Before Sonny sent Fredo off to learn the casino business, what exactly was his position? He was obviously shadowing the Don, and he even got to sit in on important meetings ...i.e. he was there for the Sollozzo meeting. Its pure speculation, but it seeems Vito may have known Fredo's limitations but never thought he had it in him to turn traitor on his family, and perhaps he would not have if Sonny had not died and Fredo never had to be angry about being passed over. But I wonder...was he on the muscle end? Was he made?

Fredo's job description :

Take care of some Mickey Mouse night club somewhere.
Pick somebody up at the airport.
Run a bordello.
Open the drapes.
Show the government people a good time in Havana.
Walk in a daze.



But getting back to Godfather 1, I think that Fredo was a made man. As you pointed out he did sit in on some important meetings. And also, as you've pointed out, Vito knew his (Fredo's) limitations. So he may have given him a postion within the family, one that seemed important to Fredo himself, but in truth one that couldn't really have been that important.

One line in GF that always had me wondering just how high up Fredo really was is when Clemenza says to Sonny, after the Vito is shot ; "I asked Freddy if he wants me to get a different bodyguard and he said no."

That line alone tells me that Fredo did have some kind of control over the Capos and the soldiers.

Perhaps that is the reason that Fredo was soooo angry when Mike took over, feeling that he should have been the next in line, but instead was stepped over. He may have really believed that he was doing important stuff while he was under his father's command.


Don Cardi

Very insightful comment, DC. I agree completely.
The novel says Fredo "was still living at home," when, as a bachelor he presumably could have lived outside the mall. I think Vito kept him close, simply as a way of compensating him for his weakness and apparent lack of force--maybe making him feel good.

So, he might nominally have been "responsible" for his father's personal safety. In that role, he might have had sway over Clemenza and Tessio's choice of real bodyguards for his father--and nothing more. While this seems important (and it is), the family had enjoyed 10 years of peace just before Vito was shot. So Vito (mistakenly) might have thought it was a little bone he could throw poor Fredo to make him feel important.

BTW, dt: I don't think your excellent question had been asked before. Take a bow, fella!

- clearly in the book - Sony heads up as the third capo, this is spelled out in the text.

I would think Fredo is pre-assassination attempt a trusted aide-de-camp

A recognized, not that usefull for big tasks, but able to handle small ones, type of guy. Directly helping his father probably pleases him, and he is totally trusted at the time. (he is never a suspect in the attempt on the Don for instance - in the movie his love of Vito is more than played out)

His role post move to Las Vegas? - probably to act as the caretaker of a bunch of Moe Green's old built up operations that will eventually fade away. From the dialog - he clearly runs some local operations and has people.

He probably thinks of himself as an old-school Capo - but Michael is playing at much higher stakes - like CUBA and US politics

When we are introduced to Fredo in GF, he is somewhat inebriated while attempting to kiss Kay. Before that we see him in the don's office for the Bonasera "favor", but in the background. I would venture to say (as most have) that he was viewed by the don as a child who needed protection and one who could not be given a position of responsibility and power. As part of the family he weilded some power or respect, but definetly in a support role. A capo-adjutant or special assistant to the don.

but he carried a gun about (even if he didn't handle it very well) Either he was using it on other people, or keeping it for self defence, but either would suggest that he was in the muscle end of the family.

I think the only time you know Fredo is carrying a gun is when he is at work, at the Genco Olive Oil importers

It should be assumed, given the Don's connections at the time a weapon's beef wouldn't mean much, though the tables get turned when a police captain enters the mix.

Guns are around all the time, and none of the time; the fact that Fredo has a .38 Special when he is driving his father one day shouldn't mean much of anything.

Being "Muscle" means you are a gunner when need be, but not just because you are a book-keeper, runner, brothel manager, pit boss, etc who might have a piece around.

The "Muscle end of the family" are the debt collectors, hit men, bouncers at clubs, guards when you need to go to the mattresses, shake-down men etc

Carrying a gun from time to time doesn't put Fredou in that club.

I like the description of Fredo in the novel, the child that parents pray for - loyal, obedient, loving, good-hearted, and still living at home. Fredo adored his father, and was protective of him. However, he was just not a strong enough man. So, the Don kept him close, kept him around to get the car, etc., but in no way are we given any indication that Fredo ever makes decisions.

At the wedding, Fredo is never asked to come into the Don's office as Sonny was, to learn at his father's knee. I think that's a pretty good indication of his standing in the Family.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by stavka:

Guns are around all the time, and none of the time; the fact that Fredo has a .38 Special when he is driving his father one day shouldn't mean much of anything.


Yet Michael never carries a gun on him until he becomes a "made man". In fact before the hit Clemenza has to show him how to handle a gun. If Freddo had a gun on him before, this would suggest that he was in the muscle end of the family.

