Francis Ford Coppola’s classic The Godfather contains a wide selection of memorable
characters such as Don Vito Corleone, Michael Corleone, Sonny, Fredo, Kay,
Don Barzini, Tom Hagen, Luca Brasi, Salvatore Tessio, Johnny Fontaine and much much more.
They are played impeccably by the actors, many of whom were novices or not well known at the time,
but have since become veterans thanks to their iconic portrayals. I’ve made videos on several
of these characters and will continue to do so, so check out the channel and feel free to subscribe.
Many of the characters who survivied the ordeals of the first film played roles in the sequel,
The Godfather Part II, however, one iconic character, Peter Clemenza,
played by Richard S Castellano, did not.
Clemenza was one of the original two caporegimes in the Corleone family, the other being Tessio.
He is a significant supporting character in the first film, playing a key role in aiding Sonny
and Michael Corleone after the shooting of Vito, mentoring Michael on how to take out Sollozo and
using his people to hide the gun in the lavatory so Michael could kill Sollozo. It was he who
mentored Rocco Lampone, who would go onto become a key figure of the Corleone criminal empire,
and he is thought to have been a key figure for the Corleones in the five family war.
When Michael Corleone replaced his father Vito as head of the family,
Clemenza enthusiastically requested the opportunity to start his own family,
as did Tessio, but both reluctantly agreed to wait and be patient, in spite of the Barzini
family taking over their territories. Though there were implications that Clemenza would
betray the Corleone family to their enemies in frustration of how events were playing out,
he actually remained loyal, unlike Tessio, and personally murdered Carlo Rizzi and Victor Stracci
as part of a series of events known as the baptism of fire, the climax of The Godfather.
At a meeting in the film’s final scene with Michael, Rocco, Al Neri and Clemenza,
the big man kisses Michael and addresses him as “Don Corleone” cementing the fact that Michael
has become his father’s successor and the head of the family, proving himself to his subjects.
And all of these characters in this meeting are in the second film,
which follows Michael attempting to work out who attempted to assassinate him,
but the only one missing is Clemenza. Instead, it is briefly mentioned that for his loyalty
and years of service, he was given control of the Corleone family in New York, running things from
the old Corleone compound, while Michael branched out to projects in places like Nevada and Cuba.
We also find out that he died in between the events of the first and second film,
with his position being succeeded by Frank Pentangeli, his loyal lieutenant and long time
friend. In fact, much of the plot of The Godfather Part II involves Pentangeli testifying against his
boss Michael Corleone, mistakenly thinking that Michael tried to have him assassinated.
Pentangeli’s testimony could have sent Micahael to jail for life, but he ends up denying his own
written testimony in the senate hearing after seeing Michael walk into the proceedings with
Pentangeli’s own brother. Pentangeli eventually takes his own life, after Tom Hagen meets him
and subtly tells him his family will not come to harm if he ends his life for his treason.
In The Godfather Part II, it is implied that Clemenza died under suspicious circumstances,
as when Fredo Corleone mentions he died of a heart attack,
Corleone hitman Willi Cicci says “that was no heart attack” implying that there may
have been foul play, but it is never elaborated upon, not in the film at least. Interestingly,
Clemenza actor Richard Castellano himself died of a heart attack at the age of 55.
Peter Clemenza is in the Gofdfather Part II, but only in the flashback timeline
which charts the rise of Vito Corleone, showing the Don’s early years as a poor
immigrant as he gradually became a local mafia boss. Clemenza is played by Bruno Kirby,
and in fact it was he who kick started Vito’s career as a criminal, after initially
asking Vito to hide some guns for him to prevent them being discovered by the police.
Clemenza returns the favour by stealing a rug for Vito, and thus begins a partnership of crime
that accumulates to Vito being established as the leader of his group with Peter a loyal follower.
I love Clemenza. He’s one of my personal favourite characters from The Godfather.
He’s incredibly likable. I just love this big, chunky dude with his thick Italian American New
York accent and fedora, he kinda looks like the quintessential La Coa Nostra mobster.
The legendary Chicago mobster Al Capone was also from New York, and I always thought we really
missed a trick with Castellano not playing Capone in his life, he seemed perfect for the role.
