Like many people The Godfather is a passion of mine. I first saw the movie in college and just had to read the book after I saw it. The movie was and still is a great work of art, but the book is what any mafia fan was looking for. It fills in every question you could have about the movie. My favorite scene is the peace meeting setup by Don Corleone. But as the camera pans down the middle of the table I always ask myself, who are these other men that are only mentioned by name and without any background? So that is what I wish to do, explain the other men at that great boardroom table. I will only give information about these men leading up to this peace meeting.
I start with Carlo Tramonti, a man known as the Whale due to the fact that he owned every business in New Orleans. His main business was gambling, which he took over from the American syndicate of southern small town politicians that ran the operations. He came over from Sicily and settled in Florida, where he started his fight. First he gave the police a bigger share of the gross and killed the rednecks that ran the games with no imagination for growing their business. After this the politicians began to realize this man was willing to lose everything to take over their operations, something that they were not willing to do. This is what made the men at this table so powerful, the fact that at anytime they would put up everything they had, including their self, just for one more inch of power. After this he took over the town of New Orleans, he opened ties withCuba and Batista.
Joseph Zaluchi is the boss of the Detroit area. He is a strong ally of the Godfather and he disapproves of drugs. He is a sophisticated leader whose territory has the lowest level of violence in the nation, with only 2 murders accounted to his empire in the last 3 years. Like most of these men, he was born in Sicily and moved with his family to America for a better life. They moved to Detroit in the early 1900s, where Zaluchi made a good living owning his own business and paying protection money to the Jewish Purple gang. As the years go by he begins to see that the Purple gang is tearing the city apart, so he took matters into his own hands and went to New York for the help of the Godfather, who in turn pulls some strings to get the right people in Zaluchi's corner. In 1930 he prepared for the war to wipe out the Purple gang and by the end of 1931 he was the Don of Detroit. He then built his empire from the sale of liquor supplied by the Godfather through Canada, from which he took the profits and bought a horse track, as well as extending out and taking over most of the gambling in the city. He is the Godfather's closest ally at the meeting. As an ice-breaker he explains that the drug business is something that cannot be avoided, therefore they should seize control of it as best they can.
Frank Falcone is the young Don of Los Angeles where he controls the movie unions and the pipeline that provides prostitutes to the whorehouses of the west. Born and raised in Chicago, he worked in his family’s store until the age of 15 when a stick-up man shot and killed his dad and sister. The police didn't care about the matter so Frank went to Al Capone, who swiftly had the stick-up man and police sergeant killed for the injustice. Frank joined Capone's outfit and the store was sold to a man from Trapani. After Capone is arrested for tax evasion, Frank moves to Los Angeles to start his own organization. His connections spread across the state of California quickly. Frank is not trusted by the other Dons because of his movie connections and his desire to be in "show-biz". Frank is on the Godfathers side at the meeting but he also has ties to Barzini due to his desire to get into the movie unions as well.
Anthony Molinari is the Don of San Francisco and due to the closeness of their operations is a close ally of Frank Falcone. He is also a close ally of the Godfather and is currently helping him by protecting his son Fredo in Las Vegas. Most of his operation was on the waterfront which included dope smuggling ships coming from the eastern part of the world. He also has a hand in smuggling at the Mexican boarder. He has a weakness for fine seafood and owns the finest seafood restaurant on the west coast. It is said that he lost a great amount of money from the restaurant because he charged such low prices for the quality of the food served.
Domenick Panza is the self proclaimed Don of Boston. He is the one Don of the group that didn't have the respect of his peers at the table. He could not control his city and it had a higher murder rate due to many wars for power and freelance activities that he didn't control. He cheated his people and never paid them what they earned. The Godfather had said over the years that Panza even looked like a thief. As a Barzini, he is sure he will make a ton of money from his part in the drug business.
Vincent Forlenza is the Don of Cleveland and was secretly called the Jew, because he surrounded himself with Jewish assistants. He came to the U.S. from Sicily in the early 1900s and earned his rep running the gambling rackets for the big shots. He has control of the largest strictly gambling operation in the United States. He runs an extremely efficient organization that he rules with an iron fist in a velvet political glove. He has some connections with the Barzini family but acts for neither side in the conflict since drugs are of no concern to him.
Anthony Stacci is the weakest of the Dons of the families of New York, but he did control New Jersey and the docks of the west side of Manhattan. He has a firm grip on gambling in New Jersey and was very strong within the Democratic political machine. His fleet of trucks made him a ton of cash because he could overload them and not have to worry about them being stopped or fined due to his political connections. Even better when it came time for the roads he was tearing up to be fixed. His road paving company would get the state contract, business creating business; it doesn't get much better than that. He was too old fashioned to deal in prostitution, but due to his control of the docks there was no way around him being involved in drug trafficking.
Ottilio Cuneo is the Don of upstate New York where he supervised smuggling of immigrants from Canada as well as all upstate gambling. He welded veto power for all state licensing of race tracks and owned one of the big milk companies. It is said he carried candy in his pocket to give out to children he came across during his day. He had never been arrested and his true activities had never been suspected. He served on civic committees and had been voted "Businessman of the Year for the State of New York".
Phillip Tattaglia is the Don of the Tattaglia family and earned most of his money off women. He was a whiner and was held in contempt by the rest of his peers because of the current state of the underworld and his part in making it that way. He controlled most the night clubs in the U.S. and could place talent anywhere he wanted to.
Emilio Barzini is the Don of the Barzini family and at this point is the most up and coming Don in the country. He had is hand in almost everything which included gambling in Brooklyn and Queens, prostitution, strong-arm, he completely controlled Staten Island, sports betting in the Bronx, and of course narcotics. He had interests all over the country that included Cleveland, the west coast, Las Vegas and Reno, Miami Beach and Cuba. It is easy to see then why he is the most respected man in this group.
That is my rundown of the meeting and I hope it intrigues people the way it does me. I hope this post starts a good discussion about the topic and maybe with everyone’s help we can fix it up even better. Thank you all

huh?

Daniel, trust me for saying that most of us, if not all, already know of these details.

Sonny, i kind of figured that, all being fan of the great book and movie. i simply had never seen a essay or list put together anywhere, so i took the time to set down and do it. Would you happen to have anything to add to it that i may have missed?

Welcome, Daniel.

First, when you actually copy something from another source, you have to put it in quotation marks and say where it came from.

People differ a lot on how much authority different sources carry. A lot of people draw a line around the novel and the three movies, because Puzo and Coppola were directly involved with them.

The novel says 5 New York families and ten others participated in the conference. In the movie, Vito mentions that someone is there from Kansas City.

According to the novel, the head of the Bocchicchio family did the preliminary negotiations to set up the meeting, but it's not specifically mentioned if he attended.

Thank you for the advice, i will use it.

Sorry fellas, if i knew this was going to be such a awastge of space i would have never posted it.