Clemenza death

I tend to come on here for the Soprano's & Godfather sections as this one is better than some of the other boards. I'm watching the GF II for the umpteenth time during this AMC marathon. And I just noticed that when mentioning Clemenza's passing, Pentangli points to his arm like how guys did during the late 70's through 90's to insinuate someone had a drug problem.

Is he implying Clemenza died from an overdose of something? Perhaps he did it to himself by getting hooked once the drugs became prevalent in NY after the sitdown in the first movie. Or perhaps someone injected something into Clemenza via his food or something else. I know these films are big on subtle hints, so I thought that part was kind of interesting, it's really my first time noticing it, and Pentangli doesn't do it again throughout the whole movie, so it isn't something that was common for his character.

He's pointing to the black armband.

Pentangli is pointing to the black armband, which is a sign of mourning for Clemenza. They wrote Clemenza off cause the actor who played Clemenza was doing Honor Thy Father at the time, and did not have time to take part in GF2.

Richard Castellano, who played Clemenza, wanted more money than Paramount was willing to pay. He also wanted his girlfriend in the movie, and script control.

I think he also said he didn't want to play a rat..... as the Frankie Pentangeli role was similar to the one they had for Clemenza...testifying at the hearing and all..

Yea you guys are right, I hadn't noticed the armband until later in the scene where he confronts Michael in his office in regards to the Rosato brothers.

Something I was wondering about though was what Cicci was implying when he said, "That was no heart attack." Was he implying that Clemenza was poisoned or something?

I don't know if it was poison. But Cicci definitely implied that Clemenza was the victim of foul play.

The general view is that the Rosattos ran him ragged with their goings on, and all the stress gave him a fatal heart attack. There's a part in the second draft of the GF2 script where Frankie says something to the Rosatos about it, and he says this to Michael in the boathouse:





Of course, it could have also been a tongue-in-cheek reference to the reason Clemenza wasn't in the movie as well. It wasn't a heart attack because it was a write-out!