See One of the Greatest Speeches in the History of Pictures: “That Kid’s Name was Moe Greene” (The Godfather, Part II, 1974), Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth, and Al Pacino as Michael Corleone

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

“There was this kid I grew up with. He was younger than me. Sort of looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together. Worked our way out of the street. Things were good.

“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 G.I.s going 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, signpost, or 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 headstrong. 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.”

N.S.: One of the greatest speeches in the history of pictures. It’s a bookend speech to Michael’s brief one in The Godfather, regarding killing New York City Police Department Capt. McCluskey, that it’s “Strictly business, nothing personal.” Both speeches were ironic, in that the speaker says the exact opposite of what he means. Killing McCluskey is nothing, if not personal. Not only did he break Michael’s jaw, but he’d been hired to finish off his father. And Hyman Roth loved Moe Green (Bugsy Siegel) like a brother. And his name was Moe Green! As soon as Michael had one of his button-men shoot Green/Siegel through the eye, Roth resolved to kill Michael.