I agree with comments made by Joseph in another thread that while the trilogy is for the most part better without the deleted scenes now available on the DVD, there are some notable exceptions.

I suppose that if I were re-editing The Godfather and given the opportunity to retrieve something from the cutting room floor, I would include both of the "Janie" scenes.

Before I explain, let me state that I am part of that small minority of Americans who read Mario Puzo's 1969 novel before seeing the movie. What made the character of Hollywood producer Jack Woltz so despicable to the reader was not his refusal to release Johnny Fontane from his contract (perfectly valid under the laws of all 50 states), but his purchase of an underage girl for sex. I had wondered how the movie would handle such a delicate subject and was hardly surprised that the matter had been dropped entirely in the version that was released to theatres.

When I recently viewed The Godfather DVD bonus disk I was both startled and delighted to discover that Coppola and Puzo had fully intended to associate the evil Woltz character with child molestation. The novel had briefly but in no uncertain terms announced that Woltz had paid off the mother of a little girl to let him have his way with the child. The deleted scenes (Tom witnessing Woltz throwing a birthday party for Janie at the studio; Tom spotting Janie and her mother at the Woltz mansion; Tom confirming to Vito that the rumors about "that girl" are true) subtly but effectively hint at the gross immorality of the movie producer.

My only cavil is that while Puzo's novel indicated that the girl was only 12, the actress who played Janie in the deleted scenes looked like someone old enough to vote but made up to appear about 16. Still, I have already acknowledged that Puzo and Coppola were treading on very sensitive ground here.

Had the scenes been included, I think the popular outrage over the cruelty of decapitating a man's horse and slipping it under his silk sheets would have been tempered by the anger aroused by Woltz's loathsome child abuse. The scenes would also have fit in well with Woltz's monologue to Hagen, delivered in John Marley’s superb craggy voice, about how Fontane had made off with his favorite starlet: "And let me be even more frank, just to show you that I'm not a hard-hearted man, and that it's not all dollars and cents. She was beautiful! She was young! She was innocent! She was the greatest piece of ass I've ever had, and I've had 'em all over the world!"