Michael never carried a gun on him 'before' the McClusky/Sollozo hit because Michael didn't want anything to do with the family business and obviously was not involved up until Vito was shot. Fredo on the other hand was involved and taken into the family business from the onset.


Don Cardi

Jabroni, there is no evidence, either in the films or in the novel, that Fredo was in the muscle end of the family. He carried a gun while (temporarily) bodyguarding his father, which is a natural thing for a bodyguard to do. Given Fredo's overall weakness of character and his inferior position in the family, having a gun might also have made him feel important or "powerful." But again, there is no indication that he ever used a gun or needed one.
Michael didn't carry a gun. Neither did Vito. They were protected by people who did carry. For that matter, Sonny didn't appear to carry, either. When he heard the loud knocking at his door after learning of his father's shooting, notice that he reached into a drawer for his gun--it wasn't on his person.
As Stavka said, guns are all around. Jabroni, I notice that you are from Budapest. Hungary, like all European countries, makes it very, very difficult for a private citizen to obtain a handgun. America is much different. I own a second home in the state of Arizona, in the American Southwest. The "cowboy" tradition is strong in Arizona. The state has no restrictions on handgun ownership over and above the general Federal requirements. Anyone who buys a handgun can carry it openly. And you can carry a handgun concealed if you take a one-day course on safety and law.

DC's observation that Fredo held some limited sway over Clemenza is a good one, and it is interesting because Paulie's absence was the key to the Don being shot. If Fredo controlled Clemenza's choice of bodyguards (and did so in spite of Clemenza's clear doubts about Paulie ---"What are you a dance judge? Go do your job.") it could have been a sign to outside observers that "the Don .... was slippin'...." and that Sollozzo couldn't have gotten to him ten years ago.

Taking the Corleone characters fully into consideration through all the movies and books about them:

Fredo was not a "made man" in the sense that he never killed anybody (read The Godfather Returns).

He was a Capo on the same line with Sonny, but I think only because he was Vito's son, nothing more. Everyone knew "Fredo was...well Fredo..." So I think he was only there because he was one of the sons.

He'd have a gun just because it's like giving a child your keys to play with. You never expect your kid to start up the car and drive, but if it makes him happy why not?

I don't think Clemenza making the smartass comment about Paulie being a dance judge indicates any doubt on Clemenza's part about Paulie. I think it's merely a line of dialogue insterted simply so that scene had some dialogue. If you wanted to infer that the line meant to show Clemenza's jolly old fat man side, I can understand that, but, IMO, nothing more. If Clemenza had any doubts about Paulie, there is no way he would hold any job within the family, much less a job as important as Vito's bodyguard.

As far as Fredo not being a made man because of anything written in GFR, after having finally read it just so I can see how terrible it actually was, all I can say is .

No I respectfully disagree....it is a plot device called "foreshadowing." At the wedding we see several things about Paulie. 1)He is a clown, not paying attention to his business, who has a friend delivering sandwiches to him at a wedding that has tons of food. 2) He is jealous and greedy looking at Connie's purse and wishing it was someone else's wedding so he could steal it. and 3) The rebuke by Clemenza. Paulie is out of line compolimenting him on his dancing. He is not Clemenza's equal, and Clemenza is there as an invited guest, supposed to have fun, while Paulie is there being a body guard. Clemenza is anything but jolly when he sarcastically tells him he is not a dance judge and that he needs to do his job.

This is followed by Clemenza letting Sonny know after the Don was shot that he had his doubts about Paulie, but that Fredo overruled him.

So we know that Fredo did have some say in who should be a body guartd for Vito --- and even at that Fredo was in over his head.

Indeed Fredo is a mess when the Don is shot. First he can't even handle his own gun, then when the hodds run away all he can do is sit in the gutter screaming PAPA PAPA!
Maybe he blamed himself for that and thought it was one of the reasons Michael passed him over.

P.S. Thanks for the compliment TB...coming from the Master, that is something.

Man - I love this board!

I hadn't ever thought about Clemenza being "overruled" by Fredo on the driver issue! - but you are dead on right.

One point though - it is peacetime - probably not worth butting heads over a simple day to day issue with the Boss's adult son - who's role seems to be designated lackey -

Clemenza probably felt happy this wasn't an issue he dealt with Sonny on (he and Tessio have to share the table with a kid they probably baby-sat for, and now shoots first and probably forgets to ask questions - thinking more about getting laid while he's out of the house)

Means whoever Clemenza would send could be doing his job for Clemenza instead - why not go with Fredo's "Don't worry about it"?

So close to Christmas and all

Yes, complacency had set in strongly prior to the shooting. It's part of what Sollozzo meant when he said, "The Don, rest in peace, was slippin'." And what Clemenza later said to Michael (when he was practicing with the gun): "Somethin' like this has to happen every ten years, to let out the bad blood" (or something to that effect).

This was accompanied by a statement "ten years ago could I have gotten to him?" What I think that means is ten years before if the Don had said "no" to Sollozzo's proposal, the other families would not have given Sollozzo permission to hit him.

