I was more or less joking about Franzese. He says in an interview he believes a lot of Livia's lines come from his mother, based on the belief that David Chase used a lot of the FBI's bugs of his father's house as source material. Who knows. It's plausible.
No doubt season 1 was based on the DeCavalcantes. The war with Junior and Tony was practically a reenactment of Majuri's war with Palermo.
"...the successful annihilation of organized crime's subculture in America would rock the 'legitimate' world's foundation, which would ultimately force fundamental social changes and redistributions of wealth and power in this country. Meyer Lansky's dream was to bond the two worlds together so that one could not survive without the other." - Dan E. Moldea
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