# The Godfather (I & II): Why are they so well regarded? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 14, 2018, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318 "2018-09-14T02:09:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/81 "2018-09-18T17:38:51Z")
How did Pentangeli betray Michael? Why did Hyman Roth try to have Michael killed – if Michael was the aggrieved party, not Roth? Maybe I should spin off a new thread… ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/82 "2018-09-18T18:09:57Z")
> [@jsc1953](#): > > How did Pentangeli betray Michael? Turned state’s evidence after he mistakenly believed that Michael had a hit put on him. Michael told him to make peace with the Rosato brothers and they tried to kill him at a meet. It is here where the confused actor Danny Aiello( playing Tony Rosato )ad-libbed the line ‘Michael Corleone says hello’ which Coppola left in to make the source of Pentangeli’s disaffection a little more clear. > [@](#): > > Why did Hyman Roth try to have Michael killed Michael was (cordially )moving in on Roth/Ola’s rackets in Havana and it is implied Roth held a long-running and sublimated grudge over the murder of Moe Green. I disagree with **JohnT** about Roth’s motivations - Roth firmly believed that Batista would triumph, it was Michael who was concerned on that front. No, Roth felt he was being pressured to retire( Michael: “He thinks he is going to live forever!” )and despises Michael for killing his childhood friend. Plus Johnny Ola and associates( the Rosato brothers for example )want Michael’s NY territories and to exclude him from the Cuban pie. Money mostly, plus a heaping spoonful of resentment and dislike. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/83 "2018-09-18T19:39:48Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Turned state’s evidence after he mistakenly believed that Michael had a hit put on him. Michael told him to make peace with the Rosato brothers and they tried to kill him at a meet. It is here where the confused actor Danny Aiello( playing Tony Rosato )ad-libbed the line ‘Michael Corleone says hello’ which Coppola left in to make the source of Pentangeli’s disaffection a little more clear. Not quite clear enough, apparently. 🙂 But I’m now armed with enough knowledge to see it again! Was the hit on Pentangeli a false-flag operation? Wound but not kill him, leave the message from Michael, and then wait for Frankie P to turn on Michael? (This is how I got confused…) ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/84 "2018-09-18T19:52:47Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Turned state’s evidence after he mistakenly believed that Michael had a hit put on him. Michael told him to make peace with the Rosato brothers and they tried to kill him at a meet. It is here where the confused actor Danny Aiello( playing Tony Rosato )ad-libbed the line ‘Michael Corleone says hello’ which Coppola left in to make the source of Pentangeli’s disaffection a little more clear. > > Michael was (cordially )moving in on Roth/Ola’s rackets in Havana and it is implied Roth held a long-running and sublimated grudge over the murder of Moe Green. I disagree with **JohnT** about Roth’s motivations - Roth firmly believed that Batista would triumph, it was Michael who was concerned on that front. > > No, Roth felt he was being pressured to retire( Michael: “He thinks he is going to live forever!” )and despises Michael for killing his childhood friend. Plus Johnny Ola and associates( the Rosato brothers for example )want Michael’s NY territories and to exclude him from the Cuban pie. Money mostly, plus a heaping spoonful of resentment and dislike. By the time Michael went to Havana, it was readily apparent to anybody in the know that Batista was losing - that’s one of the reasons, imho, that Roth gave Michael such a short deadline to come up with the $2 million. I agree with the rest of your take, however (with the exception that it wasn’t implied Roth was pissed about Moe Greene - Roth stated he was pissed about Moe Greene, but rationalized his death because that’s the risks you take in this business he was in): > [@](#): > > There was this kid I grew up with; he was younger than me. Sorta looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the street. Things were good, we made the most of it. During Prohibition, we ran molasses into Canada… made a fortune, your father, too. As much as anyone, I loved him and trusted him. Later on he had an idea to build a city out of a desert stop-over for GI’s on the way to the West Coast. That kid’s name was Moe Greene, and the city he invented was Las Vegas. > > This was a great man, a man of vision and guts. And there isn’t even a plaque, or a signpost or a statue of him in that town! Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn’t angry; I knew Moe, I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we’ve chosen; I didn’t ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business! ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/85 "2018-09-18T19:58:33Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > They should have just recast and pretended the new actor was Clemenza and moved on. Um, maybe. But they certainly couldn’t do that with Duvall and _GF3_. Which left a gaping hole. Look actors, when you sign on to a film you’re gonna keep doing that role no matter how long it takes. Do you get that, Tobey Maguire? 😃 I also don’t think Roth thought the Cuban Revolution was going to succeed. It was Michael who was the first to realize the seriousness of the situation when he saw the incident with the police and the kid with a grenade. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/86 "2018-09-18T20:50:01Z")
Hyman Roth was based on Meyer Lansky, and Moe Greene on his boyhood pal Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. In actual fact, Lansky was celebrating his success with his casinos in Havana on the New Years Eve before Batista fled. Lansky fled himself a week later just before Castro entered the city, and lost millions when the new regime nationalized the casinos. Siegel was known as “the man who invented Las Vegas.” He was rubbed out at his home in Beverly Hills rather than in Las Vegas, for reasons that remain speculative. Some accounts say Lansky agreed to the hit. One of the bullets went through Siegel’s eye, though the gunman was just spraying bullets rather than aiming for it. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2018, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/87 "2018-09-18T22:22:46Z")
