Where was Vito Corleone Buried in "The Godfather?"

Any "Godfather" fanatic worth their salt knows that the funeral scene in Part 1 of the "Godfather" trilogy was filmed at Calvary Cemetery in Queens, New York. How many people could tell you Vito Corleone's *exact* burial location? I mean *exactly* where would the burial have been? What section, range, plot and grave number? Let's find out, as we click through this short series of pictures. Most of these photos are composite, showing how the cemetery looks today compared to how it looked in "The Godfather."

This photo essay began in March, 2007, when a Godfather fanatic named Allen sent me an e-mail. Allen had found my series of photos from Calvary Cemetery in Queens, and wanted to know if I could direct him to the exact site of the Corleone funeral. To my surprise this information did not seem to be available online. Perhaps these details exist in the director's (Francis Ford Coppola's) notebooks or elsewhere in the paperwork of this much-scrutinized film. I had not watched the movie in years, but when I found the scene on my DVD I immediately knew that the Corleone funeral was filmed in Section 1-West, with one camera shooting part of the scene from Section 1-South. Determining the exact location of the fictional burial required a little more detective work. But I found it.

As far as I know Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" is the only mainstream movie to have filmed a scene on the grounds of Calvary Cemetery in Queens. The 2002 movie "Bad Company" (starring Anthony Hopkins and Chris Rock) includes a scene filmed on Laurel Hill Boulevard outside the cemetery grounds. An aerial shot of Calvary from the opening of the Al Pacino film Dog Day Afternoon appears to have not touched Calvary soil. The Diocese which owns Calvary has strict rules which forbid filming of video on the cemetery grounds, but I do not know if those rules existed when "The Godfather" was filmed. A portion of Sufjan Stevens' "The BQE" was filmed at Calvary.

Screen grabs are all taken from The Godfather DVD Collection and are copyright Paramount Studios.
UPDATE 09.23.2009: Strange discovery at Calvary today. Read about it here