May 19-He was the tallest usher in the famous wedding scene from "The Godfather."
But actor Ron Gilbert was no fan of heavyweight actor Marlon Brando, who played Mafia chieftain Vito Corleone in the iconic gangster flick.
Gilbert, now 83, was born and raised in East Harlem and growing up knew the neighborhood wiseguys well.
"We had that vibe," Gilbert told the Advance in a telephone interview.
He called Brando "a joke" for the less-than-dapper way that Brando dressed for the part of Don Corleone.
"If you were raised where I was raised, guys in the mob were very well dressed and very elegant," he said. "We used to go to a barber shop and you'd see them being groomed."
But Brando, he said, "was from a different world."
"He looked like a monkey," Gilbert said.
BRANDO'S SCRIPT TROUBLE
Gilbert, then 32, landed the wedding usher role after doing an off-Broadway play called "Rosebed."
Gilbert, who took up acting after leaving the Army and studied at the famous Actors Studio, said that he had read the best-selling 1969 novel "The Godfather" before being cast in the film.
"We all read the book," he said. "We felt it was a very powerful story. Gangster stories really work a lot."
Gilbert, who also appeared in "The Usual Suspects" and numerous other films and TV shows during a long Hollywood career, said that Brando didn't learn all his lines for "The Godfather." During filming, he said, dialogue was stuck to the chests of other actors, written on the ceiling or on cue cards.
Movie historians say that part of the reason was because "Godfather" director Francis Ford Coppola was constantly rewriting the script and there was no time for Brando to learn the lines.
But according to Gilbert, Brando, another Actors Studio alum, "wanted everything to be natural."
MOM'S WEDDING CAKE
The wedding scene was filmed at the so-called "Godfather house" at 110 Longfellow Ave. on Emerson Hill.
Many Staten Islanders were extras in the scene and the multi-tiered wedding cake was created by Oven Bake Shop in Port Richmond.
Gilbert said he spent three weeks on set and said that his brother still has one of the small dolls that decorated the wedding cake.
"I never had real lines," he said of the scene. "I was there, walking around."
He said he remembered jogging at a nearby school track during filming breaks.
Bride Connie Corleone was playing by Talia Shire, who was director Coppola's sister.
Gilbert said that Shire considered the "Godfather" wedding cake to be her mother's wedding cake because her parents, Carmine and Italia Coppola, had eloped.
Carmine Coppola did music for all three "Godfather" films as well as for other Coppola movies including "Apocalypse Now."
Gilbert said one peculiar restriction was in place while the wedding scene was being filmed.
"They didn't allow us to dance," he said. "We couldn't dance with the women. It was kind of strange."
Gilbert said that when not filming the wedding scene, he and other extras acted as "mob guys" in other "Godfather" scenes.
"All the extras were trying to get in front of the camera," he said, adding that many of the background actors in the film were more mob-authentic than the lead players.
STILL GETS RESIDUALS
Gilbert said that a friend of his, Carmine Caridi, was in line to play hot-headed oldest Corleone son, Sonny, in the film.
But Caridi was nixed because, at 6-feet-3-inches tall, he was thought to be too tall to play opposite Al Pacino, who played Michael Corleone and is listed at 5-feet-6-inches.
James Caan played Sonny and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Caridi, however, later played Carmine Rosato in "The Godfather Part II" and Albert Volpe in "The Godfather Part III." He is one of only a handful of actors to play two different roles in the "Godfather" films.
Gilbert also said that there was obvious on-set "tension" between Pacino and actress Diane Keaton, who played his wife, Kay Adams. The two met on the film and would soon embark on a decades-long, on-off, romance.
"They didn't have to act," Gilbert said. "There was real tension between them."
Gilbert said he still gets residuals from the film. When the 50th anniversary of "The Godfather" was celebrated last year, Gilbert said he received $50.
His name is also included on the cast list of "The Godfather Trilogy," he said.
"Over the years I have felt blessed to have been a part of that film," he told Heart of Hollywood magazine.
MORE 'GODFATHER' STORIES FROM TOM WROBLESKI
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