When The Godfather played to an empty room
This week’s column involves Mark One Electric Co. and its questionable eligibility for affirmative-action programs. Carl “Red” Privitera incorporated the business 1974, which is run today by his daughter, Rosana Privitera Biondo.
Searching for background information on Mark One, I came across a Kansas City Star story by Robert Butler on the 25th anniversary of the release of The Godfather. Butler marked the occasion by recalling the film’s 1972 premiere in Kansas City.
As my colleague Charles Ferruzza also noted in a recent review of Blackhand Strawman, The Godfather played to an empty house inside the Empire Theater; the tickets had been purchased by a group protesting the movie’s portrayal of Italian-Americans. “We strongly oppose a kind of prejudice the picture can cause,” Thomas Gialde, the vice president of the Italian-American Unification Council of Greater Kansas City, explained to reporters in the theater lobby.
Butler referred to Carl Privitera as the president of the council in his original 1972 account. “The stereotyping — it hasn’t stopped. It’s terrible,” Privitera said when Butler caught up with him 25 years later.
A recent story in Vanity Fair describes in terrific detail how objections to The Godfather were also informed by the Mob’s desire to avoid scrutiny.
