What real incidents and people did Coppola incorporate into the script for “The Godfather Part II”?

A new setting has been added to the “Casino King” who was killed in the previous work!

There is another character who has come to the fore since Lansky was used as a model for Ross. At the climax of the first movie, The The Godfather , Moe Greene is a Las Vegas casino magnate who was murdered on Michael's orders.

The name Moe Greene comes from Moe Dalitz, Moe Sedway, and Gus Greenbaum, who were the driving forces behind turning Las Vegas into a huge casino resort. They were a Jewish gang with strong ties to Lansky, and were the faces of the Mafia who had been entrusted with running the casino.

But beyond his namesake, Green is modeled after someone else. Benjamin " Bugsy " Siegel, played by Warren Beatty in the biopic "Bugsy" (1991). He was a notorious assassin, and as mentioned earlier, he had been friends with Lansky since they were just budding thugs.

I won't go into the detailed explanation that there are many theories, but Bugsy Siegel is the "father of Las Vegas" who opened the Flamingo Hotel, the first huge casino resort in Las Vegas. Its funding source was the mafia, and due to poor spending and unsatisfactory management immediately after opening, Flamingo was killed in a purge of the organization shortly after opening. He is known for his sweet mask, and is said to have been in a relationship with a Hollywood star actress, and even took a camera test in order to appear in a movie.

“The Godfather Part II” Copyright (C) 1974 by Paramount Pictures and The Coppola Company. All Rights Reserved. Restoration Copyright (C) 2007 by Paramount Pictures Corporation. All Rights Reserved. TM, (R) & Copyright (C) 2014 by Paramount Pictures . All Rights Reserved.

In the middle of Part II, there is a scene in which Hyman Roth, a calm and collected strategist, becomes emotional just once. While negotiating with Michael over a gambling business, he expresses his anger at Michael's assassination of Moe Greene. In reality, Ross and Green were childhood friends, and Ross suppressed his feelings of anger and resentment in order to make the person who killed his best friend his business partner.

Of course, this kind of behind-the-scenes setting didn't exist in the first film. This is an afterthought to connect the new character Hyman Roth with the previous work. But what Coppola wanted to try was to incorporate the fact that Lansky and Siegel were friends who had grown up in the same neighborhood. (It would be another 17 years before Siegel was featured again in the biopic Bugsy.)

Lee Strasberg played Hyman Roth. He is the owner of the legendary actor training school ``The Actors Studio,'' which produced actors such as Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, and was also a mentor to Al Pacino. However, no matter how great of a leader Strasberg is, he doesn't exude the same charisma as Marlon Brando, who played Vito in the previous film. It seems that even Coppola did not expect Strasberg's delicate performance, and the character of Hyman Roth changed into an introspective and quiet person that matched the actor's characteristics.

As a result, Hyman Roth gives a rather bland impression to be called the "strongest enemy" in "PART II," but Strasberg's subdued acting in most of his appearances serves as a contrast, and the above-mentioned mode・The scene where he talked about green gave off a particularly strong impression. Strasberg was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this role. It was the moment in the career of a great American coach who came close to winning an Oscar. And if Coppola hadn't focused on the friendship between Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, Strasberg might never have had the chance to prove himself as an actor in the film. I believe that everything is an interesting coincidence, like a chain of beads.

Text: Akira Murayama

Born in 1971. Writes articles for magazines, newspapers, movie sites, etc. Representative of “ShortCuts,” a review site for distribution-based works.

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*Information as of April 2019.

Copyright (C) 1974 by Paramount Pictures and The Coppola Company. All Rights Reserved. Restoration Copyright (C) 2007 by Paramount Pictures Corporation. All Rights Reserved. TM, (R) & Copyright (C) 2014 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved .