The James Scott Memorial Fountain is a monument located in Belle Isle Park, in Detroit, Michigan.

He was described by twentieth-century author W. Hawkins Ferry as a "vindictive, scurrilous misanthrope"[3] who attempted to intimidate his business competitors and when this was unsuccessful, he filed suit.

Perhaps for these reasons, Scott died in 1910 with no heirs or colleagues and he bequeathed his estate to the City of Detroit with the condition that the fountain include a life-sized bronze statue of him.

[4] Several community and religious leaders—including Bishop Charles D. Williams[1]—spoke against accepting the bequest, saying that a person with Scott's reputation should not be immortalized in the city.

In the scene shortly after learning of the death of his estranged son (though falsified by the mother), Pacino's character Francis Lionel 'Lion' Delbuchi, happily plays with a group of children before, upon uncovering a deep emotional truth, he snatches one of them up and begins to ascend the fountain.