I've been thinking recently about how often we talk about the book informing understanding of the movie. It's occurred to me that in the audience for the original release there must have been an awful lot of people who had read the book: 9 million copies had been sold just in 1969-71, and some of those were read by more than one person. Box office in 1972 was $81 million, which would be about 40 million admissions at the average ticket price then, but I think it probably had relatively few discount admissions, and then people could have gone multiple times. So it wouldn't surprise me if a third of the people in any theater had already read the book and were filling in any gaps on their own.

It's also occurred to me that I don't have any idea if I've ever seen the first two movies on a big screen. I was 13 when The Godfather was released, and mostly into sports and comedy. I remember seeing the NBC miniseries version in the late 70s. I was in college in the late 70s and early 80s, we had a great repertory cinema just off campus and tons of on-campus movies. I went to a lot of movies, seldom in first run, so it seems almost certain I saw them, but just don't recall being in the theater. So maybe I'll do that some day.

Same here Pete. I read the book soon after it was published. The only Trilogy entry I saw in a theater was III.

I was too young to see the first two movies theatres. I saw III in theatres, but I'd bet there are a lot of posters here who were too young even for that, which makes me feel pretty old.

I did not read the book until well after I had seen all of the movies.

Pete, I'm sure the vast majority of people in the "nabes" who saw GF in theaters had read the novel, considering how long it stayed on the best-seller lists. I saw all three in theaters, but I bet I read the book a hundred times before GF opened in my nabe.

I remember my older siblings went to see it, and came back raving about it, on a holiday when the family was gathered. That would have been Thanksgiving or Christmas, 1972, and since movie came out in March it would have been running for 8-9 months at that point.

Too young to see the first in theaters, but did see the second. Saw it with my parents and grandmother, who loved it because it was the first time she heard Sicilian spoken in a movie. Saw III the first day it came out.