15 Differences Between The Godfather Novel and Movie

Posted on 28 september 2022 by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Today it was 50 years ago that The Godfather, one of the greatest films ever made, was released in the Netherlands. It was based on the excellent novel by Mario Puzo. As often happens with a screen adaptation, a lot of stuff was either left out or changed. Below are the fifteen most important differences between Puzo’s bestselling novel and the classic movie by Francis Ford Coppola.

1. Sonny’s Cockyness
The following passage from the novel explains more about why Sonny was always the cock of the walk: Sonny Corleone was tall for a first-generation American of Italian parentage, almost six feet, and his crop of bushy, curly hair made him look even taller. He was built as powerfully as a bull, and it was common knowledge that he was so generously endowed by nature that his martyred wife feared the marriage bed as unbelievers once feared the rack. It was whispered that when as a youth he had visited houses of ill fame, even the most hardened and fearless putain, after an awed inspection of his massive organ, demended double price.

2. Another Request For the Don
All the wedding guests that ask requests of Don Corleone at his daughter’s wedding are in both the novel and the movie except one. Understandably, it was cut out because it is the least interesting. A guy needs 500 dollars to open a pizzeria. What is interesting though is his name: Anthony Coppola. The novel was released in 1969 and author Mario Puzo did not yet know that it would be adapted into a movie by a guy named Coppola. Funny he chose that name.

3. Woltz is a Real Pervert
Placing the severed racehorse head in movie producer Jack Woltz’s bed was brutal. In the film the guy is portrayed as an asshole, but not as a big enough fucker to deserve this kind of punishment. In the novel however, Hagen finds out he ‘did a number’ on a twelve year old girl during his visit to Woltz’s ranch. Later, it is explained that the 60-year old movie mogul can indeed only get it up with very young girls. So apart from the notion that hurting animals is always wrong, Woltz definitely had something bad like this coming.

4. Bonasera Gets His Vengeance
After a long conversation with the undertaker Bonasera, we see the Don give out the order to punish the two men who have hurt his daughter, but we don’t witness the actual event in the film. In the novel we learn that Paulie Gatto was in charge of this operation (the guy who gets killed after which the famous line “leave the gun, take the cannoli” – which btw is not in the novel – is uttered). He uses two professional fighters who kick the two abusers to a pulp when they leave a bar. Like ordered by Don Corleone, they survive. But their faces are unrecognizable. Bonasera is very happy indeed, until his phone rings some time later.

5. Fontane Makes a Career Switch
The singer Johnny Fontane plays a larger role in the book than in the film. We learn that the Don’s service to Fontane has paid off. He played in Woltz’s picture which earned him an Academy Award. And that is not all. Tom Hagen visits him after the picture is wrapped up and tells him that Don Corleone will bankroll him in becoming a movie producer. Soon after the Don is shot, but Fontane still gets the money to produce one movie at the time. He ends up as successful as Woltz.

6. More On Luca Brasi
In the movie, it is obvious that Luca Brasi is a dangerous killer who works exclusively for the Corleone Family. But there is nothing about his background really. In the novel, he plays a larger role. Partly because there is more story about the Don’s rise to power, which wasn’t used in The Godfather: Part II (see also 7). About Luca we learn that he is absolutely terrifying and has done some horrible deeds. Some he did in service of the Don, like butchering two hitmen Al Capone had sent to New York as a favor to Don Maranzano who was at war with the Corleone Family. But some he did for himself, like incinerating his own baby in an oven and murder his girlfriend with whom he had the child. No wonder everybody in the movie seems to be afraid of this brute.

7. The First Mob War and Sonny’s Involvement
When the Corleone Family goes to the mattresses in The Godfather, we get the faint impression that this was not the first war they were in. It is not. In the novel, Don Vito fights a bloody war in the early 1930’s with another New York boss: Don Maranzano. It was in this war that Sonny Corleone made his reputation as a brutal general. As a boy, Sonny had witnessed his father kill Don Fanucci and he confronted his father with this (that’s right, this is not in The Godfather: Part II). After that, he became involved in the family business and it turned out that he had a talent for violence and cruelty. He may have missed the strategic subtleness the Don searched for in his successor, but he surely was effective. The war against Maranzano was resolved by killing the Don while he was eating in a restaurant (similar to the real-life assassination of Don Masseria of New York).

8. Kay and Mama Corleone
After Michael had left her after killing Sollozzo and McCluskey, Kay Adams visits the Corleone estate but gets very little information from Tom Hagen. The jerk almost didn’t invite her in! Mama Corleone is not happy with this treatment and she asks inside Kay for lunch. Despite Tom’s objections, she tells Kay gently that “Mikey not gonna write you. He hide two-three years. Maybe more. You go home to your family and find a nice young fellow and get married.” After Kay leaves, she is trying to get used to the fact that the young man she had loved was a cold-blooded murderer. And that she had been told by the most unimpeachable source: his mother.

