I keep trying to count them in my head...and i just got to start reading the book so i'm not up to that part but in the movie i remember there are only four introduced and four killed in the baptism sequence: Strachi, Cuneo, Barzini and Tattaglia. Who's the Fifth?

Sorry about the ignorance...

It's highly debated, but the Corleone family is (I think) supposed to be the 5th. They're just referred to as the "Five Families" even by their own members, so people speculate there's another one.

Incidently, though, the novel mentions a sixth family in the chapters that talk about Vito's rise to power ("There were five or six families too powerful to eliminate"). This family isn't named and all it really says is that Luca Brasi assassinated the head of the family, and Vito made peace with them later on.

1 Corleone
2 Barzini
3 Tattaglia
4 Cunio
5 Stracci
Thats how I see it but they have a who debate on it at Geoff\'s Godfather webpage

Just go to part B of the page, then to "For Scholars Only" then it will have the 5/6 families' discussion.

Here's the most recent, and I think the best, discussion of this question.

http://www.thegodfathertrilogy.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=003855

Let us know what you new guys think

The sixth family is the Plawrence Mob.

There is a sixth family mentioned in the book, name and all. They were at one time the most ruthless family in Sicily, but they emigrated to America. The name has slipped my mind, but they were quickly removed from power becuase of their stupidity and barbaric nature. I know that the Corleones used them to get Mike back to America, by convincing the boss to make one of his sons who was in prison confess to the murders of Sollozzo and McKluskey. Also, this family offers up hostages in times of trouble, i.e. when Michael was meeting with Sollozzo and McKluskey, they offered the Corleone family one of their men as a hostage, with the understanding that if Michael didn't come back safe and sound, their man would die, and it would be big trouble for Sollozzo. But I cannot think of the name for the life of me. I don't know if Puzo would refer to them as the elusive "6th Family," but it is a possibility.

You're thinking of the Bocchicchio clan.

YES! They're the ones!

They werent a "Mob Family" so to speak. They were a clan of negotiators who, if one of them was killed in a bad negotiation deal, would get revenge, but they werent a mob family.

The five were: Corleone, Barzini, Tattaglia, Cuneo and Stracci.

Maybe the metioned another family in the novel but that was (I thought) before the Castellemares-War.

In your opinion That's the five who were named. The sixth wasn't. In my opinion. You should read the discussion in the link provided above if you haven't already.

From the novel:

"The representatives of the Five Families of New York were the last to arrive and Tom Hagen was struck by how much more imposing, impressive, these five men were than the out-of-towners, the hicks."

Clearly, Don C. had already arrived, and was not one of the five.

And the physical description...

"The five New York Dons were in the old Sicilian tradition, they were 'men with belly' meaning, figuratively, power and courage; and literally, physical flesh, as if the two went together.... The five New York Dons were stout, corpulent men with massive leonine heads, features on a large scale, fleshy imperial noses, thick mouths, heavy folded cheeks. They were not too well tailored or barbered; they had the look of no-nonsense busy men without vanity.

Except for the cheeks, he's not describing Vito.

Before the meeting with Sollozzo Tom tells about Sollozzo's past and things like that. Vito asks tom opion and he said: "Well, I say yes. There's more money in narcotics than anything else. If we don't get into it, somebody else will, maybe one of the five families maybe all of them. Whit the money they earn they can buy more police and political power. Than they come after us."

Vito Corleone also said on the meeting after the dead of Sonny and Appolonia: "Don Barzini, i want to thank you for helping me organise this meeting, and also the other heads of the five familys from New York and New Jersey. Carmine Cuneo from the Bronx, and from Brooklyn Philip Tattaglia, and from Staten Island we have whit us Victor Strachi."(Strachi looks a bit like Don Altobello).

It all very confusing...

The Five Families include the Corleones. A sixth wasn't mentioned because it don't really exist

It don't? So how do you explain this, from the book?:

"The representatives of the Five Families of New York were the last to arrive and Tom Hagen was struck by how much more imposing, impressive, these five men were than the out-of-towners, the hicks."

There are several places (including those cited by plawrence and others), in both the novel and the film, in which "five families" seem to be mentioned in addition to the Corleones. This gives the impression that there are actually six families. You can make a good case for six families based on those mentions. But only five--Corleone, Barzini, Tattaglia, Stracci and Cuneo--are ever named. In my opinion, "the Five Families" is a kind of generic reference to the five that are named--even when one of the Corleones says "the Five Families," he's referring to the four plus the Corleones. Another possible explanation is sloppy writing, of which the novel has plenty.

Exactly right, turnbull.

Plawrence? You want me to explain? Listen, they only mentioned four. Does that help? Does that tell ya there is a mistake?

Yeah, there was a mistake all right. The mistake, though, was the one Puzo made in not naming the sixth family.

One way or another, this discussion is really all about sloppy writing, because there are only two possibilities.

Either Puzo intended that there be 5 families in addition to the Corleones and, sloppily failed to name the fifth.

OR

He intended the five familes to include the Corleones, and sloppily wrote passages such as the one cited above (and others), which strongly implied that there were six families in total.

Either way, it's a mistake by Puzo. I think everyone would, or should, agree with that.

