I dunno, LW. My wife grew up in Massapequa, and I'd beg to differ .

Maybe it doesn't apply to women .

...and if they did, Italian groups (like the Italian-American Civil Rights League, headed by Joe Columbo) lobbied to remove references to "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra." Didn't matter in either case: We knew Woltz was a pederast without the deleted scene (he told Tom that the starlet Johnny stole from him was "...young, beautiful, innocent, the greatest piece of ass I ever had..."). And we knew the Corleones were an Italian organized crime family without the use of "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra."

The Last Woltz,

I'll send my reply to you via pm....it's pretty long and goes off on points that become tangents (to this thread and this board)..

I'd be interested to read your response to it though....

look for it tomorrow....
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Turnbull

I disagree that anything in the film suggests what Woltz REALLY is....

if anything, he's depicted similarly to the book description of one of the heads of the NY families..an old man who was a skirt chaser, a dandy...


The fact that the actress in question ran off with Johnny suggests that she is of legal age....a starlet. Chasing young beautiful women is ONE thing.....people might look down on it because of Woltz' age, but what Woltz is actually about isn't hinted at in the film, one bit.




In the doc. that I saw about the protests.....they aired a clip of Woltz calling Tom's (unseen boss) EVERY Italian ethnic slur in the book...literally every single one..BUT...he never said "mafia"

The doc. suggested that the major beef that Columbo and company had , that the words "cosa nostra" and "mafia" not appear in the film, was unfounded because neither word was ever in the script anyway.

If I'm correct the words were in the script, but only one or two times so it didn't matter at all.

straight from the producer's mouth


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3t6hqbEvPI&feature=related

Oh Brando was a giant hypocrite. Also, didn't it end up coming out that the native American woman who accepted the Oscar on his behalf wasn't actually native American? Or am I mistaken?



Turnbull,

Were the words "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" omitted from the film because of pre assure from Italian groups, or was that done as a stylistic choice by Puzo and Coppolla? That may seem like an amateaurish question, I had just always assumed those words had been excluded as 'style' choice.

I agree. Wolftz talking aobut she was young only suggested she was 18, 19 maybe 20, that kind of young. It did not suggest she was a CHILD.
In that instance, we should be cheering the Corleones. A horse's head is the least of what Wolftz deserved. He deserved to get something else cut off. Hey, maybe that was the symbolism of the horse head cut off. You bastando, you f*** children and you f***** over my friend. Next time. it won't be your horse's head cut off.
Hmmm, never looked at it that way.

That's like what my mother (who, as I said before, is an animal lover) suggested they could have done instead of the horse's head--drug Woltz and cut off one of his testicles. I think that also would have worked. Waking up and realizing that one of those was missing would be at least as horrifying as finding a horse's head in your bed. And Woltz--a man who "had 'em all over the world"--certainly wouldn't want to lose the other one (as well as another vital organ), that's for sure!

If I remember correctly, in the novel it is said when Tom Hagen saw that girl and her mother at Woltz' studio he thought she was 12 years old.

From p. 119 of Harlan Lebo's definitive "The Godfather Legacy":

On Friday, March 19, flanked by Anthony Columbo and Nat Marcone [of the Italian-American Civil Rights League] at a paress conference, [Al] Ruddy [Godfather producer] announced the deal: in exchange for League cooperation in the making of The Godfather, Ruddy assured Colombo that the words "Mafia" and "La Cosa Nostra" would not be spoken in The Godfather. In addition, the proceeds from the film's world premier would be donated to the League's hospital fund.

To add to Turnbull's answer (above).... Joe Columbo, head of the NY Family with the same last name, led an anti-defamation league fighting Italians being stereotyped as criminals, etc. in the media. Whether he really gave a damn about this is arguable but he sure liked taking the money that the league was raising.

The rest of the NY Families didn't like the fact that the League was getting a lot of publicity (they're not in a public relations minded business ) and Columbo was warned to "cool it" by Carlo Gambino (then the BIG boss of the Mob). Columbo ignored the warning (stupidly) and on the day that "The Godfather" was filming the love scenes between Mike and Kay, Columbo was shot (one half mile away from the movie scene) at a rally for the League. It's been generally acknowledged that Carlo Gambino was behind the shooting.

What's more, Ruddy got more from the Colombos than he gave by eliminating "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra." The Colombos made union problems disappear (to use Woltz's phrase), gave cooperation on the streets--and let James Caan hang around with some of their top guys (reportedly Carmine Persico) to study their ways. Caan was so thick with the mob guys that the FBI opened a file on him.

And it is also rumored that real mobsters (allegedly from the Colombos) were used as extras at the wedding sequence.

The youtube clip that I put up earlier is from a BBC (or british tv) documentary called "The Godfather and the Mob"...




Reveals all the controversy surrounding the filming of the GF.

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As an aside, I've never gotten upset about the language in any gangster film because who knows what kind of language ANY body uses behind closed doors, and stories center around killers and criminals ..and if you can take lives, being PC is the very last thing you are thinking about.

It's true to the characters to have them using blunt language, profanity and ethnic slurs about other groups.

Because of the success of (Italian) gangster films and the colorful language/dialogue, there exists groups of people out there who have become a bit too familiar and comfortable using ethnic slurs about Italians. Most people sit down, enjoy the film and that's it. Then there's the minority of arrogant people who hear a phrase or term in a film and start thinking it's okay to repeat it.
(Same arrogant people hear Chris Rock, or other comedians..and some violent hip hop songs and start thinking it's appropriate to use certain words themselves).

Look at the clip of the producer that I posted...youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3t6hqbEvPI&feature=related

it's a script that he helped draft(adapt)..but look at how easily the slurs flow from his lips as he's repeating Woltz' lines to Tom.
Could you imagine a situation where a non jewish producer/writer/director would be that comfortable in an interview quoting passages from a script that had a stream of jewish slurs?

I've seen that documentary, it's pretty interesting. But for more detailed information you should read the books The Godfather Legacy and The Godfather book.

thanks SB,


I've heard stories that names were changed but that Vito's godson and a few other characters in the book were based on actual people.

You think Woltz and his perversions were based on a real life studio head and perhaps that's why a certain segment of the story was deleted from the film?


Allegedly the "child" is based on a hollywood legend who had a sicko stage mother.


The first three times I read the GF, this part of the story went over my head..I thought that there must be some kind of slang that I just didn't understand. It was unthinkable that I read what I actually thought I read.

Of course a lot of ancient Hollywood history is shrouded in lies, self-serving memoirs, gossip, censored storylines and the fact that most of the old timers are all gone.

But I've read that Rita Hayworth and Clara Bow were both molested by their fathers. Howard Hughes had just about every famous female movie star of his time and was not averse to underage girls (or boys supposedly). The same thing was true, only more so of Errol Flynn, who quite deliberately would look for underage girls and was acquitted of statutory rape in one trial. Chaplin had an "affair" with a 14 yr old actress (Mildred Harris) who he met at a Hollywood party. She had appeared almost nude in the movie Intolerance. This was encouraged by the girl's mother.
They married when Mildred became pregnant. His later wife, Lillita McMurray he seduced when she was 15 and under threat of a paternity suit decided to marry her. And there were plenty more such scandals, rumors and stories.

Surely Puzo would have been aware of these sorts of stories. But I don't think Woltz's proclivities were based on any mogul/actor in particular. You start looking at the backgrounds of a lot of those people and you'll find some disturbing things. But like I said, most of them are long dead. I'm sure the current crop of Hollywood actors, directors, producers and moguls are ever so much better behaved...

Sure. Just look at Charlie Sheen.