Trivia / Once Upon a Time in America

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• Acclaimed Flop: Widely considered to be one of the greatest crime dramas of all time, the butchered American release led to horrible reviews and the bad press around this version led to very few seeing it in theaters in America.
• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • Robert De Niro suggested that James Woods wear a set of perfect, bright white teeth to demonstrate Secretary Bailey's wealth and vanity. The producers balked at the cost, so De Niro paid for them himself.
  • De Niro also suggested the scene where Noodles, after returning to the restaurant from a long absence, slowly stirs a coffee cup as his colleagues stare silently at him. According to De Niro, he pitched this as an homage to similar scenes in Leone's earlier films and Leone appreciatively agreed to film it.
• All-Star Cast: Starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Treat Williams, and William Forsythe with supporting roles by Joe Pesci, Tuesday Weld, Danny Aiello, Burt Young, Jennifer Connelly, Darlanne Fleugel, Brian Bloom, James Russo, and Louise Fletcher.
• Box Office Bomb: It flopped with a $5.3 million gross on a $30 million budget.
• California Doubling: Most exteriors for the 1918 sequences (set on the Lower East Side of Manhattan) were filmed in Brooklyn; some scenes were shot in Montreal. Most of the 1933 sequences were filmed in Montreal, because the real Big Apple had changed so significantly between then and now. Large portions of the film were likewise shot on massive backlot sets at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, which were also used by several other productions including Rats: Night of Terror. One relatively short sequence goes from a scene shot in New York to one shot in Montreal to one shot in Rome to one shot in Venice to one shot in New Jersey.
• Cast the Expert:
  • Larry Rapp (Moe) was not a professional actor, he was part-time manager of a Brooklyn restaurant frequented by Robert De Niro who recommended him to Sergio Leone. To date, it's his sole acting credit.
  • Most of the kids in the flashbacks were real New York street kids with minimal performing arts experience.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Joe Pesci originally auditioned for Max, but Sergio Leone convinced him that he wouldn't be quite right for the role. As a favor to Pesci's friend Robert De Niro (the star of the film), Leone told Pesci that he could pick whichever of the available roles he wanted as his own instead. He chose the part of Frankie, which was considerably larger in the original script than it is in the finished movie.
  • Danny Aiello auditioned for several roles and was ultimately cast as the police chief who (coincidentally) shares his surname. As with Pesci's character, Aiello's character had a more substantial role in the original script which Leone trimmed to a borderline cameo appearance.
• Creator Backlash: Elizabeth McGovern personally felt there was little to work with in the part of Deborah.
• Creator Killer:
  • According to writer Christopher Frayling, the film's failure left Sergio Leone so devastated and disillusioned by the persistent intervention from studio executives in America that he never directed or wrote another movie again. He had several projects laid out as possible comebacks, but things really didn't go so well for Leone in the end.
  • The film along with The Right Stuff is what led to The Ladd Company terminating its partnership with Warner Bros. and led them in a ten-year period of inactivity until the 1995 film Braveheart.^note The reason for that inactivity being Alan Ladd, Jr. becoming a studio executive at MGM. They became a "non-exclusive production organization", and officially dissolved in 2007.
• Creator's Favorite: James Woods named Max as one of his favourite roles.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Sergio Leone himself regarded this as his magnum opus also, having considered it his "best film-bar none".
• Creator's Oddball: Sergio Leone is probably best known for his spaghetti Westerns, several of which involved actors being cast against type. His last film was a story about gangsters. However, his first film was a sword-and-sandal epic, The Colossus of Rhodes.
• The Danza: Danny Aiello as Police Chief Aiello.
• Dawson Casting:
  • The guys are meant to be in their twenties in 1933 - Robert De Niro, James Woods and James Hayden were in their thirties. William Forsythe just barely averted this by being 29.
  • In the original script, Deborah Gelly was 15 years old, but Elizabeth McGovern was 20 years old when shooting began, 21 years old when it ended and 22 years old when the movie premiered.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: An interesting case. The original European version you can still find on streaming sites, but the American Cut hasn't been released since its limited run in the mid 80s and the extended director's cut version (the version that extends pass four hours) was only released physically and went out of print in 2019.
• Deleted Role: Louise Fletcher as the director of the cemetery Noodles visits in 1968 appears only in the restored version.
• Deleted Scene: Detailed here.
• Died During Production: Patsy was meant to have a more prominent role in the second act, but his role had to be cut down after actor James Hayden died of an overdose.
• Executive Meddling: How the film got its running time trimmed as Sergio Leone's original intention was to have the film to be split into two three-hour parts before it was trimmed to 269 minutes. However when it was set to premiere in Cannes, it was trimmed to 229 minutes before it was trimmed to 139 minutes for its American release, against his wishes.
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: Sergio Leone first read The Hoods in the mid-1960s. He spent much of the sixties and seventies trying to get the film off the ground, meeting with author Harry Grey several times to understand America through his point of view. Casting for the film began in 1975 and at one point, Leone passed on directing The Godfather in order to get it made.