9. Michael’s Scapegoat
In the movie, it is never explained how exactly Don Corleone managed to get Michael home from Sicily. The police are after him after all, which we know in the novel because they come to Kay’s house to question her. The don did it by finding a scapegoat for the Sollozzo-McCluskey murders. This guy was part of a small Sicilian mob family, who acted as intermediaries when the bosses needed to plan safe negotiations. The man had committed a brutal murder and had been sentenced to death. Don Vito made him falsely confess to killing McCluskey and Sollozzo and he had the waiter from the restaurant provide false witness testimony. Problem solved.

10. Lucy Gets an Operation
On Connie’s wedding in The Godfather I, Sonny cheats on his wife with Lucy Mancini. In part III, she apparently had a son from Sonny called Vincent. There is nothing about her getting pregnant in the book, but there is quite a lot of stuff about their love affair, and there is a chapter on her after Sonny’s death. It is in this chapter that we learn that she has quite a big box. Apparently which is why she matched so well with Sonny (see point 1). Not sure if this is Puzo’s finest writing, but I’m just giving you the facts here. After Sonny’s death, the Corleone Family gives Lucy a job in Vegas and a nice monthly income. She meets a doctor, who she has an affair with. He fixes her ‘down there’ and later also fixes Johnny Fontane’s voice box. Great guy.

11. More On Al Neri
Michael Corleone’s enforcer Al Neri was apparently a cop before he came into Michael’s service. A brutal cop who would put the fear of God into many delinquents. One day, he kills a vile pimp who had cut up a young girl and her mother. He gets a heavy sentence, and this is when the Corleones step in. They use their political influence to set him free, and immediately offer him a job. Now Michael got his own Luca Brasi, a powerful weapon in the battles he is about to get engaged in.

12. Fabrizio Gets What’s Coming To Him
Michael’s big revenge differs quite a bit in the movie. In the novel, it doesn’t take place during the baptism. Coppola combined the happenings to make it more dramatic and Michael more diabolical. Great move. Also, Moe Greene gets killed earlier in the story. More importantly, in the novel Michael only whacks two of the four dons of the opposing families: Barzini and Tattaglia. Also, Fabrizio, the bodyguard who killed Michael’s wife in Sicily, is shot to death in a bar. “Michael Corleone sends his regards”. A scene was filmed for The Godfather: Part II, in which Fabrizio is killed by a car bomb, but it was cut from the movie.

13. Tessio Off the Hook?
After Tessio is to be killed for his betrayal, he asks Tom Hagen if he can get him off the hook. “Can’t do it, Sally”, Hagen answers. In the book, Tom had actually checked with Michael if Tessio could be saved. “Any way to get Tessio off the hook?” Michael’s answer: “No way”. At least he tried, which makes Tom a bit less cold than in the movie, although in the world of the mob, it’s not really possible to give traitors passes. The don’s position would be threatened very soon.

14. Hagen Reconciling With Kay
The Godfather famously ends with Michael’s door being closed on Kay; the moment she realizes of course that it was all true: Michael had killed Carlo and the heads of the five families. The perfect ending. In the novel, there is a scene after that realization in which Tom Hagen visits Kay and actually explains to her why Michael killed Carlo. And he makes it sound very reasonable. After that, Kay decides to give it another shot with Michael. How does she deal with Michael’s sins?

15. Kay Burning a Candle
The novel ends with Kay going to church to burn a candle for Michael Corleone’s soul. Like she had seen Mama Corleone do for her husband. So history repeats itself and Kay, despite being a real Americana, becomes a Sicilian wife for Michael. So, he made the right choice hooking up with her again after his exile on Sicily.

Read also: The Don’s Dilemma Reconsidered

Who are the Five Families in ‘The Godfather’?

Posted on 23 mei 2021 by Jeppe Kleijngeld

There are a lot of references in Mario Puzo’s famous novel to ‘The Five Families’, which doesn’t seem to include the Corleone Family.

For example in the following passage: ‘For the last year the Corleone Family had waged war against the five great Maffia Families of New York and the carnage had filled the newspapers. If the five families include the Corleone’s, then why doesn’t it say: … against the other four great Mafia Families?

There are many other references, like: ‘The heads of the Five Families made frantic efforts to prepare a defence against the bloody retaliatory war that was sure to follow Sonny’s death.’ Or: ‘The Five Families and the Corleone Empire were in stalemate.’

