De Niro’s Iconic Godfather Suit Doubles Its Value At Auction

Antiques Trade Gazette’s weekly choosing of products that caught bidders’ attention entails a suit put on by Robert De Niro in a prominent scene from ‘The Godfather Part II’. It more than doubled it’s approximate value at an auction event in Hertfordshire.

Vito Corleone’s (Robert De Niro) screen-matched brown pea-coat was drawn from Francis Ford Coppola’s Academy Award-winning gangster sequel The Godfather: Part II. The young Vito Andolini left Sicily and was named after his hometown, Corleone, as his surname by immigration department officers at Ellis Island upon arrival in the United States in 1901. He put on his peculiar pea-coat on numerous occasions including during a house robbery he did with Clemenza (Bruno Kirby).

The brown woolen pea-coat has ten tortoiseshell wooden buttons on the front end and an additional button sewn into the inner lining. It also has two wide side pockets as well as a pocket on the upper-left breast. The coat  is categorized on the pattern of its buttons. It is classified with a paper wardrobe tag marked “40 #52” and tailored to De Niro’s specifications. The coat displays some modifications done to chips on the buttons alongside smaller fraying of the wool.

The outfit, modelled by Theadora Van Runkle, who achieved an Academy Award nomination for her design work on Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 masterpiece, features towards the tail end of the film when Vito Corleone goes back to Sicily with his family.

In a prominent scene, putting on this costume, he depicts revenge on local Mafia boss Don Ciccio (Giuseppe Sillato) for the killing of his father, gapping his gut with a kitchen knife.

The outfit bears the tag of the Western Costume Co. The tag has the name De Niro and his waist measurements of 31″.

Provided with a lead of 10,000-20,000 pounds at the Propstore sale of entertainment memorabilia in Rickmansworth on November 9, it accepted 50,000 pounds from an internet bidder.

In a recent interview when De Niro and Al Pacino met, the two gave a reminisce of their epic in acting and film production. 

“It’s not that you’re competitive,” said De Niro about his long friendship with Pacino. “You’re up for the same parts. Like Godfather—Francis wanted Al. But every actor knew about it, and I think the studio was forcing him to look [elsewhere],” he added. 

“We got together early on,” said Al Pacino, gesturing at Robert De Niro. “And we shared something, which was a big thing at the time.” The two men were sitting in a hotel suite in New York, trying to sum up 50 years of friendship and the weird, singular bond that comes from being two of the most heralded actors of their generation. The balcony door was open, to catch the September breeze. Last night Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, in which they both star, had premiered at the New York Film Festival, and they’d spent nearly every hour since being fêted. And so, despite their often formidable reputations, there was a sweetness about them. “New York Film Festival, this is a prestigious film festival!” said Pacino earnestly.