Jack Woltz
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Jack Woltz(1889-1969) is a fictional character from the novel The Godfather and the 1972 film adaptation. In the film, he is portrayed by John Marley.
He is a Jewish movie producer who refuses to cast the singer/actor Johnny Fontane in his movie due to his jealousy over Fontane's role in the break up of one of Woltz's previous relationships. Fontane asks Don Vito Corleone, who is his godfather, as well as the head of an organized crime family, to lean on Woltz. Corleone sends his consigliere, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), to Hollywood to "reason" with Woltz.
Woltz initially becomes enraged shouting anti-Italian slurs at Hagen and refuses to bargain. Later, after researching exactly who Hagen worked for, he appeared more eager to listen, but in the end he still refused to cast Fontane. Woltz is finally persuaded in perhaps one of the most famous scenes in movie history: when he wakes up the next morning to find the decapitated head of his prized racehorse, Khartoum, in his bed. An actual horse's head was used in this scene in the film. However, the horse wasn't sacrified for the purposes of the movie; the head was obtained from a slaughterhouse for a dog food company who were going to slaughter the horse anyway for their product. This scene caused outrage in the animal enthusiasts community, Coppola received several angry letters from furious animal-lovers.
In the novel, Woltz is portrayed as a man who has achieved great success in the film industry, having come up from nothing. To complement his financial success, he employed an English butler to teach him to interact in polite society, though he still has a number of rough edges. It is eventually revealed that he is a pedophile who routinely abuses young girls who audition for his movies, as well as the daughters of some of his actresses. This side of the character is largely left out of the movie, though it is much more evident when one views several of the excised scenes.
Woltz's palatial home depicted in the film is actually "Greenacres," the estate of Harold Lloyd, situated in Beverly Hills, California [1].
The character is sometimes said to be based upon real-life movie mogul Jack Warner, of Warner Brothers fame.
