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…
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.
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…)
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):
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.
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 there is now a bust of Bugsy Siegel on the grounds of The Flamingo.
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 :).
And Johnny Ola was based on Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo. Meyer Lansky’s real life Sicilian messenger boy.
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
Thanks. I was not aware of that.
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.
and lucy mancini was based on siegels bag girl virginia hill who had her name on several casinos
Very interesting read. Thanks for posting the link.
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, 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.
I like how they used Troy Donahue’s real name, Merle, as his character’s name.