# Carmine Coppola

Carmine Valentino Coppola (Italian:; June 11, 1910 – April 26, 1991) was an American composer, flautist, pianist, and songwriter who contributed original music to the films The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders, The Black Stallion, and The Godfather Part III. He is the father of film director Francis Ford Coppola. In the course of his career, he won both the Academy Award for Best Original Score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, with BAFTA Award for Best Film Music and Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media nominations.

## Personal life

Coppola was born in New York City, the son of Maria (née Zasa) and Agostino Coppola, who came to the United States from Bernalda, Basilicata. His brother was opera conductor and composer Anton Coppola. He was the father of August Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola and Talia Shire, and grandfather of Nicolas Cage, Sofia Coppola, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, Robert Schwartzman, and the late Gian-Carlo Coppola.
Coppola died in Northridge, California, at the age of 80 in 1991. His wife, Italia, died in 2004 in Los Angeles. According to Francis, his father suffered from a stroke on the night of the Academy Awards, due to the shock of not winning an award for "Best Original Song". Both Coppola and his wife are buried at San Fernando Mission Cemetery.

## Career

Coppola played the flute. He studied at Juilliard, later at the Manhattan School of Music and privately with Joseph Schillinger. During the 1940s, Coppola worked under Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Then in 1951, Coppola left the Orchestra to pursue his dream of composing music. During that time he mostly worked as an orchestra conductor on Broadway and elsewhere, working with his son, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, on additional music for his Finian's Rainbow.
Carmine contributed to the music performed in the wedding scene in The Godfather (1972). Later, his son called on him to compose additional music for the score of The Godfather Part II (1974), in which he and his father received an in-movie tribute with the characters Agostino and Carmine Coppola, who appear in a deleted scene from the young Vito Corleone flashback segments. Principal score composer Nino Rota and Carmine together won Oscars for Best Score for the film. He also composed most of the score for The Godfather Part III (1990). He made cameo appearances in all three Godfather films as a conductor.
Carmine and Francis together scored Apocalypse Now (1979), for which they won a Golden Globe Award for best original score. He also composed a three-and-a-half-hour score for US showings of Kevin Brownlow's reconstruction of Abel Gance's 1927 epic Napoléon. Carmine composed the music for The Black Stallion (1979), on which Francis was executive producer, and four other films directed by his son in the 1980s. In his audio commentary on The Godfather Part III DVD, Francis said that his father missed a cue during the shooting of that film's opening wedding reception—something he never did in his prime. At that point, Francis realized that his father had little time left. As it turned out, Carmine died less than four months after Part III premiered, of a stroke.

## Filmography
### Collaborations with Francis Ford Coppola

| Year | Film | Notes |
| 1959 | Battle Beyond the Sun | English-language reedit of Nebo Zovyot Composed with Yuliy Meitus & Vyacheslav Mescherin |
| 1962 | Tonight for Sure | — |
| 1969 | The Rain People | Composed with Ronald Stein |
| 1974 | The Godfather Part II | Composed with Nino Rota Academy Award for Best Original Score |
| 1979 | Apocalypse Now | Composed with Francis Ford Coppola Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score Nominated- BAFTA Award for Best Film Music Nominated- Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media |
| 1980 | Napoléon | Reedit of 1927 film supervised by Coppola |
| 1983 | The Outsiders | — |
| 1987 | Faerie Tale Theatre | Television series Episode: "Rip Van Winkle" |
| 1987 | Gardens of Stone | — |
| 1988 | Tucker: The Man and His Dream | Composed with Joe Jackson |
| 1989 | New York Stories | Segment: "Life Without Zoe" |
| 1990 | The Godfather Part III | Nominated- Academy Award for Best Original Song Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song |

### Collaboration with other directors

| Year | Film | Director | Notes |
| 1968 | The Green Berets | John Wayne Ray Kellogg | As flautist Score composed by Miklós Rózsa |
| 1971 | THX 1138 | George Lucas | As flautist & orchestrator Score composed by Lalo Schifrin |
| 1972 | The People | John Korty | Television film |
| 1977 | Mustang: The House That Joe Built | Robert Guralnick | Documentary film |
| 1979 | The Black Stallion | Carroll Ballard | Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Music Nominated- Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score |
| 1989 | Blood Red | Peter Masterson | — |