"Take your wife, your family and your mistress"

Whose jaw did not drop when Michael mentioned Tom's mistress?
Why would Tom have a mistress. Did FFC just include her to give Tom some vulnerability Michael could use?
Tom, a loyal person who always tried to behave as correct as possible. (The only incorrectness we can observe is that he smiles while Sonny is banging Lucy.)

I believe the original concept was going to be that Tom was intimate with Sonny's widow. That was evidently dropped. I guess it was enough to have Tom be unfaithful and Michael finding out about it and using it against him. It sort of emphasized that Michael had no compunctions about trying to hurt his stepbrother any way he could.

Why would Tom have a mistress? The same as any other man. I always thought that Vito and Michael were atypical among their peers in their faithfulness and disdain for temptations.

As I have maintained ever since joining the Board that Michael took every suitable opportunity to demean Tom. He blamed him for Vito's shooting, Sonny's murder, and the vulnerable position in which the Corleones found themselves during the war.

I view FFC's inclusion of that scene in order to further illustrate Michael's demeaning of Tom.

Yes, to emphasize Michael's cruelty to Tom. Also, note the smug look on Neri's face when Michael is demeaning Tom. Neri was obviously the source of that negative info (as well as the job offer from the House and Hotels). Neri was trying to push past Michael and become his second in command.

Yes, I understand the *function* of the scene. But I don't really buy Tom's unfaithfulness, because we always see him as a super-correct person in any sphere of life.

What's so hard to understand? Priests handle the body and blood of Christ, but yet some of them molested kids.

I know people do not like if someone refer to the book but the mistress thing was in the book. I believe that it had the purpose to remind us that Tom is just a human being too (in fact he was not such a nice guy if you think about what he was doing). But most characters had mistresses in the book , that is one thing that highlighted that the Kay-Michael relationship is very special in that world.

I always thought that Michael was not demeaning Tom but basically telling him that things will get ugly (like Fredo's murder) and he should decide whether it was too much for him or not. Tom decides to assist in all what will come which further proves that a. he understands why Michael is doing the things he does b. that he is not such a sensitive person. Next scene he is convincing Pentageli to commit suicide. - we see this in action.

Really? Cite it.

Oh I am sorry I got the book from the library but I read it 10 times in two weeks, and I was sure it was there.Maybe not. Anyways if not I think it has the same purpose as I mentioned in the movie.

Well, to keep the ball rolling:

Suppose Tom had said, "Yes, I'm going to accept the vice-presidency of the House & Hotels; and yes, I'm going to move my wife, my family and my mistress to Vegas." Do you think Michael would have let him go?

No. Instead Neri would have invited him to go fishing.

Seriously though, I think Michael's enmity toward Tom would have been monumental, but stopped short of murder.

He would let him go, just as he let Clemenza go.

I don't think he would have had Tom killed but I think he might have tried to sabotage it somehow to get Tom to come crawling back.

There's no way he'd let Tom go. Tom knew too much about him. If Tom left his employ, the attorney/client privilege Michael enjoyed with Tom would disappear. FBI already had Tom listed in the Corleone Family org. chart we saw at the Senate hearing. After breaking with Michael, Tom then could have been subpoened and forced to tell all about Michael.

If Tom chose to leave to Michael then, do you think Michael would kill him?

I don't think that's true.

It's my understanding that attorney-client privilege extends permanently, as long as the communication took place while there was an attorney-client relationship.

Also, it doesn't apply to criminal activities, so I don't know how much protection it really afforded Michael and Tom.

Still, it's hard to imagine Michael, at the height of his ruthlessness and paranoia, allowing Tom to go his own way.

True Woltz. The ATT/Client relationship survives ven death unless there is attorney culpability in the underlying crime or some mitgating circumstance such as the Att breaching that confidentiality with a 3rd party.

Oli & LW: that's where I was going when I referred to the FBI chart listing Tom as consigliere, with an FBI #. I'm assuming they regarded him as "house counsel."

Tom was a co-conspirator in Michael's crimes. I do not think the atty-client privilege would attach under the circumstances.

It would be interesting to have Tom indicted, but given immunity. His testimony would have put Michael away for sure. I wonder though if he would have testified.

I doubt it.

Michael would use Tom's wife, the same way he used Pentangeli's brother if Tom was indicted.

What criminal acts did Tom commit with Michael? Wasn't that the whole idea behind removing tom from the rough stuff and limiting his role in the family business?

As far as the mistress bit goes, i think that Michael's main goal here was to let Tom know that his 'sneaking around' does not go unnoticed. And that Tom was not showing respect for his don.

Tom was in on the last minute planning of the killing of the heads of the families in New York and I believe he was in on and witnessed Carlo being killed. He was also aware of just about everything Sonny did when he was interim head of the family.

Michael's "mistress" comment not only showed Tom that Michael (and Neri) were on to his every move, but it also harkened back to a derogatory comment Vito made to Santino years earlier, and also in Tom's presence, "I think you're going soft in the head with all that comedy your playing with that young girl."
Strange that Vito and Mike were so ruthless, yet shared a very strict moral code when it came to extramarital sex.