The Godfather Part II follows Al Pacino as Don Michael Corleone, as he looks to
expand the Corleone empire and crawl closer to his dream of legitimising his business.
In the first film, Michael is mentored by his father Vito, during an era in which the Corleones
were subjugated to numerous attacks from rival families, and ostensibly they were growing weaker,
until of course, Michael carries out a deadly attack on all rival families simultaneously, thus
cementing his power in New York. After cleansing his family of traitors like Tessio and Carlo,
Michael leaves New York to bigger and better things, leaving his loyal capo Peter Clemenza
in charge of the Corleone crime family. In the second film, Clemenza has already died,
with his position being taken by Frank Pentangeli, who visits Michael to ask for help in a street war
he is engaged I with the Rosato brothers. Clemenza’s death is shrouded in mystery,
and I’ve already made two detailed videos on it – one called ‘why was Clemenza not in The Godfather
Part II’, detailing disagreements between the actor who played him and the film-makers,
and also ‘The mysterious death of Peter Clemenza’ where I go through ways in which
he might have possibly died, including his death in a sequel novel to The Godfather.
There’s one possibility that I never mentioned that I want to address,
and that is the idea that maybe Clemenza actually became addicted to drugs, and he checked out as a
result of a overdose. Either that, or perhaps his drug addiction made it easier for his enemies to
get to him, or maybe even is own men – Pentangeli even – bumped him off after he became a liability.
So what’s the evidence for this? Well, when we are first introduced to Pentangeli,
he is greeted by Fredo Corleone, and the subject of old man Clemenza comes up and his
dying of a heart attack, and we get Willie Cicci’s enigmatic line “that was no heart attack”.
It’s pretty strange that this subject is never boguth up again,
but I do talk about it a lot in the other video I did on Clemenza’s death.
Before Cicci says this line, Pentangeli makes a weird, elongated gesture to his arm,
and it looks strikingly like a pose that you’d use to reference a heroin user. And if it isn’t a
reference to that, then what exactly is Pentangeli doing here? He’s surely trying to say something?
Now you make think, well sure he does pretty much point to his arm but maybe he’s saying
something else – although I don’t know what – or maybe its just him processing his grief.
But during the meeting with Michael, he makes the same gesture when he is sticking it to
the Rosatos, saying they do violence in their grandmothers’ neighbourhoods, that they do junk,
that they do dope, and it’s clear he’s making a gesture referencing drug use,
and sure, it isn’t exactly the same gesture he made in the scene with Fredo,
where he was kinda pointing to the side of his arm, but its close enough that I think a case can
be made where he actually knows hat Clemenza died of his drug addiction, rather than the apparent
heart attack which seems to be the mainstream narrative among the Corleones. This explains the
“that was no heart attack” line and falls in perfect sync with Pentangeli’s gesture earlier.
Maybe it’s common knowledge that Clemenza died of natural causes, but Pentangeli and Cicci,
who would have obviously spent a lot of time with him, knew the truth, but to save face
they did nothing to dispel the rumors, but here Pentangeli drops Fredo a little hint.
It is actually a sound conclusion in my opinion, one that explains Cicci’s line and
one that works without any need for reference to external material, like books or deleted scenes.
Perhaps there is a deleted scene that goes into this a bit deeper, but I’m not aware of any that
exists, nor have I come across any interview from Francis Ford Coppola where he references Clemenza
dying of drug related reasons. It’s possible it’s something the film-makers threw out there
while they were deciding on how best to explain Richard Castellano’s absence from the film,
or maybe it just was the film-makers intention for Clemenza to have died from a heroin overdose but
most people just missed the reference. Because the more I think about it, the more it works –
otherwise, why would they include the ”that was no heart attack” line without giving us
an alternative possible form of death, and why did Pentangeli make that gesture to his arm?
So what do you think of this theory? Does it work, or do you think that Clemenza died some other way?
Let me know in the comments below, subscribe to the channel,
check out my other videos on Clemenza, and thanks for watching.