The year 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather. I remember one incident from my childhood that related to this event with utter vividness. Sometime in the late 1970s, both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II had been edited together to create an ersatz mini-series shown on network television, a sort of Italian American version of “Roots.”
On that very day, Grandpa, my mother's father and an Italian immigrant, opened the week's television guide to a page that featured a very large photo of Marlon Brando as Don Corleone holding a cat. “A dago, like me,” my grandfather said, smiling. At nine years of age, I had never seen the film nor had the slightest idea who Don Corleone might be, or who Marlon Brando was for that matter. I did know the word dago pretty well. Every Italian American...
