In my understanding of Italian, "Don Corleone" or"Don Barzini" are incorrect. Correct usage would be Don Vito or Don Luigi. Also, there are several incidents where it stated that "I pay my men.......", or "they're paid more than their jobs indicate". Who gets "paid" in the life? Am I nit-picking?
Sorry if this has been discussed before.

As far as I've seen, Don is more like calling someone uncle or grandfather,so Don Vito would be correct.

Also,I don't know of any Families that pay their members anything like a weekly or monthly salary. In fact,more often than not,it's the other way around.

Some Capos may require their men to regularly kick up a certain minimum amount ,plus , of course,their cut of any other earnings,

There may be some exceptions,but they would be few and far between.

I agree with Lou, though I read somewhere on this board or the OC board that Don Firstname is a Sicilian tradition, Don Lastname is more American. It seems from what I see on TV or read that currently, the troops call or refer to their bosses by first name or nickname.


No, nobody gets a salary in a Mafia family. As Lou said, the troops earn and they kick upstairs. In the GF novel, when Vito made Tom consigliere, Puzo wrote that Tom would become "a very rich man." Since he had no troops or action on his own, I inferred that the Capos and perhaps others would kick up to him, or that Vito would allocate some of his kicked-upstairs funds to Tom, which you might, by a stretch, call a salary. Puzo also wrote that, after doing a piece of work for Michael, Neri's reward was "a particularly rich bookie joint on the East Side."

At least early on, Neri was termed a "special" who received a salary rather than a living.

My assumption with respect to Rocco's people has been that he had some sort of legitimate front, and that's what was overpaying everybody. So anyone with a no-show job would draw some kind of salary.

BTW: The novel says Barzini's first name was Emilio--Luigi Barzini was a famous Italian author.

My 74 year old brain sometimes gets its wires crossed. I read From Caesar To The Mafia and The Italians years ago. Luigi and Emilio sharing a last name caused a senior moment. Apologies to both.

At the Dons' meeting, Tattaglia whispers something to one of his aides. Nothing happened as a consequence of that whisper. Does anyone know or speculate why that whisper is in that scene?

It was probably just for dramatic effect, Olli. A stretch: Barzini had just "laid down the law": He said that Vito "must let us draw the water from the well." Then the Don of Cleveland, whom the novel tells us was a friend and ally of Vito, started his speil abut how he paid his people extra not to traffick in drugs." Tatt may have been whisperingto his aide that the tide seemed to be turning in his favor...what did he (the aide) think?

Thanks TB.

Also. I just watched again Mafi's Greatest Hits which examines the life of Joey Gallo. In it the murder of Gallo's hitman Gilly is shown as a fish reminiscent of that Brasi scene in the Godfather. It also illustrates the unsuccessful garroting of Gallo's brother in a bar as illustrated in GFII. Surely, Puzo was aware of those real life events and used them as the basis for similar events in his novel. Agree?

Sure, Oli--a direct replay of that famous garrotting, including the long-standing beef that led to it, except that the Rosato brothers were the Gallos as aggressors, and Pentangeli was Profaci this time as the victim. No New Yorker of a certain age will ever forget the photo on p.1 of the Daily News showing Larry Gallo being led away from the Sahara Lounge in Brooklyn with a big red line on his neck.

I'm sure you remember from the novel that Puzo conflated Vito's rise as a replay of the Castellemmarese War of 1930-31, except that Vito's foe was "Maranzalla," and it included Capoe sending help to '"Maranzalla." In real life, Joe Masseria, who was allied with Capone, fought Salvatore Maranzano, who won by having Masseria assassinated whille lunching with supposedly trusted associates--i.e., "died with a mouthful of bread."

I've watched Mafia's Greatest Hits several times including the episode about Joey Gallo. I have one big question about it.

While it does state that he was made by Profaci, there's never a mention of his being a Caporegime. So, I wonder how he was able to put together a crew that was audacious enough to challenge and then abduct the hierarchy of the Profaci family.

The usual Mafia fictions are at work, Oli. Some accounts list Crazy Joe as a "caporegime," but he was clarly subordinate to his elder brother, Larry, who headed the Gallo brothers crew and was their rep at the infamous meeting at Brooklyn's Sahara Lounge, where he was nearly killed.