...or a combination: the Don getting complacent, and the other families perceiving that his complacency signaled that his time as top dog was over.

It could be complacency but it could also be that the Don's opposition to drugs "so long as your business doesn't interfere with mine" would have operated as a veto (pardon the pun) in years past, but now, with the other families especially Barzini and Tattaglia wanting in there was a feeling they could out muscle the Corleones and have their way. Remember that after the Don was shot, the Corleones really lost the ensuing war. The Don was the one who ultimately gave in, and it was not only because Santino died, but it was also because the price of more blood was too high. The Don admits as much when he realizes it was Barzini all along, because he refers to the fact that they "outfought Santino." Later Moe Green mistakenly confirms this "conventional wisdom" when he thinks he can push Michael around by telling him "the Corleone family don't have that kind of muscle any more," and "You're being run out of New York by the other families," and "I talk to Barzini, I can make the deal with him and still keep my hotel."

Moe's statement has always puzzled me - it sort of implies that he knows he's going to be muscled out or in-on by somebody - otherwise, why must he talk to Barzini about "the deal" if he refuses Michael?

For protection alone, maybe - but why would Barzini rekindle a war for the sake of Moe Green?

I doubt the answer is that Moe knows about the future Barzini move against the Corleone's when the Don dies

Sollozzo probably was telling the truth when he said, "The Tattaglias are behind me with all their people...the other families will go along with anything to prevent a war." I think what happened was that the other Dons wouldn't move against Vito on their own. But when Sollozzo and Tattaglia came along and said they was willing to take the risk (and perhaps let the other families in on the drugs trade), the others thought they had nothing to lose.
Stavka, Moe said he could make a deal with Barzini "and still keep my hotel," whereas Michael wanted to buy him out. His statement, "I talk to Barzini" (Moe's emphasis), I think was designed to make Michael believe that he had clout.

I think Moe's problem was cash flow.

I don't think he was necessarily worried about being "muscled out".

Don't forget -- altho we never see Hyman Roth in the first film, I think we may assume that given who the Moe Greene character was clearly modeled after, he had a powerful mentor in the backround who wasn't going to let his pal Moe get muscled.

"Your casino loses money" Michael tells Moe Greene.

My guess is that Michael thought that Moe was skimming a bit too much, hence his very sarcastic comment to Moe: "You're unlucky".

If there's one thing that's practically an impossibility, it's the proposition that over the long haul a casino can lose money.

But apparently - altho it was probably Moe's greed in skimming more off the top than the business could support - Moe and his casino had a cash flow problem, and needed an infusion of money to keep operating.

So he talks to Barzini.

(BTW, I always loved the way Moe pronounces the word "talked".

Almost like "tocked" -- like with a Boston accent. Certainly not "tawked", the way a New Yawka would say it.)

I always felt that this statement referred specifically to the assassination attempt, and nothing else.

Ten years ago the families were at war, and probably not getting involved in any joint ventures.

With a war on, Don Corleone was certainly heavily guarded at all times (a la Sonny when he was at war), and an attempt on his life would have been difficult.

Similarly, I always thought that by saying that the don was slippin, Sollozzo was implying that Vito would not have made himself so vulnerable as to going out with only Fredo to protect him ten years earlier.

Was it careless of Vito to rely only on Fredo? I always envisioned Vito having this in the back of his mind when telling Michael in the garden that men can never be careless.

Probably this was Puzo/FFC cribbing from real life:

Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel lost a pile of money on opening night, December 26, 1946, probably due to the newness of his cropiers and dealers. The hotel was too new for Siegel to be skimming money from the casino. But, as you know, the original estimate of the hotel's cost--$1 million--had soard to more than $5 million before it opened. Siegel's NY mob associates suspected that he and/or his mistress, Virginia Hill, had skimmed the construction money. What's more, the Flamingo's sleeping rooms hadn't been finished by opening night. So, Siegel closed the Flamingo after opening night and sold thousands of points in the hotel to unwary investors--another form of "skimming" if you define the term loosely. That's what led to his demise the following June.

I thought Moe's point was that everyone knew he was losing money by skimming or whatever. The Corleones wanted to buy him out completely as a part of Michael's plan to move the family to Nevada. Barzini, on the other hand would have bailed Moe out and arranged some kind of cut (of course if Barzini then caught Moe skimming, he may have ended up with a bullet in his eye one way or another).

P.S. I also have always liked the way he said "I TOLK to Barzini." I think he was trying to impress Michael, or maybe even intimidate him.

I don't know where and when the idea of skimming casinos originated, but it seems likelt that Siegal and the Mob had that in mind when they supported the Flamingo. Now, we have to make license for fact v. fiction. It's probably true trhat Bugsy and Hill did skim some of the construction money since the casino itself was not earning at the time. But, in the GF the timeline is accelerated so that Moe may be skimming from a casino that has been operating awhile.