Vito's politicos and Michael

Puzo several times emphasizes the importance of Michael having Vito’s political connections “wired into him” He gets most emphatic just after Michael, after Vito’s death, learns about Tessio’s betrayal and is set to put the Great Massacre of 1955 into motion. When Michael tells Tom that Tessio’s reason for the betrayal is “He’s figuring I can’t win,” Tom asks, “How right is he figuring.” Michael replies: “It looks bad. But my father was the only one who understood that political power and connections are worth ten regimes. I think I’ve got most of my father’s poltical power in my hands now, but I’m the only one who really knows that.”

I can understand why Vito’s political contacts would be important to Michael if he were planning to stay in New York. But, almost from the get-go, he was planning to move the operation to Nevada. Also, why the specific mention of Vito’s contacts in the context of the impending assassinations? How were the politicians going to help him bring off the Great Massacre?

Good questions, TB. Unfortunately Puzo chose not to truly illuminate that portion of Vito's power, perhaps because he couldn't write it but more likely because he thought it would be more effective if the reader made his/her own conclusions. Vito (and by extension Michael) is frightening precisely because no one really knows how far his arm reaches.

To give my take:

Both Corleones thought strategically. It would not do for Michael to kill his enemies and then lose the Family power via bad press/legal entanglements/new rivalries.

Michael's inheritance of Vito's political/financial power was necessary to ensure that everything continued running smoothly after Vito retired/died. Not only did the money continue to flow to the right people but the personal relationships Vito had built up over 3-4 decades were passed to Michael.

This meant that whoever ran NY after Vito's passing and Michael's Vegas move would only do so with Michael's blessing. So no one would get any big ideas. Otherwise it would be quite easy for a Clemenza or whoever to start thinking to himself "Mike's in Vegas, why do I need to give him x% of "my" take? "

On a street level, obviously the Corleones must have had very good intelligence on the habits, whereabouts and protection details of Barzini and Tattaglia. I always thought this would have been much easier to accomplish with police or other official assistance.

And then at a higher level, the murders of two prominent bosses followed by the elimination of many of their supporters would presumably have caused unease among officialdom. Only a Vito would have had the ability to convince people to turn a blind eye to this or softpedal investigations.

I don't think Vito or Michael would have been so crude or stupid as to tell some judge or senator exactly what was going to happen. But a few well placed words about "wanting to be on the right team when changes happened" or promises of new deals coming in could have been sufficient to ensure that no Corleone would be investigated/prosecuted for the purge.

From what I can tell, Vito never shared his political contacts with Barzini, he just reluctantly agreed to use them on Barzini's behalf. So really Barzini had no freaking clue what Vito was really up to if/when he met with his judges, senators, bureaucrats, etc.

"Look I'm gonna ask you to do this thing for me for a few years but there will be some changes coming later, ok"

"Sure, Don Corleone"

The Corleones were not giving up NY. Nevada was the new opportunity, but turning over everything they could to Clemenza and Tessio is purely for operational purposes.

Frankie to Michael: "Now I want to run my family without you on my back ..." Michael still ran the NY Corleone family.

As Lilo states, Michael's continung investment in NY needed no less political protection than in the past. Also, there was no guarantee that what Michael was planning would be successful including the "1950-51" massacre.

Lilo & olivant: The novel goes a different way.

"For twelve months, Michael divided his time equally between his headquarters at the Long Beach mall and his new home in Las Vegas. But at the end of that year he decided to close out the New York operation..."
"Now the Corleone Family was unchallengeable, and Clemenza had his own Family."

GF2 went a different way because FFC needed a way to show that Michael was ready to kill an old friend like Clemenza (who was replaced by the newly invented character of Frank Pentangeli).

So, the novel states that Clemenza had is own family. And that's it. No control by the Corleones who completely had moved their operations to Nevada.

In my opinion we sometimes tend to argue too much from the perspective of the trilogy: We want to make the trilogy consistent with the novel. It doesn't work all the time. A few months ago it happened to me too. I could have sworn there was a part in the novel where we read about Vito's return to Sicily & his revenge. There isn't.

