We saw Clemenza sweet and funny in the beginning of GI, was Frankie shown the same way with the food and the band in teh beginning of GII? I think so. It's disarmingly charming

yeah Frankie was shown as an all around good guy singing and trying to let everyone have fun.

He was. And I think that FFC did that for a reason : The character of Frank Pentangelli replaced the character of Peter Clemenza ( I believe that Richard Castellano wanted too much money to do GFII so FFC killed him off )so therefore my feeling is that FFC made them similar in character.


Don Cardi

To bad that Richard Castellano got so greedy, I would've loved to see Clemenza in #2. I loved his charactor.

Yeah, and even more, they went to all the trouble in the "Young Vito" scenes to set up the back story of how Clemenza and Tessio first hooked up with Vito, and we never see the Pentangeli character at all in the flashback scenes.

At the end of GF I, of course, Tessio betrays the family and is whacked as a result. The perfect parallel in GF II would have been for Clemenza, after 40 years of being the caporegieme under Vito and then Michael, finally giving in and betraying the family at the end.

If Castellano wanted too much money I don't know wny they didn't just cast Gazzo as "Pete Clemenza" rather than "Frankie Pentangeli."

Gazzo was an old balding portly Italian guy, he could have played the role of Clemenza, and instead of having about a dozen irritating little plot points messed up as a result of switching the characters, the audience would have taken 10 seconds to think "Huh, OK, Clemenza looks a little different" and then not worried about it after that.

They didn't have any problem recasting the role of Vito Corleone when circumstances made it necessary, why was recasting Clemenza (and later, in GF III, Tom Hagen) considered such a sacrilege?

... or Don Tomassino.

Good point, but needs must at the time I suppose.

I think part of the charm of the Godfather films is the continuation of the same actors playing the same parts. To divert from this might have weaken the films. Yes, Vito was recast, but since it was a long time line between, young Vito and older Vito, the casting was acceptable. With the mention of Clemenza's heart attack, it gave continuation of the story. I think the Pentangelli character fit right into the story line, and was well cast. There was a Philly mob figure that kinda looked like Pentangelli.

Well, I know that, but I think it weakened them somewhat to have key characters (Clemenza in II, Hagen in III) written out without any resolution to their story lines, and then new characters abruptly written into the plot to fill essentially the same roles.

I mean, yeah, the Pentangeli character fit right into the story line - almost as well as if his name was Pete Clemenza.

Ideally, of course, the best thing would have been to bring the original actors back to play the original roles. Considering how much $$$ the series made, maybe, probably, that's what FFC should have done.