

Bugsy Malone gave a young Jodie Foster a starring role and was the first feature film directed by Alan Parker.

Johnny Depp plays which real crime boss, a secret FBI informant, in the 2015 film Black Mass?

Whitey Bulger spent 16 years on the run before his arrest in California in 2011, for a time ranking second only to Osama bin Laden among the FBI's most wanted.

In American Gangster, Frank Lucas builds his empire on which drug, bought directly from producers in Thailand?

Heroin sold under the brand name Blue Magic turns Lucas into a wholesale supplier for dealers across the New York area.

Which feared Corleone enforcer is strangled while pretending to defect to the Tattaglias in The Godfather?

Luca Brasi was played by Lenny Montana, a former wrestler who had worked as a bodyguard and enforcer for the Colombo crime family.

Which actor shoves half a grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face in the 1931 gangster classic The Public Enemy?

James Cagney was first cast as the best friend, until the director decided he would be more effective in the lead and switched the two actors.

In Goodfellas, Jimmy Conway's crew steals six million dollars from which airline's vault at JFK Airport?

Lufthansa's real cargo vault was raided in December 1978, in what was then the largest cash robbery in American history.

A famous unbroken tracking shot in Goodfellas follows a mobster and his date through the back of which nightclub?

Copacabana's back entrance was used only because the filmmakers could not get permission to go in the short way, so a practical problem produced the film's best-known shot.

Which Italian composer wrote the score for The Godfather and won an Oscar for the music of its first sequel?

Nino Rota lost his nomination for the first film when it emerged that he had reused a theme he wrote years earlier for another film, Fortunella.

Which Italian director turned down The Godfather and later made the Prohibition epic Once Upon a Time in America?

Sergio Leone saw his American distributor cut about 90 minutes from the film and rearrange its scenes into chronological order without him.

Which Hollywood studio released the 1931 gangster films Little Caesar and The Public Enemy?

Warner Bros. saw Little Caesar's box-office success spawn several more gangster films, many of them its own productions.

Which 1990 Coen brothers film follows Tom Reagan, right-hand man to a Prohibition-era Irish mob boss?

Miller's Crossing has a plot so dense that its writers hit writer's block; their working title was The Bighead, their nickname for the hero.

Which 1949 film noir ends with gangster Cody Jarrett cornered atop a storage tank that he sets ablaze?

White Heat was first meant to tell the true story of Ma Barker and her outlaw sons, but in rewrites she became the fictional Ma Jarrett.

Which actor became a star as Rico Bandello, the small-time hood who rises through the mob in Little Caesar?

Edward G. Robinson had already played gangsters on stage, and this breakthrough role immediately made him a major film star.

Which 1971 British film stars Michael Caine as a London gangster who goes home to Newcastle after his brother's death?

Get Carter was the directing debut of Mike Hodges, and in 2004 a Total Film survey of British critics chose it as the greatest British film of all time.

Which actor plays the Harlem crack kingpin hunted by an undercover detective in the 1991 film New Jack City?

Wesley Snipes had the part of the drug lord written specifically for him by screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper, a former investigative reporter.