True D, but that's what we do on this Board so much - we speculate. If we didn't, I imagine that the number of posts during my 8 years on the Board would be cut to about 10%.

What else is there to do? We speculate and we also compare it all with what we know of reality. In reality, a Capo of a Mafia family doesn't get to form his own family. Michael telling Tessio and Clemenza that after the move to Nevada they can break off from the Corleone family and form their own families is, from what we know about the Mafia, absurd! It's also implausible for Michael to give up his hegemony over the NY Corleone family when he moves to Nevada because giving it up was not necessary. The nature of a Don is to enhance his power and wealth, not to hold it steady or diminish it. Of course, in II Micahel tells Frankie that the name of his family is still Corleone and he's to run it like a Corleone. That doesn't sound like someone who has eschewed his authority over NY.

But do you really think the Corleones would have given up their powerbase in New York just like that? They still needed the muscle to back up their operation in Nevada. So what Puzo states at the end of the novel is highly implausible.

And we have the films to support it. Without Coppola's films, this board would probably not even exist in the first place.

That's what I mean: The films, especially GF2, tell a different story sometimes.
We can't pretend there is a person named Michael Corleone and that there are certain events like the massacre of 1950+x.
All that is fiction. and in the case of Godfather, we have a book and two films (some say three ;-)). FFC used the book a lot. But in no way do the films "support" something from the book. The novel came first. The Roth story, Pentangeli, Cicci, Ciccio. All that was added by FFC.

So, according to the novel, "Clemenza had his own Family".
Are we supposed to believe that Puzo wanted to say something else than just that?
It may sound implausible, like so many other things in the book. But that's the work we have to deal with.

You make an excellent point about maintaining distinction between the book and the movie, Danito.

But even in book and I don't have it in front of me right now, there is a line that reads something like The victory was not complete until a year of delicate political machinations made Michael Corleone the most powerful Family boss in the United States.

Whatever the formal relationship was between Michael's Nevada operations (which Vito had clearly identified as growth opportunities) and the old "olive oil" business, I think it's clear that the political power which Michael inherited and evidently expanded was critical to them both.

I also don't think Michael gave up the more legitimate areas of the NY personal Corleone fiefdoms (Wall Street brokerages, real estate, garment district businesses, etc) which would be watched over/guarded by whoever the onsite power was in NY-again people being who they are there had to be something keeping them from getting greedy just b/c Michael wasn't onsite.

If you indulge a small aside, Puzo used the exact same theme in "The Last Don"-withdrawal from direct involvement in street activities but maintenance of street level allies to scare off people and total political/legal control to keep said thugs on a leash.

I think you can interpret Clemenza having his own family any way you want.

It could have been something like what happened with the Rizzutos in Montreal. On the one hand you had a Bonanno faction, which the Rizzutos were part of, and you had the rest of the Montreal mafia, also led by the Rizzutos.

So maybe Clemenza got a part of the Corleone family for himself, maybe his own regime. The initial plans were that both Tessio and Clemenza would form their own families. But Tessio was killed, so those plans may have been altered.



The films are heavily based on the novel and are an important extention of it. Without the novel, those films wouldn't have been made, but without the films, the novel would long be forgotten. In my opinion, there isn't even a novel and three (or two) films, there is just one story.

On the broad topic, I usually think of two "stories," with the first being the book, GF1, and the flashback sections of GF2. I'll try to reconcile those when I can.

With respect to the New York/Las Vegas question, it's important to recall that Michael has incorporated much if not all of the Barzini/Tataglia Families, so there would be a lot left over after Clemenza was given his family.

When Puzo writes that Michael is closing down the New York "operation," he then goes on to talk about selling the houses on the Mall and the actual Corleone family preparing to move west. I don't think it necessarily means the same as "operations" in a business sense, as when Sollozzo says he needs help with the drug operations.

This is Bonanno all over again. He moved to the southwest ages ago, but kept control of his NY family. Accardo in Chicago "retired", but nothing got done with his front Dons without his approval.