And there is now a bust of Bugsy Siegel on the grounds of The Flamingo. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2018, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/88 "2018-09-19T02:04:11Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > By the time Michael went to Havana, it was readily apparent to anybody in the know that Batista was losing - that’s one of the reasons, imho, that Roth gave Michael such a short deadline to come up with the $2 million) I don’t think I agree, he was acting dismissive of the rebel’s chance. Which could have been play-acting , I suppose. But as **Colibri** noted the real Lansky seems to have been caught by surprise. But I’ll grant you could make a plausible argument in either direction :). ---
**Author:** ![Doyle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doyle/32/439_2.png) [@Doyle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doyle)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/89 "2018-10-01T14:13:47Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Hyman Roth was based on Meyer Lansky, and Moe Greene on his boyhood pal Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. In actual fact, Lansky was celebrating his success with his casinos in Havana on the New Years Eve before Batista fled. Lansky fled himself a week later just before Castro entered the city, and lost millions when the new regime nationalized the casinos. > > Siegel was known as “the man who invented Las Vegas.” He was rubbed out at his home in Beverly Hills rather than in Las Vegas, for reasons that remain speculative. Some accounts say Lansky agreed to the hit. One of the bullets went through Siegel’s eye, though the gunman was just spraying bullets rather than aiming for it. And Johnny Ola was based on Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo. Meyer Lansky’s real life Sicilian messenger boy. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/90 "2018-10-01T14:57:04Z")
The whole thing is full of real-life analogues. In the meeting in Havana, the solid-gold phone is given by a representative of the fictional version of ITT and there’s a representative of the fictional version of the United Fruit Company. The story of how Don Vito got the bandleader to release Johnny Fontaine from his contract may be referring to an event early in Frank Sinatra’s career. And in the third movie, the pope’s death was a fictionalized version of the death of John Paul I while the Vatican Bank shown in the film was based on a scandal involving the Banco Ambrosiano. ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/91 "2018-10-01T15:45:35Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > The whole thing is full of real-life analogues. In the meeting in Havana, the solid-gold phone is given by a representative of the fictional version of ITT and there’s a representative of the fictional version of the United Fruit Company. The story of how Don Vito got the bandleader to release Johnny Fontaine from his contract may be referring to an event early in Frank Sinatra’s career. And in the third movie, the pope’s death was a fictionalized version of the death of John Paul I while the Vatican Bank shown in the film was based on a scandal involving the Banco Ambrosiano. One some might not know about: “That ain’t no fake. That’s real. That’s why they call him Superman.” - Fredo > **[Superman of Havana](https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2015/superman-of-havana/)** > > He was famous beyond Cuba’s shores for his mighty endowment, a symbol of an era of sex and sin. But when the revolution came, he disappeared ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/92 "2018-10-01T16:07:38Z")
Thanks. I was not aware of that. ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/93 "2018-10-01T16:08:57Z")
for those that don’t know John Cazale was only in 6 full length movies and all 6 were nominated for Best picture Oscar. Godfather 1 and 2 and the Deer hunter won best picture. ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/94 "2018-10-01T18:38:32Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Hyman Roth was based on Meyer Lansky, and Moe Greene on his boyhood pal Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. In actual fact, Lansky was celebrating his success with his casinos in Havana on the New Years Eve before Batista fled. Lansky fled himself a week later just before Castro entered the city, and lost millions when the new regime nationalized the casinos. > > Siegel was known as “the man who invented Las Vegas.” He was rubbed out at his home in Beverly Hills rather than in Las Vegas, for reasons that remain speculative. Some accounts say Lansky agreed to the hit. One of the bullets went through Siegel’s eye, though the gunman was just spraying bullets rather than aiming for it. and lucy mancini was based on siegels bag girl virginia hill who had her name on several casinos ---
**Author:** ![Rough\_Draft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@Rough\_Draft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rough_Draft)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2018, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/95 "2018-10-01T20:23:50Z")
> [@x-ray\_vision](#): > > One some might not know about: > > “That ain’t no fake. That’s real. That’s why they call him Superman.” - Fredo > > [Superman of Havana](https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2015/superman-of-havana/) Very interesting read. Thanks for posting the link. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/96 "2018-10-02T13:51:24Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > The story of how Don Vito got the bandleader to release Johnny Fontaine from his contract may be referring to an event early in Frank Sinatra’s career While Sinatra was clearly the main basis for Fontaine, elements from other singers’ lives were used by Puzo. Tony Bennett, for example. Even more interesting is that [Puzo also used Al Martino](http://godfather.wikia.com/wiki/Johnny_Fontane), who later appeared in _The Godfather_ as Johnny Fontaine! ---
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/97 "2018-10-02T14:20:48Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Even more interesting is that [Puzo also used Al Martino](http://godfather.wikia.com/wiki/Johnny_Fontane), who later appeared in _The Godfather_ as Johnny Fontaine! That Godfather wiki gets a lot of things wrong. I’m wary of this particular claim as the reasons they give for it don’t make much sense. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2018, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318/98 "2018-10-02T14:38:22Z")
I like how they used Troy Donahue’s real name, Merle, as his character’s name. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-godfather-i-ii-why-are-they-so-well-regarded/821318.md?page=4)