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John "Johnny" Fontane is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's novel ''The Godfather'' and the series of films based upon it. In Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation of the novel, he was portrayed by Al Martino,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Godfather, Part III (1990) )〕 the role having been turned down by Vic Damone. ==Novel and film== In the novel and film, Fontane is a famous crooner and occasional film star in the vein of Frank Sinatra. He is also the godson of Vito Corleone, the head of a major Mafia crime family. The Corleone family intervenes four times to aid his career. The first, years before the novel's and film's main time frame, Vito Corleone used violent persuasion (an "offer he can't refuse") to buy out Fontane's ironclad contract with a big band leader; after the bandleader declines Vito Corleone's first offer to buy out the contract, the Mafia chieftain orders his personal assassin Luca Brasi to place a gun to the man's forehead, telling the bandleader that either his signature or his brains would be on the contract. The second, the infamous "horse-head" scene, is an act of intimidation, carried out at the Godfather's behest to ensure Fontane is cast in a war film that could revitalize the singer's declining stardom. The film's producer, Jack Woltz, despises Fontane for "ruining" an actress he was grooming for stardom and had been having an affair with, and thus blacklists the singer from the production. After Corleone family ''consigliere'' Tom Hagen fails to persuade Woltz to cast Fontane, Woltz awakens soon after to find his prize racehorse's decapitated head in his bed as a warning. Terrified, Woltz relents and casts Fontane. Months later, Vito uses his Hollywood connections to ensure that Fontane wins the Academy Award for Best Actor. Finally, the Corleones finance Fontane to start his own film studio. Fontane is a minor character in the movie adaptation. In the original novel, however, the character is far more central, with large portions of the book dedicated to his adventures and misadventures in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Nevada, his precarious relationship with childhood friend and former partner Nino Valenti, and his struggles with losing his singing voice. In the novel, Fontane develops (and eventually is cured of) lesions on his vocal cords. Fontane was widely believed to have been based on Frank Sinatra. While Puzo never made this claim, he also never denied it.〔 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Johnny Fontane」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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