In spite of being a stone cold killer, you do feel that Clemenza is the kind of guy
you can have a laugh with, the kind of guy who would could for the lads and tell some
great stories while he did so, but would be able to switch to mobster mode in an instant.
Known for his jovial nature, street smarts, storytelling abilities and great sense of humour,
Clemenza could get a laugh out of Don Vito and even the more serious Michael.
His absence in the 1950’s timeline in The Godfather Part II is felt,
but probably for most people didn’t feel that impactful, nowhere near at least compared to
the absence of Robert Duvall in the third film, and that might be in part to the fact that The
Godfather Part II is still an incredible film without the character, a masterpiece
who’s new characters, like Pentangeli and Hymen Roth, more than make up for Clemenza’s absence.
It may interest you to learn then, that Clemenza was originally supposed to be
in The Godfather Part II, not just in the flashback timeline I mean but in Michael’s
story, the present day timeline, with Castellano returning to reprise the role.
In fact, he would have had a bigger role in the second film than he did in the first one.
So why wasn’t he in the movie? Well, it came down to a dispute between Castellano and paramount
pictures, but not over money apparently, not totally anyway, which is what you’d might expect.
,but rather it was over the character’s dialogue and the amount of weight Castellano
would need to gain for the role. Castellano, who improvised the famous line in the first film,
“leave the gun, take the cannoli” reportedly wanted to have a friend of his re-wright his
dialogue, Coppola for example is quoted as saying Castellano insisted that his lines were improved,
so he was written out of the film and his character was replaced by Frank Pentangeli,
so all of what happens to Frank in the film, the murder attempt, the testifying, the suicide, would
have happened to Clemenza in the original plans for the film. Pentangeli basically IS Clemenza.
However, according to Castellano himself,
who’s widow, by the way, claimed that he was the nephew of infamous mob boss Paul Castellano,
the actor was unhappy with the portrayal of his character in the script for part 2.
Castellano stated in an interview, talking about his character and director Francis Ford Coppola:
“I saw Clemenza as a teacher,’’ “He teaches how to make spaghetti,
how to use the gun. [Coppola] can’t tell me that Clemenza, after years of loyalty to the old man,
would go in and testify against organized crime. Not unless you
proved to me . . . that he had become a fearful man, that he had become a betrayer.
“The demands on me were impossible. I had settled on a price and everybody else’s was settled upon
mine. [Coppola] had me losing weight to play Clemenza as a young man. I was down to 194 pounds.
When I received the script five minutes later, it had me rolling in at 300 pounds.’’
After Castellano bowed out of the picture, he said that Francis Coppola promised to
tell the press that he had turned down the film for artistic reasons. He continues:
The next thing, I saw Coppola quoted as saying that I asked for more money than anyone else,
that I asked to rewrite the script. Once the lie gets out, the lie is told, and it takes.’
So there you have it. Interestingly, and this is gonna sound crazy but it’s
true, but Richard Castellano was actually the highest paid actor in The Godfather.
It makes sense in a way, most of the actors in the film were unknowns at the time, Brando was making
a comeback with the picture, and yetCastellano was an Oscar nominated actor. The amount is
undisclosed, and I doubt that he netted more than Marlon Brando, who was paid $250,000 plus
a percentage of the film’s gross, which netted him an additional $2m, but if were talking just
salaries, it’s widely reported that Castellano actually took home more than anyone else,
and his increased wage demands and insistence on creative control over his character, plus
his refusal to gain the weight to play Clemenza again meant he was axed from the film’s sequel
Of course, he has his version of the events, which I’ve mentioned already, but it is what it is.
You know, I’m torn on Clemenza not being in part II. I loved the actor’s portrayal of
the character, I love the character himself, and by the sound of Castellano’s interview,
it looks as though he was actually going to play both the young and the older Clemenza. However,
The Godfather 2 is a perfect film, the movie is not harmed by Clemenza’s absence, and Michael V
Gazzo gave a magnificent performance as his replacement Frank Pentangeli. It’s one of those
situations where issues occurring in reality end up affecting what we see in a film for the better,
perhaps, with Robert Duvall exiting The Godfather
part 3 being an example of when these kind of situations harms the film.
