Showing posts with label American Cinema. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Cinema. Show all posts

Friday, June 17, 2011

Hyman Roth's speech on Moe Greene, from The Godfather, Part 2

Hyman Roth, played by Lee Strasberg, gave this speech in The Godfather 2 to Michael Corleone (who he knew had given the order to have Moe Greene killed):



Hyman Roth: "There was this kid I grew up with; he was younger than me. Sorta looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the street. Things were good, we made the most of it. During Prohibition, we ran molasses into Canada... made a fortune, your father, too.

"As much as anyone, I loved him and trusted him. Later on he had an idea to build a city out of a desert stop-over for GI's on the way to the West Coast. That kid's name was Moe Greene, and the city he invented was Las Vegas. This was a great man, a man of vision and guts. And there isn't even a plaque, or a signpost or a statue of him in that town!

"Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn't angry; I knew Moe, I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we've chosen; I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!"

Meyer Lansky, the character upon whom Hyman Roth was modeled:

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