So In The Godfather Novel Johnny Fontane Is Trying To Produce His Own Movies And A Union Official, Billy

So in The Godfather novel Johnny Fontane is trying to produce his own movies and a Union official, Billy Goff, who is connected to the Corleones, tries to extort 50K from him. Johnny is considering just paying up, instead turns to Tom Hagen, who has been helping him with the whole project. Tom advises him not to pay up, says he'll deal with it and a few days later Tom has the Union official shot dead in his own home.

Vito has just been shot at this point, and is too ill to be consulted so Tom says that he'll talk to Sonny about the situation but that he will be the one who makes the final decision as to what will be done about the Union official so he personally ordered him to be killed.

Elia Kazan’s ON THE WATERFRONT was released in the U.S. on July 28, 1954 #OnThisDay

So apparently the first time I read The Godfather, I somehow missed the part where Tom Hagen arranges to have someone killed. WTF?

My favourite scene in The Godfather book might be when Tom is released after being abducted by Sollozzo and Michael watches Sonny literally run to embrace Tom and realises that Tom is much closer to Sonny than he'll ever be.

Tom Hagen might not be Sicilian but he's fluent in the language, uses Sicilian hand gestures, has Sicilian facial expressions, even prefers the language over English at times and has married an Italian wife. Clearly he's done everything possible to absorb a language and culture that he wasn't born into to the extent that Vito even says that he made Tom a Sicilian and yet almost every character in the book spends every 5 minutes reminding him that he isn't one of them.

The most famous orange in Hollywood 🍊