Was Tom Really Loyal?

I have written about this in another section, and alluded to it in a post made earlier today, but now I raise the possibility that maybe Tom was not as loyal to Michael as one might think.

First of all there is no question that Tom, Sonny, and Vito were a tightly knit team. Tom enjoyed the affection of Vito and Sonny, but not so much Michael. After Vito's shooting, and Michael's departure to Sicily, we see cracks in the relationship with Sonny, but their arguements are brotherly, and there is no hint that Tom wants the Corleones to prevail in the war. After Sonny's death and Vito's surrender, Michael re-emeges, and basically the first thing he does is dismiss Tom because he is not a wartime consigliere, and from there on out seems to go out of his way to embarass him whenever he can.

Once Vito dies, Tom is further moved out of Michael's inner circle, and is only brought back in after the attempt on Michael's life in Tahoe. While Tom is temporarily back in charge of things, he manages to keep the family business profitable, ad he manages to compromise Senator Geary. His reward? Further humiliation by Michael.

Still, maybe it is Tom who is playing Michael and not the other way around. Maybe Tom wanted Michael out of the way.
Certainly he knew how to legitimize the family business, and he could have persuaded Connie and Fredo to go along with him.
Rocco and Neri would be more problematic, but if it is true that Rocco was on the outs with Michael, Tom could have persuaded him to align with him and get rid of Neri.

Maybe Tom was not outsmarted by Roth as he leads eeryone to believe, and maybe the Senate hearings were the ultimate set up. Its a good explanation for his withholding the truth from Michael about Roth's possible rescue of Fredo in Cuba, and more importantly "forgetting" to check New York sources about Pentangeli being alive, thus setting Michael up for a perjury rap. The plan to bring Pentangeli's brother into the mix was Michael's idea, and Tom had to go along to keep his cover, and ultimately his plan to undo Michael, under this scenario, fell apart. Still and all if he was really messing around with Sonny's widow, and fielding job offers from hotel chains, maybe he was looking at a post Michael time where he could gain leadership in the legitimized Corleone family.

After all at the beinning of GF III we leard that Tom had died. Of what? A fishing accident?

Now about those drapes......

i LOVE TOM HAGAN. He was fabulous in Days of Thunder.

What does that have to do with what DT said?

No he was squeezed to death by Francis Ford Coppola's cheapness. He would have appeared in Part III if FFC only agreed to pay what Duvall was asking, but FFC was watching his pennies so he could play with his wine.

Tom Hagen was loyal to Mike. Take that to the bank!

I see Tom as loyal to the bitter end. Even if he was hurt, bitter or angry at Michael (as brothers occasionally are sometimes) he never would have done anything against Michael or Michael's family. Although Tom's view of Michael as a brother is not always reciprocated, Tom certainly was viewed as a brother by Sonny and Fredo and perhaps as a son by Vito and Mama Corleone.

So Tom would be loyal to Vito's memory if nothing else.

Loyal, loyal, loyal. Tom was orphaned and homeless when Sonny brought him home. The Corleones gave him a home, sent him to college and law school, gave him an excellent living, but most of all gave him a family to belong to.

He would never betray that. Never.

Ditto.

Never a doubt as to Tom's loyalty. In addition to loyalty being ingrained in his character, he also (as we saw) needed the family and desperately wanted to be a brother--even more so than consigliere. I think Michael was telling the truth when he told Tom (after the Tahoe shooting), "Right now you're the only one I can completely trust."

Who are you? Sam Wheat??

Poor Sam Wheat, he was stuck in between two worlds.

And here I thought he may have died from smelling to much napalm in the morning.

Actually, he died in a surfing accident...

Actually, he died in a surfing accident... [/quote]


Consigliere don't surf.

What do you know about surfing, Major? You're from goddamn Virginia.

That's no joke. According to Mark Winegardner, Tom went surfing in a car and drowned!


Don T, are you implying that it was actually Tom who opened the drapes?

While I like your post and the possibilities you provide as to why Tom may not have been as loyal as we originally thought he was, to Michael, (and you do provide some legitimate food for thought) when push comes to shove I really have to agree with the others. Tom was loyal to the very end.

