I've read many articles and interviews about the films, Puzo and Coppola. Many years ago I read or saw that Puzo or Coppola took his inspiration from the tale of a powerful king with 3 sons, each w/ very different personalities (innocent and naive, cunning and ruthless, intelligent and fair, etc) Can anyone provide any more info? Need
for research project. Thanks.

King Lear is the story you speak of, in which a King divides his kingdom between three daughters. This plot is also present in the Akira Kurosawa film Ran.

Mick

Puzo's the Family is another book based on a 'King and three sons' with a daughter. But this was based on the Borgia Family in Rennaisance Italy. He's always been interested in that period of history.

I've been meaning to post this as a separate topic for sometime now, but have never got around to it. Anyone familer with the TV "Dallas"? I notice a ton of simmilaraties between The Godfather and Dallas. I don't think Dallas copied off of The Godfather, it probably just goes back to the king and his three sons archtype.

But you have Jock Ewing, who has built an oil empire out of nothing. He's slightly underhanded, but also has a whole lot of integrity.

The oldest son is JR. He wants nothing more in life than to please his father. He runs Ewing Oil and he is very underhanded. He lacks integrity. He is ruthless and will do anything to keep the business on top.

The middle son is Gary. He's not a very big character in the show because he lives in California. He has a drinking problem and is generally a pretty big failure compared to the rest of his family. He will never have anything to do with the business.

The youngest son is Bobby. He's the apple of his father's eye. He's the son his father thinks is most cut out to run Ewing Oil, but he really wants nothing to do with it. He loves his family, but wants to make his own life. But over time he continues to get sucked into the business and when he does he runs the business better than his brother. He occasionally does things underhanded, which is against his character. And this causes strains in his marriage as the show goes on.

There's also a fourth brother, Ray. He's Jock's son through a previous relationship. He runs the family ranch and does it very well, but it's understood that he'll never have anything to do with the oil business. He's still as loyal to the family as any of the other brothers, and is in a lot of ways closer to Jock than any of the other three boys.

Just an interesting observation I've observed by watching both shows overtime...

Hahahaha thats funny, yeah that has a lot of Godfather simalarities. Id never heard of that before. Oh haha that was a good one!