I suspect the scene depicted in Puzo's novel is based on Elizabeth Taylor's entre into Hollywood. The physical description of the child and Liz's own comments about what happened to her . . . and Michael Jackson, lead me to suspect she was used by movie big wigs at the behest of her parents! I don't know anything, but it seems plausible to me.
Mario Puzo (puzio ... gack!!) wrote a fabulous book, didn’t he! My former mother-in-law was as Italian as Italian gets. She told me that the book was fiction only in a technical sense, but that I could and should believe that every word was true in the larger sense.