I think that even if Tom was not happy with the way Michael was handling things or the way that Michael treated him, he could never bring himself to betray Michael. In a man like Tom hagen's mind, to betray Michael would have been disloyalty to the memory of Vito. It would have been like he was actually betraying Vito.

I don't know, DC. I think Don Tomasso is just partial to Irish lawyers.

I'm just trying to be a bit provocative with this thread, and I recognize it is a long shot, but if we think of Tom as more than a two dimensional figure, there is the possiblity that he was out to undermine Michael ---- maybe even subconsciously.
After all if those stories about all the comedy he was playing with Sonny's WIDOW are true, that would be a betrayal to Vito wouldn't it?

Don T, don't get me wrong. When I first read your post I initially began to really think about and ponder what you had written. You absolutely provoked thought. You provide some really legitimate reasoning.

But after really thinking about it, I just cannot see Tom Hagen betraying the memory of Vito by betraying the son that Vito was most fond of. Tom seemed really moved when he and Michael are conversing, especially when he tells Michael that he always wanted to be thought of as a brother by him.

Well, with DC and TB PB and the rest all piling on here, I'm going to keep this thread going and come up with more on this theory. Wsant there a deleted scene or something in a draft about Tom complaining to Sandra about how Michael treated him?

If I'm not mistaken, Tom had an affair with Sandra (Sonny's widow) in an early version of the script.

I've said it more than once; Part II is one of the best movies I've ever seen, but it was rushed when it was produced (especially in writing the storyline - too many inconsistencies). Early versions of the script shouldn't be used as a source of info from which to argue a point.

That's a great point, and I'm often guilty of this. We can't look at early drafts of Parts II or III and draw any conclusions from them. The only thing these early scripts are good for are "what could have been," not what actually happened.

Well it's from the book and not the movie but when Vito was promoted to consigliere, (paraphrasing here) Tom was amused to learn that the other Families were slightly contemptuous of this move and had started calling the Corleone Family "The Irish Gang". It let Tom know that he'd never be fully accepted in the Sicilian organization and could never hope to succeed the Don.

But what's important here per the book is that Tom never had any desire to succeed the Don and viewed such an ambition as disrespectful to his "father" Vito and Vito's sons.

So even though Michael abused Tom's loyalty and treated him disrespectfully I don't think Tom ever could have had taken any action against him. At most he might have left, but as we know his loyalty (love?) wouldn't let him do that either.

Well, how far goes loyalty in general? I mean, if there has ever been a loyal person in history or fiction, it was Tom Hagen. But there's always a limit. And I think his loyalty was tested more often than that of Jesus.
Many times Michael has betrayed the memory of his father. So if Tom happened to distance himself from Michael it could be one way of keeping his loyalty to Vito.

Good points. Michael's exclusion of Tom from Family business, his emotional manipulation and humiliation of Tom, forcing Tom to carry out the "hit" on Frankie, the fact that Michael had either Rocco or Neri spying on Tom's personal life, and just his overall coldness and disdain for someone who was not only an older "brother" but a pretty important power broker all had to grate on Tom tremendously.

I could see Tom starting to give less of himself to Michael. Tom could just give the facts and the absolute minimum asked of him, offering no advice or analysis (since it would be ignored anyway), and showing up less and less at family get togethers-brothers do that all the time in real life.

Maybe ultimately he would have left but I don't see it.

...which raises a question: What if, after Michael scornfully told Tom he could take his family and his mistress and move to Vegas, Tom said, "Yeah, right, Mike, I think I'll do that." Would Michael have let him? I don't think so. Tom knew far too much. And, if he left Michael's employ, the lawyer-client privilege he had with his boss would disappear. Tom would be an easy target for law enforcement, and Michael's mistreatment of him would reduce his resistance. Michael would know that, too. So, if Tom said he'd leave, he'd be a dead man.

Good point, TB. Let's not forget, this is 1959; years before the idea of any kind of "Witness Protection."