• Fake Nationality: Almost none of the film's many Jewish-American characters are played by Jewish actors, with the notable exceptions of Larry Rapp (Moe), Estelle Harris (Peggy's mother), and Jennifer Connelly (young Deborah). In an inversion of the classic Hollywood trope of casting Jewish actors in Italian roles, Noodles is played by Italian-American actor Robert De Niro.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • The director's cut is missing a controversial but important scene. For while, it could only be found on a special edition DVD set...in Brazil. And that STILL isn't the complete version of the movie, but the one that premiered at Cannes and was subsequently released in Europe. Leone's original version ran forty minutes longer. A restoration which includes about twenty minutes of additional footage premiered at Cannes and has been released on Blu-Ray (known as the Extended Director's Cut), but there's been no word about the rest of the footage.
  • There also exists reports of a heavily-edited American network television version, based on the director's cut and the American theatrical cut, that was made and first aired in the early-mid 1990s. It ran for almost three hours long (without commercials), and while retaining the non-chronological order of the director's cut, had also removed many key scenes that had violence or graphic content, as well as having all profanity and references to drugs exiled from broadcast. This version was supposedly intended as a one-off showing, and despite apparently being re-aired by local stations (and according to one source, AMC) via syndication, no copies of this cut are known to exist.
  • The Original US Cut hasn't been seen since its initial VHS release in the mid 80s.
• Missing Episode: The infamous American theatrical cut was considered a lost film for many years, to the point where people doubted whether it had been released on video at all. Considering how said cut —which sloppily watered down director Sergio Leone's preferred non-linear four-hour cut into a chronological two-hour cut against his wishes— was trashed by reviewers, heavily flopped at the box office, and nearly took The Ladd Company down with it after critics attacked the producers for the editing relentlessly; its lack of availability may (understandably) be a deliberate example. It took until 2020 to find out that, yes, the US cut was released on video in 1985, but only as a rental exclusive and was given a very limited run. This version occasionally turns up on streaming and torrenting sites online, but it remains virtually impossible to see through legitimate means, and considering its reputation there's little demand for a new release.
• Posthumous Credit: James Hayden (Patsy) died of a drug overdose shortly after filming wrapped.
• Saved from Development Hell:
  • Sergio Leone first read The Hoods and decided to adapt it in 1967, shortly after finishing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He met with Harry Goldberg, the author of the book, several times in the sixties and seventies, having discussions with him to understand America through Grey's point of view. He even turned down the chance to direct The Godfather in order to make his own gangster epic.
  • In October 1975, Leone declared that the cast would feature Gérard Depardieu as Noodles and Richard Dreyfuss as Max, with James Cagney playing the old Noodles and Jean Gabin playing the old Max. However, while Cagney and Dreyfuss were flattered by the proposition Cagney had trembling hands and Dreyfuss did not feel it was the right moment for him to take on the part of Max.
  • By 1980, Leone spoke of casting Paul Newman as old Noodles and Tom Berenger as young Noodles; the role of Max going to Dustin Hoffman, William Hurt, Harvey Keitel or John Malkovich, Jon Voight or Michael York; Liza Minnelli would be Deborah and Brooke Shields as young Deborah; and Claudia Cardinale would be Carol. Shields withdrew following a strike and Leone felt that Cardinale (whom he'd previously cast in Once Upon a Time in the West) wouldn't be convincing as a New Yorker and turned her down.
  • Filming began in June 1982 and eventually finished in April 1983.
• Shrug of God:
  • Sergio Leone was aware of the fan theory that the plot is just an opium dream by Noodles. He never confirmed nor denied it, while conceding it was a valid interpretation of the film.
  • According to James Woods, the question he's been asked the most is whether Max died in the garbage truck. To this day, he has no idea.
• Vindicated by Cable: The Z Channel's broadcasts of it in its original cut helped restore its reputation in the US.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson turned down the role of Noodles.
  • John Belushi was offered the role of Max, but he died before auditions began.
  • Clint Eastwood reportedly turned down the role of Jimmy O'Donnell.
  • Leone wanted Sylvia Kristel for the role of Carol, but the producers did not agree on her participation and told the director to employ the "famous Hollywood star". Julie Andrews was offered the role, but turned it down.
  • Rosanna Arquette, Kim Basinger, Linda Blair, Glenn Close, Jamie Lee Curtis, Geena Davis, Farrah Fawcett, Carrie Fisher, Melanie Griffith, Bridget Fonda, Jodie Foster, Linda Hamilton, Daryl Hannah^note  She turned it down in favor of Splash, Goldie Hawn, Mariel Hemingway, Diane Lane, Jessica Lange, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kristy McNichol, Tatum O'Neal, Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd, Sissy Spacek, Meryl Streep, Kathleen Turner, Sigourney Weaver and Debra Winger were all considered for the role of Deborah.
  • The film's initial cut was six hours long, which Leone wanted to split into two separate movies. The studio convinced him to release it as one movie, which led to the 269-minute cut that was shown at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. The distributors then wanted it to be shorter, leading to the 229-minute theatrical cut.
  • In the early days of the project Leone courted John Milius to direct, a fan of his who was enthusiastic about the idea; but Milius was working on The Wind and the Lion and the script for Apocalypse Now, and could not commit to the project. Miloš Forman also met with Leone several times in the late '70s to discuss directing the movie, but decided to make Ragtime instead.
  • Norman Mailer contacted Leone through Mickey Knox, the dialogue translator on several of his earlier films, expressing interest in collaborating. Mailer delivered a draft screenplay to Leone which the director found completely unusable, and in any case at odds with Leone's own vision for the movie. Mailer responded by suing Leone and the Ladd Company once the film went into production, receiving an undisclosed settlement in the process.

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