I just finished reading The Godfather. A big subplot, mercifully not in the movie, featured Lucy, the Bridesmaid Sonny banged at his sisters wedding. To put it bluntly, Lucy has an enormous vagina that was only satisfied by Sonny’s massive tool. She later gets a corrective surgery by her abortionist boyfriend’s surgeon buddy. (I forget the specifics, I think the muscles in her pelvis were weakened, or something to that effect.) He tightened her up, everyone lives happily ever after.
This was a major “WTF?” subplot, to say the least. The condition and procedure are described in explicit detail, and really seem to clash with the rest of the book.
Has anyone ever questioned Puzo about this odd subplot? Was this a condition he was trying to raise awareness of? Lucy’s boyfriend gives her a mini-lecture about how this is a common condition, and thousands of women are living in misery because they are to embarassed to discuss it with their doctor. Is this a real condition, or a figment of Puzo’s imagination?
I never thought to question it before. But I thought Puzo was relating a real problem that one of Sinatra’s wives/Girl Friends had a problem with and was corrected. Now I am not so sure and I eagerly await more knowledgeable answers.
I thought The Godfather was just a huge pulp novel, full of far too many characters and subplots. Coppola made a wise choice in which ones to include in the movies. The subplot with Lucy was one of those irrelevant, meandering subplots.
I read the The Godfather several years ago and the part you are talking about puzzled me as well. If I remember it 50 or 100 pages long and had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the book. I still can’t figure out why Puzo’s editors didn’t have him take it out.
I think it had to have been a “to raise awareness” thing. Maybe Mrs. Puzo or a sister-in-law or somebody had the problem and its correction changed their life so much that he had to get the word out. I remember ti was really bizarre when I was reading it because you kept thinking it would somehow work into the rest of the plot, but nope.
Sonny was long dead by the time of her surgery and Lucy was basically for no apparent reason a retainer in Las Vegas. Since Don Vito & Mama Corleone were both old school Sicilians who were actually very prudish on sex (so was Michael really- at least he never fooled around while married) and Sonny had a bunch of kids with his wife I can’t even think of why they’d continue to pay for the support of their dead son’s mistress. Perhaps this is why they made her Vincent’s mom in III, because really only a Corleone bastard would really justify her remaining in the family circles (even outer circles).
Something I didn’t understand from III relating to Vincent was why they made Lucy’s son at all other than for Joey Zaza’s “bastardo!” baiting of him. Sonny had several sons with his wife who would have been the same age- why not just make it one of them? That would probably have embarassed Michael more- a son from a branch of the family that he honestly thought was totally legit (his sister marrying into the rich socially prominent WASP family from II [though the novel last year had a different take on that marriage] and the kids all breathing clean mountain air and the like) and yet the family blood is so cursed that his nephew passes up a chance to be educated, a lawyer or doctor or whatever, to return to the old neighborhood and be a hood.
Or, make the nephew one of Connie’s sons, the baby from the first movie’s baptism even, who Michael has raised like a son and who loves his uncle dearly, but also has the blood of Sonny in his veins and knows that Michael killed his real father.