As it happens, even this wasn’t good enough for the director Francis Ford Coppola, who insisted on using a real, unstuffed horse’s head in the scene where an uncooperative movie mogul wakes to find the bloody head of his beloved racehorse under his bed sheets, as promised by Don Corleone (“I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”). The head was ferried in on dry ice and handed over afterwards, apparently without irony, to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for disposal. Lot 12, then, is a prop head that was only used in rehearsals – and yet such is the demand for movie memorabilia, it is the star item in the catalogue with bidding expected to reach $20,000-$30,000 (£12,000-£18,000).