Then what about Lucy?
What about Strachi and Cuneo who survive in the novel?
And all the other discrepancies?

The novel was the novel. FFC took the topic and made a film out of it. That's what artists do. The fact that he used lot of the original dialogues and that he didn't change too much of the story make it easy for us to forget that these are different works.

Even the films GF(1) and GF2 aren't consistent in themselves as you know from the timeline discussions. FFC changed the birthday of Vito on the last day of the film shooting of GF2 because Brando finally said he wouldn't appear in the movie.

What about Lucy?



Stracci and Cuneo's fate is prety much left open in the novel. The novel only describes how Tattaglia and Barzini were killed. The novel doesn't particulary state that Stracci and Cuneo were left alive.



I'm not sure if that has anything to do with eachother. Coppola had already written the scene, he just wrote Brando out at the last minute.

Not much is beyond me in the way of speculation, but this is pretty close to the limit.

There is an "ethical" reason why Cuneo and Stracci were spared: they joined the war only after the Corleones gunned down a police captain and then refused to give up the killer. The Corleones knew that was an infraction that would impact all of the families, and they expected to "catch hell" for it.

Good point Pete. Just like Sonny's murder by machine guns in the film, the murder of additional dons in the film was a result of FFC's (as well as so many directors and producers) perception of an audiences need for a certain amount of violence.

Danito and mustachepete bring perfectly legitimate arguments. But the way I see it, the first two films are a "revised" edition of the novel. For me, the canon consist of the latest changes.

For example, Vito's birthyear in the first film is 1887. In the second film this is changed to 1891. So in my book, Vito's birthyear is based on the latest statement, which is 1891.

That's just how I want to perceive it. Otherwise I would go mad of all the contradictions.

This is not real life. These are pieces of art.

As always, very intelligent responses from all.

As I posted elsehwere, I think Michael had no intention of letting go of New York. Just as Vito's promise to the other Dons not to be the first to break the peace wasn't binding on Michael, neither was Vito's to Tess and Clem to form their own families. Michael needed NY as a source of income; for the synergy with his legal gaming business in Nevada, and as muscle to deter other gangsters from horning in on his Nevada holdings. So, it'd be in his interest to make sure as many of Vito's politicos were wired into whomever ran NY for him.

It would be interesting to know what Puzo would have to say about it. The novel has a movement towards west. Everything new is in the west.
When Tom visits Woltz in Hollywood, he thinks that a man like Vito could make a lot of money there. The same with Las Vegas.
If we don't argue withe Coppolla's continuation of his version, I think, it's quite plausible that Michael sold the "olive oil business" in New York and invested in legal and illegal business in Nevada, California, etc.

Your points TB, as usual, mesh with mine. I also think that the rather public annouincement of the Corleones' Nevada plans was intentional to effect deceit in order to faciliate the massacre. As others have posted, while announce those plans in front of Carlo? Of course, he would pass them on top Barzini who thought he could then just pick up the pieces despite Tessio or Clemenza.

In any case, Mafia dons don't give up anything unless they have to.

The reason why the Corleones wanted Carlo at that meeting was to deceive him into thinking he was finally being accepted in the Corleones inner circle. It was meant to make him feel comfortable after what happened with Sonny. Carlo would surely have been wary that the Corleones might suspect him.

The main reason why he betrayed Sonny was because Sonny had humiliated him in front of his neighborhood. It was a personal thing and I don't think he would have dared doing it again. Especially not when he supposedly became Michael's right-hand man in Nevada. This was all part of Michael's scheme.

I think that in the novel Michael was serious about doing a Kennedy and letting go of most of his illegal enterprises. It was hinted that he actually was a good enough businessman to run things profitably (mostly)within bounds of the law.

Howard Hughes was able to run his Vegas casinos without the Mafia in the sixties - it must have been possible for somebody who had enough money and clout.

Politicos would have remained wired into Michael, I imagine, as an insurance against being taken out. He'd still mediate political protection, while extending political connections into the West.