Then the big meeting of bosses comes, so we can finally learn who the Five Families are and Puzo messes it up. It reads: ‘The representatives of the Five Families of New York were the last to arrive and Tom Hagen was struck by how much more imposing, impressive, these five men were than the out-of-towners, the hicks. For one thing, the five New York Dons were in the old Sicilian tradition, they were ‘men with a belly’ meaning, figuratively, power and courage; and literally, physical flesh, as if the two went together, as indeed they seemed to have done in Sicily. The five New York Dons were stout, corpulent men with massive leontine heads, features on a large scale, fleshy imperial noses, thick mouths, heavy folded cheeks. They had the look of no-nonsense busy men without vanity.’

Don Corleone is already there from the beginning, so you would expect five bosses to be introduced now, but we only get four: Anthony Stracci, Ottilio Cuneo, Emilio Barzini and Philip Tattaglia. What the hell?!?!

There is also another passage here pointing to five families besides the Corleones. It reads: ‘Of the five New York Families opposing the Corleones, Stracci was the least powerful but the most well disposed.’ That proves it: there is a family missing here.

Yes, in real-life there are five New York Families (Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese) and not six, but these passages in the novel make it very clear that the Corleone Empire is NOT considered as one of the five. Why did Puzo create this unclear situation? This seems rather sloppy for a capable writer like him.

Francis Ford Coppola could have corrected this mistake in the movie, but he didn’t. The movie also includes a few of these references. Like Tom Hagen proclaiming: “All the five families would come after you, Sonny.…” Or Don Vito saying: “I want you to arrange a meeting with the heads of the Five Families.”

I have searched for an answer, but found nothing. We, lovers of popular culture, will have to live forever with this frustrating, inconsequent, mess-up. Good luck with that.

The Don’s Dilemma Reconsidered

Posted on 15 maart 2020 by Jeppe Kleijngeld

A dilemma in business is usually a choice that one must make between two outcomes that are both undesirable. For a great example, look no further than The Godfather, in which family patriarch Don Vito Corleone has to decide whether or not to enter the drug trade. As a reminder of this deal – that sets The Godfather’s whole plot in motion – read Tom Hagen’s notes here below:

“Sollozzo is known as the Turk. He’s supposed to be good with a knife, but only in matters of business with some sort of reasonable complaint. His business is narcotics. He has fields in Turkey where they grow poppy. In Sicily he has the plants to process them into heroin. Now, he needs cash, he needs protection from the police for which he gives a piece of the action. I couldn’t figure out how much. The Tattaglia family is behind him here in New York. They have to be in it for something. He is known as a top narcotics man.”

The Consiglieri Question: What would you advise Don Vito about the Turk’s proposal?

Now this is much more tricky as it may seem at first glance. Don Corleone is very well connected, but his current rackets (gambling, unions) are easily overlooked by corrupt police officers and politicians. Drugs: different story. So, entering this trade would create a major problem for the Don in maintaining his valuable business relationships which he also considers as dear personal friendships. On the other hand, the attractiveness of narcotics, moneywise, is way too big for the Mafia to resist. The Don’s major competitors will surely get involved with Sollozzo, and if the Corleones won’t play ball it might lead to serious conflict. Maybe even war. And off course, this is exactly what comes to pass.

The Don’s consigliere Tom Hagen seems to focus mostly on the second consideration. This is his advice to Don Vito: “Well I say yes. There’s more money potential in narcotics than anything else we’re looking at. Now if we don’t get into it, somebody else will. Maybe one of the five families, maybe all of them. Now with the money they earn, they can buy more police and political power. Then they come after us. Now, we have the unions and gambling, and they’re the best things to have, but narcotics is a thing of the future. If we don’t get a piece of that action, we risk everything we have. Not now, but ten years from now.”

Is Hagen right? Is it the smart play to help the Turk? If you consider the shitstorm the Corleone Family ended up in after Don Vito turned him down (“I must say ‘no’ to you, and I’ll give you my reasons”) you would probably say yes. Definitely yes. But maybe Vito’s answer wasn’t so wrong after all. You see, every business starts with the core principles of the founder(s). Vito started out by helping the community he lives in. Off course, he also used despicable violence against those who opposed him, but he didn’t believe in squeezing out poor people like the old Mustache Pete’s were doing in New York. Similarly, he thinks drugs will bring destruction to the communities they live and operate in. He knows very well that saying no to Sollozzo might lead to repercussions. But rather than going against his principles, he turns him down anyway.

And this a valuable lesson for any business leader dealing with a major dilemma. If one of the options goes against your core values and the other doesn’t, then you know what decision you have to make. Even if it means, you will have to deal with major negative consequences, at least you will have stayed true to your core principles. And in the end, this always lasts longer.