re: What happened to Clemenza?

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The Family Corleone, which is a prequel that came from a screenplay written by Puzo, definitely leads me away from him being killed for betraying the family.

He’s about as loyal as anyone gets imo.


Has anyone else read it?

It focuses mainly on Sonny’s entry to the family business, but has some great Vito scenes as well.

The other main character is Luca Brasi, and I did not like how it paints him. He is an absolute monster, and I don’t really believe that Vito would have brought him into his operation based on the events in that book. Think it was too over the top

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I've read it. Its a great read if you are into The Godfather. I feel like in the original book they mention some of Luca's back story with throwing the baby in the furnace and the midwife leaving back for Sicily (but I could be blending them together). In the 3rd book (definitely way after the movie, that is largely based on Carlos Marcello and the JFK stuff) when Tom dies, it has a really cool flashback section as he is dying thinking of Sonny and giving his perspective on when he met Sonny when a pedo was trying to frick with him and Sonny stabbed him on the street and it paints a very grim picture of life on the lower east side in the 20s for an orphan with an eye infection.

But yes, based on the books and movie (regardless of whether or not Puzo even wrote the latter books, it appears that Clemenza was always loyal.

ETA: there were talks about making a fourth film and having it focus on Garcia's character as boss and eventually going into the drug trade and ruining it all for good, and have flashbacks to Sonny's young life coming up in the family (same format as Godfather 2/ father and son dichotomy) but it obviously never happened.