The Five Families

Does anyone have any information and the names of the five famlies from the godfather

There is a big debate over weither the 5 families included the Corleones or not but the 5 that were names in the book were
Corleone
Barzini
Tataglia
Stracchi
Cunio

Thanks for that info another question I have is are any of them mentioned in the book and what is said about them because in the movie they are not mentioned

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"Keep your freinds close and your enemys closer"

They are all mentioned in both the book and movie.

The book devotes a paragraph or so to each of the other four besides Don C.

Thanks

Do you know if they are mentioned in the new book the godfather returns
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"Keep your freinds close and your enemeys closer

Yeah they are, but its a very slight mention. Actually, I think they would have prefered to have never been mentioned in the trash

yea Cunio and Strachi are mentioned numerous times in GFR, Barzini and Tattaglia limitedly.

I never understood, this big debate over whether the Corleone's are one of the 5 Families or not. Considering a 5th family besides Barzini, Stracci, Cuneo, and Tattaglia is never mentioned, wouldn't it be obvious to conclude that the Corleone's MUST be the fifth family? I don't understand what people are debating.

Plaw, I didn't know that I was in the book!


Don Cardi

I believe that in the movie a reference is made to killing the heads of the 5 families! So there lies the debate. Obviously Moe Green was the 5th hit, but Green did NOT have his own family. And If memory serves me correctly ( been a long time since I read the book) Cuneo and Stracci were not part of the hit. Only Tattaglia, Barzini and Moe Green are killed in the book.

Don Cardi

I had always read the passage as he killed the rest of the 5 family bosses. It would really make no sence to have 5 other families and only name 4 of them.

This has been an oft-discussed and debated topic here.

I suggest you read this thread:

http://www.thegodfathertrilogy.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=004457

There are numerous passages in the novel which would seem to indicate that there were Five Families besides the Corleones, must notably the one cited in the thread above by SC.

The only thing that I think everyone is willing to agree to is that this is a case (and not the only one) of sloppy writing by Puzo.

As I said in my post in the thread above, he was sloppy in either

a) writing passages that clearly indicate the existence of another family when he did not intend there to be another family, or

b) writing passages that clearly indicate the existence of another family because he intended there to be another family, but failing to name them.

From the novel:

"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."

Clearly, Don C. had already arrived, and was not one of the five.

But maybe Puso's mistake was just in the number he wrote? Maybe he didn't give it additional check and kept writing "5 families" quite automatically, where he actually meant to be 4?

it's CunEo,not CunIo

As pl and others noted, this is an oft-discussed topic. I'm not sure there's ever going to be a definitive answer.
It is a fact that Puzo refers to "five families" and "The Five Families" in many places. And, as in the quote pl reproduced, he refers to "these five men" as if there were five of them in addition to Vito Corleone, strongly implying that there were six families.
It is also a fact that he never names more than five families. [The five that are named are always Corleone, Barzini, Tattaglia, Stracci and Cuneo.
My gut tells me that, since he never named a sixth family, there were five total--including Corleone--and that the references to "The Five Families" either represented Puzo referring to them generically, or sloppy writing, or both.