We know this iconic ‘Godfather’ scene was filmed in this N.J. park. But where? (2024)

A version of this story was originally published in 2022

It is among the truly iconic movie lines filmed in New Jersey.

“Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”

Even if you haven’t seen “The Godfather,” the epic 1972 crime film chronicling the Corleone family, you likely are familiar with Clemenza’s brutally casual, six-word guidance to Rocco upon killing Paulie inside a parked car.

“The irony of the comment, set against the action, was quite memorable. It spoke about their sense of morality .... We just killed a guy, but don’t leave the cannoli,” Steve Gorelick, executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission until retiring in the spring, said in 2022.

Maybe you’d like to stand where Clemenza stood upon exiting the car in Liberty State Park — it wasn’t yet a park, a half-century ago — and savor the view of the Statue of Liberty, whose symbolic welcome to immigrants serves as a poignant contrast in the scene. Movie tourism is a popular pastime, and New Jersey is home to dozens of locations defined by their associations with popular films.

However, while many of the film’s New York City locations remain accessible — the Staten Island mansion that served as the Corleone family’s home was made available in July 2022 for rent on Airbnb — the precise spot of the gun/cannoli scene is off-limits to the public and has been for decades.

Maybe not for much longer, though.

The scene was filmed in 1971 on an unmarked road in Jersey City that became part of Liberty State Park when it opened five years later. Some fans assume the scene was filmed on the road now known as Freedom Way, which passes between the park’s two main access roads and is horizontal to the Hudson River.

But that’s not the location, at least not according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees Liberty State Park.

The unmarked road where Paulie’s fate was sealed is located within a 210-acre interior section of the park that has been fenced off from the public since the early 1980s due to environmental contamination, according to DEP spokesperson Larry Hajna.

“This is part of the interior ecological restoration project area and is not currently accessible to the public,” Hajna said in 2022.

Hajna said that remains the case in 2024.

NJ Advance Media was not allowed to visit the site but DEP provided a photo, taken by an employee on Aug. 19, 2022, showing the location 51 years later overgrown by weeds, brush and trees.

“Work on the Liberty State Park Revitalization Program, which includes the clean-up of the fenced off interior section where the scene was filmed, is ongoing,” Hajna said in a recent update.

It is not clear if the unmarked road will be preserved as part of the cleanup, but the DEP has documented the film’s GPS coordinates.

Might a plaque someday mark the spot?

That’s not a bad idea, according to Joseph Simonetta, executive director of the New Jersey Tourism Industry Association.

“I don’t know if I would go out of my way, myself, but some people would. People love to visit the sites of movies they recognize and scenes they recognize,” Simonetta, who died last year, told NJ Advance Media in 2022.

In New Jersey movie lore, the scene ranks up there with Terry Malloy’s lament, “I could’ve been a contender,” in “On the Waterfront” — a 1954 movie filmed almost entirely in Hoboken. Malloy was played by Marlon Brando, who starred in “The Godfather” as Vito Corleone.

The location of the “On the Waterfront” scene where the car was parked as Brando conveyed his regrets remains unclear. It was either on a street in Hoboken or in a studio outside of the city, according to the Hoboken Museum, though the movie shows Malloy exiting the car on River Street.

With that uncertainty in mind, we have to ask: Is the state DEP completely sure about the “Godfather” location? We’re talking about a movie scene filmed a half-century ago in a fairly nondescript location. The state Motion Picture and Television Commission’s database notes only that it was filmed at Liberty State Park.

Hajna attributed the information on file to a longtime, former park employee who once served as assistant director. The scene was filmed at a bend in the unmarked road, closer to Phillip Street than Freedom Way, he said. The ex-employee was working at a local tug operation in 1973, a year after the movie was released, and recognized the location as being in the film.

“I guess you could call it oral history,” Hajna said.

So, that may stand as the final word of the scene’s location, unless someone else with a competing anecdotal claim emerges, or long-lost paperwork is found.

An irony is that it is the only scene in “The Godfather” filmed in New Jersey. Castellano, who died in 1988 at age 55, was a North Bergen resident, and famously ad-libbed the cannoli reference.

There are so many enduring lines from the movie: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again.” “It’s not personal Sonny, it’s strictly business.” Yet, the cannoli line is this one line that perfectly captures the juxtaposition of crime and family that runs throughout the film.

The scene takes place after Vito Corleone, the family’s leader, is shot several times in a street ambush and hospitalized in critical condition. Paulie, his driver, had called out sick on the morning of the shooting and is blamed by Sonny, the oldest son, for setting it up.

Clemenza and Rocco ask Paulie to take them on a drive, ostensibly to scout out locations for dumping bodies in retaliation. When the car pulls over, Clemenza exits to urinate, his back to the vehicle. Rocco, seated behind Paulie, fires three shots.

Clemenza turns, slightly, with an expression that can be interpreted many ways, perhaps a hint of regret. He walks back to the car, glances at Paulie slumped over the steering wheel, and mentions the cannoli. This harkens back to the scene’s opening: His wife standing in their driveway as the car pulls out, blowing him a kiss and reminding him not to forget the cannoli.

Gorelick noted the inclusion of the Statue of Liberty in the background, and that many of the gangsters depicted in the movie were first and second-generation immigrants.

That not more is known about the filming of that one scene in New Jersey, such as how long it took to make, is not surprising, he said. While “The Godfather” proved to be an iconic film, and this scene in particular, that outcome is obvious only in retrospect.

“Could anyone have predicted ‘The Godfather’ would have this lasting effect? You never know with these things,” he said.

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Rob Jennings may be reached at rjennings@njadvancemedia.com.