The Staten Island home was used as Michael Corleone's residence. The driveway is also where the character of Carlo Rizzi met his end. (Google Maps)
In Staten Island’s affluent Todt Hill neighborhood stands a stately Tudor that looks like something out of a movie. And just steps from the front gate, small-time crook Carlo Rizzi was whacked by a member of the Corleone crime family.
The 120 Longfellow Ave. residence, which served as the home of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) in the 1972 film “The Godfather,” is now for sale. Asking price for the four-bedroom property: $1.37 million, a pretty penny more than “The Turk” requested from Don Corleone.
Looky-loos are already lining up for showings. “One … was quoting all sorts of lines [from the film],” said broker John A. Vernazza.
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Gianni Russo, who played Rizzi in the Oscar-winning movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola, well remembers “dying” in front of the home. His character is garroted in the front seat of a car, while kicking and spinning and fighting his fate.
“Francis wanted me to go through the windshield of the car,” he told The Post.
“They tried to do the breakaway glass but it didn’t look like glass from [the ’50s]. So they used the old glass. My feet went through the glass and the backs of my calves and ankles were all cut up. That movie beat the hell out of me.”
The character of Carlo Rizzi, seen here on the receiving end of Sonny Corleone's trash can, died in the driveway of Michael Corleone's home in the first "Godfather" film. "That movie beat the hell out of me," said Gianni Russi, the actor who played Rizzi. (Bettmann via Getty Images)
The nearby Todt Hill neighborhood has seen real-life violence recently with the March 13 murder of Gambino family crime boss Francesco Cali in front of his residence, 2 miles away from the Longfellow Avenue house.
Elaine and Peter Albert, who have lived in the “Godfather” home since they purchased it for $195,000 in 1977, have much happier memories.
“It was peaceful,” said Elaine, 73, of the place where her three children grew up. “The [school] bus came to the corner. It was nothing like the movie.”
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For Elaine and Peter, 74, the home’s Hollywood story had nothing to do with their decision to buy — they were more drawn to “the beautiful block,” said Elaine. She’s watched the movie only a couple of times, and says it is “strange” to see Pacino walk out her front door.
Although that arched door, colored white in the film, now has a brown hue, other details remain: the stone around the entry, the stained glass, the gate, even the address plate.
Russo, whose first movie was “The Godfather,” recalled the house being used as a dressing room and hangout for the actors. “The actors used to challenge each other to see who could do the better improv,” he said. “In that living room, I saw Al Pacino do an improvisation of a one-legged golfer. He bent over to put the ball on the tee, and he fell over.”
And 120 isn’t the only “Godfather” site on the block. One neighboring property served as the home of Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), while another was where the lavish wedding scene was filmed, with children from the neighborhood as extras.
Russo was the groom in that scene, and helped out in real life by supplying the cake. Producers gave him $1,000 to buy one.
He went to a local bakery and asked “how they would like the notoriety of having a wedding cake in ‘The Godfather,’ and they could get a picture from the movie and hang it up in the store,” Russo said. “[The baker] gave it to the movie for free and I kept the thousand for my trouble.”
Additional reporting by Michael Kaplan.
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