Frankie was a protected witness in the same vein as Valachi was in the '60s. Valachi in a segregated place in prison, Frankie on an army base. But if a guy like Tom ever did turn, where would he have gone?

I think that Michael would have let Tom leave. I think the exchange, supposedly about Roth, was actually about Fredo, and that Michael was trapping Tom into supporting the murder of their brother (You gonna come along with me in these things I have to do -- or what?). In his warped way, Michael was always fair, so having given Tom the choice I think he would have let him go.

If Tom had said that Michael would have said. That's interesting, Tom because the family just bought an interest in that hotel chain, and the offer's been withdrawn.
Al, Rocco, you have the boat ready?

LOL

That's an interesting point, MP.
I believe that Michael didn't tell Tom he was going to whack Fredo, but you can infer that "Are you gonna come along with me in these things I have to do" definitely included Fredo's death, whether or not Tom knew about it.
Michael probably thought that the fewer people who knew about the plan, the better. And he also must have assumed that Tom would have figured it out himself.

But I also think Michael might have had two other motivations for not telling Tom:
--Bad Michael: He couldn't be absolutely, positively sure that Tom wouldn't warn Fredo, out of brotherly concern;
--Good Michael: He wanted to spare Tom the agony of knowing that Fredo would be whacked.

Tom was basically a good guy (relative to typical Mafia hoods) caught in an unscrupulous situation. His virtue was loyalty, but not to Michael; it was to Vito. Tom served Vito's son, he was Vito's adopted son, he was Michael's brother, and he was Vito's and Michael's partner in crime. Those bonds were almost impossible for Tom to break. By leaving Michael, he probably felt that he would be disloyal to Vito. His affair was probably to help relieve the stress of his moral conflict. His efforts (?) to find other employment were a muted attempt to resolve his moral conflict by removing himself from his environment. Of course, the vice-presidency of the hotels was also a cautious attempt since they were still part of the Corleone enterprises.

I think that Tom would betray Michael but never Vito, he stood that long with Mike was cause he would of betrayed Vito's memory if he betrayed Mike.

I think Tom intuited that Michael was going to kill Fredo and thats why he asked whether he had to kill "everybody."

Tom was Vito's son, not Michael's brother, but I don't think he'd ever be disloyal to Michael--even if fear were his motivation. Also, he may not have solicited an offer from the "House and Hotels"--they may have come to him without any come-on from Tom.

Some excellent threads going at the mo.

Tom Hagen is one of the most interesting characters there is. Lots of screentime yet so underdeveloped. We know he is loyal to Vito to the end. To the absolute end, he loves him. He also loves Sonny, and thats where Mike's resentment comes in. The bond between Sonny and Tom probably made him jealous. He doesn't see Tom as his real brother, and when he assumed power, the first thing he did was demote him. He accuses him of not being a wartime consiglieri, but if anything, his calm coolness prevented the war from being a lot lot worse.

In part II Mike tells Tom that he kept things from him because he loved and protected him, but then proceeds to go back on this later in the film and humiliating him in front of Rocco and Neri...this to a man that actually ran the family for a few months. I think Tom reminds him of the days when he, HIS brother and HIS father were close knit and he was the kid brother having this life planned out for him.

The flashback scene is key i think, Mike HATES the fact that this guy, an adopted Irish kid, is telling him that he and his father have plans for his future, for me, that scene explains Mike dropping one on Tom time and time again.

The key to the Michael/Tom relationship is that Michael was an obsessive controller. He didn't need a consigliere because only his decisions counted, only his choices mattered. Tom was Vito's choice for consigliere, not Michael's. Tom was Sonny's choice for brother, not Michael's.
What's more, Tom wasn't a wartime consigliere. He says so himself, in the novel. He blames himself for Sonny's death--"old Genco would have smelled a rat." Michael may have resented Tom for that, fairly or not.

But old Tom didn't take the phone-calls....old Tom really didn't know anything about it...and old Tom wouldn't have been physically able to stop a furious Sonny.