I have absolutely no problem with Pentangeli, but the thing is though, he was a new character,
he was someone who was instantly shady because we weren’t sure whether he tired to have Michael
killed. He’s a new character who we’re all of a sudden are told was really close to Vito Corleone
and has been in the family for years, and all of a sudden he’s in charge of what used to be
the Corleone crime family. Clemenza on the other hand, is someone we knew from the first film,
he made us laugh, he was an absolute badass, and was like everyone’s favourite
uncle. Not to mention he turned out to be the loyal one between Tessio and himself,
when you’d bet your bottom dollar that if there was going to be a traitor, it’d be him.
For him to be in part II, for him to turn against Michael and testify against him after
thinking Michael tried to have him killed, for him to do a 180 and keep Michael out of jail,
and then kill himself after a deeply touching scene between him and Tom Hagen,
would have been emotionally devastating. It’s probably the one big difference between
Pentangeli’s dying in part 2 and Clemenza. Pentangeli’s death is merely interesting,
and most of the emotional aspects of the film’s closing stages come from the death of Fredo
and the flashback to when everyone was young and happy, but if the original plans of
the film occurred, we’d also experience the deeply saddening death of Clemenza,
the last of the original Corleone solders, who didn’t even really outright betray the Corleones,
it wasn’t as if he went and tried to have Michael killed or did a deal with his enemies,
he legitimately thought that Michael tried to have him killed, so in a way, it was a big
misunderstanding that perhaps stemmed from a rare moment of weakness from Michael by not allowing
Pentangeli to go after the Rosoto brothers and a showcase of strength from Michael’s enemies.
Although saying that, Pentangeli was facing lengthy jail time if he didn’t testify, so I
guess the murder attempt on him isn’t the defining factor of his betrayal, he was still gonna flip.
Imagine the scene between Pentangeli and Hagen, only this time with Clemenza instead, talking
about how the Corleone’s used to be great, used to be like the Roman empire – it resonates a lot
more because we’ve seen Clemenza experience that peak of the COrleones that he’s talking about,
we would have felt that rush of nostalgia as we felt with the flashback at the end of the film
where we see the likes of Tessio and Sonny, and then imagine seeing Clemenza’s dead body in the
bath with his wrists split. It would have perhaps surpassed the emotional weight of Fredo’s death,
who most people saw as an imbecile anyway. But not Clemenza, and the fact that Michael
Corleone would end up essentially killing him and Tessio, the two original caporegimes,
would show just how far he strayed from his father, killing his dad’s two best friends.
Clemenza’s death, self inflicted death I might add, which resonates with the movie’s theme of
self destruction, would have truly symbolised the end of the original Corleone regime.
It would have added a beloved character to Michael’s list of victims who were
ironically part of his family or in “the family”, like Kay, Tessio, Carlo and Fredo.
So as you can see, The Godfather Part II would have been a lot more impactful with Clemenza
included, but in a way, the film does the character a better service by leaving him out.
There’s something quite nice in knowing that Clemenza,
after everything that happened in the first film, actually died completely loyal to the Corleone’s,
and his reputation was never destroyed. It may have been a bit too on the nose to have both
Tessio and then Clemenza betray Michael, and it was nice that at least one of them remained strong
and firm. Rather than, for the lack of a better word, “ruin” an established
character in the sequel, like a lot of films have done to beloved characters,
they just killed him, left his reputation intact, and gave us a new one instead.
Interestingly, the actual death of Peter Clemenza, the way he died,
is detailed in a sequel to Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather called The Godfather Returns by
Mark Winegardner, a book which is not considered canon by Paramount Pictures but was commissioned
by Mario Puzo’s estate, and it’s one of the best scenes in the book. As this video is already long,
Clemenza’s death will be something I’ll cover in a nother video, so don’t forget to subscribe
to the channel and hit the notification button down below so you don’t miss it.
So what do you think about all of this? Would you have liked to see
Clemenza in The Godfather Part II, or do you think the movie is better the way it
is? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for watching