Originally Posted By: Turnbull
Originally Posted By: olivant
All I know "for sure" is that the massacre took place in '51 (a little bird told me).

However, the timeline is all over the place no matter which source one uses. Maybe Puzo and FFC conspired to keep us dissecting the novel and th film 40+ years later.

Oli, the reason I did the timeline for the novel was that the "little bird" in the film was Sonny's car radio playing the Dodgers/Giants final playoff game in October 1951. My reason for doing the timeline was my belief that the Five Families War couldn't have gone on for nearly five years--thus Michael had to have returned from Sicily way before that. Also, Sonny would have been driving a 10-year-old car when he got whacked.


I wouldn't read too much into the use of the audio from the Giants-Dodgers 1951 playoff game. That is one of the only (if not the only) extant long-form baseball broadcast from that era, so if FFC wanted to have Sonny listen to a baseball game, he wouldn't have had much of a choice.

Fun fact:

That broadcast is known for Giant announcer Russ Hodges's manic "The Giants win the pennant!" call. But it only survived because a Dodgers fan (one of the few people with recording equipment in 1951) taped the game with the intention of taunting Hodges and other Giants fans with it when the Dodgers won. A pivotal moment in broadcast history was preserved only because of a somewhat petty fan.

"A man in my position cannot afford to be made to look ridiculous!"