You're not wrong, THF. But Tom was a lawyer by training, not a Sicilian like Genco. As a lawyer, Tom would think logically about Carlo: he'd never betray Sonny because he'd be the prime suspect and would be wiped out immediately. End of story. Genco, as a Sicilian, would understand that after Sonny beat and humiliated Carlo, he'd thirst for revenge--and to hell with logic. I believe that when Tom thought to himself (in the novel) that "old Genco would have smelled a rat," he meant that Genco would have warned Sonny that Carlo would have to be watched very carefully for signs of revenge. If Sonny took that advice to heart and kept his temper in check, he might have seen that Carlo's second beating of Connie was intended as a death trap for him.

what it comes down to is - for the story to have been told the right way, it would have to had been told one of the following ways - mini-series style - had 2 extra 4 hour movies filmed closer together - and ffc should have ponied up the needed cash to have all the original actors in it either as deleted scenes or play out their roles to flesh put their parts. i didn't read the book, but what was rocco's background? since there was a survey asking who was better clemenza or pentageli, i think we should have a survey on rocco or neri. i think neri would have never been out smarted by rocco.

But could Genco have been Santino's consiglieri? Vito's yes, but Sonny's?

I'm not so sure.

What makes you believe this? I see no sign of jealousy in Michael, at least not in terms of brotherhood.

Mike wanted to be closer to Sonny, but Tom was always there. It made him resent them both.

I think that neither the film nor the novel show us that Michael was jealous.

The flashback scene at the end shows him to be a little resentful of Tom's presence.

If anything Michael was jealous of the bond between Tom and Vito. Michael was outraged when he learned that Tom and Vito had talked behind his back about his future, and he sat idly by after telling Tom he was not a wartime consigliere, and Vito contradicted him by saying that Tom was not a bad consigliere but that Sonny was a bad Don, and then sort of apologized for Michael's firing him by saying I have full faith in Michael as I do in you....

But also added that he advised Mike on his decision

Yes he did. But there's probably more to that decision than simply calling out Tom for his failings as a wartime consigliere:

Michael planned to move to Nevada well before Vito's death and Tessio's betrayal. "Legitimacy" was the most important thing to him. He needed Tom to be his "legitimate" front in Nevada, a lawyer not directly tainted by the planned massacre of the other Dons. Vito's death precipitated Barzini's immediate call for a sitdown, moving up the massacre schedule, and Michael needed Tom with him. Had Vito not died, Michael probably would have dispatched Tom to Nevada at least a year before he planned to carry out the massacre, in order to establish himself as a legitimate front for the Corleones and to distance himself from the massacre.

He claims legitimacy...but seven years...that SEVEN YEARS on, he's still forcing home casino licences, making deals with Hyman Roth and killing people. Why hasn't he bitten the bullet and welcomed Tom back to the fold in all that time? Why have Neri and Lampone grown ever powerful and Tom is now a mere lawyer?

And why did Vito think that Tom failed as a wartime consiglieri? Exactly why? He concedes that Sonny was a bad don...so Tom really isn't to blame is he? A consiglieri can only be as good as far as his Don is prepared to listen to him

(By the way, I disagree that Sonny was a bad Don, I worship the man)

Tom was portrayed as having died before the beginning of the story because Robert Duvall refused to take part due to a salary disagreement, that's all.

LOL...

Mike - Archbishop, this is Andrew, Tom's son...Pity about Duvall...I could have had him today instead of George Effing Hamilton

"When Hagen had entered the room Sonny had come rushing to embrace him. Michael realized with a faint twinge of jealousy that in many ways Sonny and Tom Hagen were closer than he himself could ever be to his own brother." - The Godfather, page 96.

Forgive me for bringing back such an old topic, but I've been reading the novel again (it seems like the 100th time) and I got the itch to return to this forum and discuss some of the finer details.

Oh, thank you very much!

Tom was loyal to a fault. However, he lamented the denouement of the Family as he knew it under Vito. To Tom, under Vito the Family had majesty; under Michael it had been reduced to a gang of thugs. Remember his remark to Frankie: "It once was". Yes, Tom was loyal to a fault.