So now the question becomes "Which is more likely to be a mistake"?

Since there were a number of instances in the novel in which Puzo implies that there is a 6th family, and only one occasion where he has the opportunity to name it and doesn't, I have to believe that the weight of the evidence is on my side.

Perhaps his description of the 6th family Don was weak, and edited from the novel. In the book, Michael does not kill the heads of all the other families, so perhaps it was felt that naming them all was unnecessary.

My theory is that since there actually were (and are) five NY families, by including the Corleones as one of them, Puzo felt that he would be inviting too much comparison and speculation as to which of the five the Corleone family was meant to represent. Since the Corleones were the main characters, I believe that would have been the case. No one would have cared, for example, who Cuneo or Stracci was supposed to be modeled after, but everyone would have been trying to figure out which family head Don Corleone was supposed to be.

I believe Puzo simply erred in not naming the sixth family the one time he had the opportunity to do so.

Interesting theory, plawrence! But Puzo didn't hesitate to invite the closest possible comparison of Johnny Fontaine with Frank Sinatra, and Moe Green with Bugsy Siegel (and a notoriously violent but unnamed Don with Albert Anastasia).
I believe sloppy writing is the villain.

That's exactly why the Corleones couldn't have been one of the five families.

This is a work of fiction set against a somewhat loose historical interpretation of some events and figures.

Fontane was supposed to be Sinatra
Moe Green was supposed to be Siegal

But Don Corleone was not supposed to rersemble anybody. He was the head of a fictional 6th family, whose story was told against the historical framework of NYC oranized crime and the five NYC families in the early 1940s, and, as such, he was none of those family heads.

It was not that Puzo was hesitant to have Don C. compared to one of the NYC Dons. It was that he couldn't be compared to any of them.

Haven't you yourself have posted the opinion that Don C. was an amalgam of features and traits of the various NY Dons at the time?

The mistake was simply statimg The Five Families plus the Corleones. When in actuality the 5 Families include the Corleones

Absolutely not!

Puzo, for whatever reason, simply left out the name (and description) of one of the New York Families. The novel explains that there were to be representatives from ten other Families besides the New York Five Families. Only six of them were identified (Carlo Tramonti from Florida, Joseph Zaluchi from Detroit, Frank Falcone from the movie unions on the West Coast, Anthony Molinari from San Francisco, Domenick Panza from Boston, and Vincent Forlenza from Cleveland). The fact the other four Families weren't described doesn't mean they didn't exist. So it is with the "missing" New York Family.

Its been stated before, and now worth repeating - (from the novel):

The arrival time had been staggered for between nine-thirty to ten A.M. Don Corleone, in a sense the host since he initiated the peace talks, had been the first to arrive....

after a few pages of describing the out-of-town Dons, Puzo added:

The representatives of the Five Families of New York were the last to arrive and Tom Hagen was struck by how much more imposing, impressive, these five men were than the out-of-towners, the hicks. The five New York Dons were stout, corpulent men with massive leonine heads, features on a large scale......

Puzo clearly made a distinction between Vito Corleone and the other five Families. He wrote that Vito had arrived first, and later the five New York Dons arrived.

I cannot even offer a reason why Puzo didn't describe the fifth Family, but that descriptive omission doesn't mean the Family didn't exist.

In short, there were five New York Families PLUS the Corleones.

My hero

I havent read the novel in a while, but wasnt there another Corleone at the meeting, named Anthony or something like that, but he wasnt under Vito?

It wasn't in the novel, but in the movie Vito mentions a Carmine Corleone from the Bronx. (Vito also mentions the names "Barzini", "Stracci" and "Tattaglia" in connection with the 5 Families). Its POSSIBLE the name "Corleone" should have been "Cuneo", but then the first name would have been Ottilio (not "Carmine") and the Bronx notation would be wrong (the novel states Cuneo was in charge of "upstate New York").

Confusing,huh?

He said "Carmine Cuneo" in the film. As SC said, it was "Ottilio Cuneo" in the novel, and he "controlled upper New York State" and "arranged smuggling of Italian immigrants from Canada" etc. That description fits Stefano Magaddino, the long-time Don of Buffalo, NY, to a "T." But Magaddino was not one of the real-life five New York City Dons, which keeps this ball rolling. Assuming that the meeting was held between, say, 1947 and 1951, the five New York City Dons would have been: Frank Costello, Tommy Lucchese, Joe Bonanno, Joe Profaci and Vincent Mangano (replaced by Albert Anastasia after 1952). If the fictional meeting had been a genuine "Commission" meeting, it would certainly have included Magaddino (who was a permanent member of the Commission and later chaired it); and several non-NY Dons, though they might not have been from the cities Puzo cited because out-of-town memberships rotated.

Not So! The Bronx Notation would not be wrong. There are some things about the Novel that differentiate from the Movie. Cuneo is based in the Bronx in the Movie, while he rules upstate in the Novel.

I clearly hear Carmine Cuneo from the bronx. But Ottilio could be his son (or a family relative) and his succeser.

Naw, I doubt it

Families in The Godfather:
the Corleones, Strachis, Tattaglias, Cuneos, and Barzinis.

I tink thisis right, correct me if i am incorrect