I’ve always kind of wondered about that. IIRC she seemed to be fairly bright, but then telling him she had an abortion and “killed his son”, and then thinking she was going to leave him and take the kids seemed to be a major brain fart.
Why did she behave so stupidly? Was she mentally still in privileged white WASP female mode?
I think it’s because in those days (60’s by then?), mothers almost always got custody.
She might have deluded herself into thinking the Corleones didn’t have influence with judges.
I agree. Major brain fart telling Michael (a Catholic and a control freak) that she’d aborted the child.
I forget the exact year, but Godfather II was set sometime in the 50s right?
Back then it was almost unheard of for a mother to lose custody for any reason short of actually being in jail. I don’t think it was “privileged white WASP feamle mode” as much as it was “natural order of things.”
I think she was desperate and also hoping that some remaining decency would convince him to relinquish the kids. She was finally out of denial that he’d ever change by this time (though he himself was still in denial).
The book Godfather Returns had an interesting take on this:
She did not have an abortion, but told Michael that strictly because it was the most hurtful possible thing she could tell him at a moment she hated him. In the book Michael has the family doctor (a character from Book 1) killed because he assumed he performed the (in fact fictional) abortion. Michael takes custody but later gives custody to Kay when he realizes their son saw Uncle Fredo (who in the book Anthony adored) being killed and knew his father had given the order.
The only problem is that in Godfather 3(yeah, I know it’s not nearly as good as the first two), you only see Tony and Mary, the kids from the first two movies, so the fake abortion from the book is contridicted by implication.
I don’t see how the plot of Godfather 3 and the appearance of the Corleone children, contradicts anything.
There were always two kids.
I’ve not read the book, but in the movie it’s clear that she says it to hurt Michael. Which it does.
–Cliffy
You’re right. Was it because she wanted a divorce, and she knew she’d need to get him to hate her before he agreed to it? That’s sorta how I remember it.
But if the book had been correct, you’d expect to at least have the third mentioned, wouldn’t you? Rather wierd for two kids to be prominantly mentioned but the third one
who was not aborted, and thus, presumably born
gets the complete shaft by the parents.
As far as I know, Godfather 3, for all it’s faults, doesn’t suffer from Chuck Cumingham symdrome.
HPL, in the movie, Kay originally said she had a miscarriage when Michael was in Cuba. It was only later that she told Michael the truth about the abortion.
–Cliffy
Replaying the scene in my mind, I don’t think that Kay telling Michael about the abortion was either untruthful or calculated. After the Senate hearings, they are in a hotel room when Kay tells Michael she’s leaving and taking the kids. Michael tries to placate her and says that ever since the miscarriage things have been hard on her. The way Diane Keaton plays the scene (again, I’m going from memory here), she is at first incredulous that he hasn’t realized it was an abortion and not a miscarriage. Once she tells him it was an abortion her emotions overtake her and she can’t hold back anymore–this is when it all comes out about how it all has to stop and “I murdered your son.”
This scene sets the stage for what I think is probably the most heart-wrenching moment in any of the films. Kay is visiting the kids at Michael’s when he comes home. Connie is trying to hustle her out the back door but Kay is trying to get her son to give her a kiss. As Kay gets out the door, Michael walks into the kitchen. He very calmly goes to the door and closes it in her face. The sob that Diane Keaton lets out as the door is closed gets me every time.
I don’t see how an abortion would make any sense. Michael allready has a son so she isn’t preventing the family tradition from continuing. Also there is no sign that Kay isn’t a devoted catholic. Finally would there be any way to know the child would be a boy in those days?
I think a miscarrage is the only likely occurence, and then claims of an abortion just to attack Michael.
As memory serves, she’s already visibly pregnant (doesn’t she in fact feel it kick?), so if an abortion it’s not first trimester and if not an abortion it’s more of a stillbirth than a miscarriage.
That was cold. Kay’s expression was so open, maybe even a bit hopeful. I liked Michael up to that point.
I liked Michael also, until Godfather 2. Kay was only a caterwauling shrew, and the whole movie was too, too forced.
The how-can -you-be-so-naive bit, is really more of a non-sequiter. How on earth was he to know that it was an abortion? There were no clues at all, and if Tom Hagen couldn’t know, then why should Michael?
more to the OP: Wouldn’t an abortion in the 50s (felony?) be just begging for a judge to give the kids to the father?
Finally, she was stupid for thinking that she would even live, after telling a high-powered mafioso that she had just murdered his son, and then cackling at him like a mad fishwife at what a dolt he was
I don’t recall Kay “cackling.”
As to why Tom said it was a miscarriage, couple of possibilities:
It was possible, even in the 50s, for a woman of means to get a safe abortion. Although how she could have done so under the watchful eye of the guys who wouldn’t even let her leave the compound to go shopping has always puzzled me. One possibility is that she could have started the process herself, and then needed to be taken to a hospital. Or she could have faked bleeding, or the onset of labor, to the same effect. But what doctor would have knowingly assisted in the induced abortion of The Godfather’s potential son? Would Mike have hunted down the aforementioned and had him whacked?
Kay was stupid to marry a mafiosa. Everything else is consequences from that major stupidity.
In Kay’s defense, being a character in The Godfather, she never got to see The Godfather. This is America’s textbook look into the lives of the mafioso.
Naivete is not precisely stupidity.
Every time I watch the Godfather movies, I am struck by just how frigging clueless Kay comes off after the beginning of the first movie when Michael lets her in on the little secret.
No, naivete is not really stupidity, but there’s naivete before you first run into a situation and then there’s naivete after you’ve run into it 30 times or so. The first time you date some bar skank and she cheats on you, that’s naivete. The 5th time you put up with her cheating on you, that’s willful ignorance, and the 50th time, that’s stupidity.
I’ve thought it through every time I watch those movies, and in my mind, there’s no getting around the fact that Kay was stupid to think she wouldn’t lose the kids. By that time, she damn well should have known better.
As far as I understand, she was angry that Michael didn’t fulfill his promise to legitimize the family and kept endangering himself, her, and their children. She was sick of this and didn’t want to have another child from him, having to live in these unstable violent conditions. She considers him to be naive that he thought it was a miscarriage because it shows how much they fell apart–he doesn’t empathize with her and cannot imagine she’d go for an abortion (even though it was harder back then, a woman with power and money could easily find a good doctor to do it). So eventually she tells him the truth, and this is a big emotional slap for him because he assigns huge importance to family and loves his children. It’s like a reality check for him–it shows him how much his mafia activities ruined the most important things in his life. At this point she is emotional and doesn’t make calculations about the custody–the confrontation with Michael, her husband, is occupying her fully (and I disagree that she was lucky to survive–Michael wouldn’t kill her, not at all, already hitting her was out of his comfort zone), and maybe she hopes that eventually he’d realize that his children would be safer around her, far away from him. It would be indeed rare for a mother to lose custody, especially if the father is a gangster; but then, he is a powerful man and can use this in court. As a woman I actually understand her behavior at this point, she’s angry for the danger he brought upon his family.