29 Facts About Vito Corleone

Vito Corleone is an orphaned Sicilian immigrant who builds a Mafia empire.

Vito Corleone informally adopts Sonny's friend, Tom Hagen, who becomes his lawyer and consigliere.

Vito Corleone oversees a business founded on gambling, bootlegging, prostitution, and union corruption, but he is known as a kind, generous man who lives by a strict moral code of loyalty to friends and, above all, family.

Vito Corleone is based on a composite of mid-20th century New York Mafia figures Carlo Gambino, Frank Costello, Joe Bonanno, and Joe Profaci.

Vito Corleone's mother begs Ciccio to spare Vito Corleone, but Ciccio refuses, reasoning the boy will seek revenge as a grown man.

Vito Corleone later uses Andolini as his middle name in acknowledgment of his family heritage.

Vito Corleone is taken in by the Abbandando family, who are distant relatives of his, in Little Italy on New York's Lower East Side.

Vito Corleone grows very close to the Abbandandos, particularly their son, Genco, who is like a brother to him.

Vito Corleone earns an honest living at the Abbandandos' grocery store, but the elder Abbandando is forced to fire him when Don Fanucci, a blackhander and the local neighborhood padrone, demands that the grocery hire his nephew.

In 1920, Vito Corleone is befriended by small-time criminals Peter Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio, who teach him how to survive by fencing stolen dresses and performing favors in return for loyalty.

Vito Corleone enters Fanucci's building and shoots him in the chest, face and mouth, killing him.

Vito Corleone then takes over the neighborhood, treating it with far greater respect than Fanucci did.

Between Genco Pura and his illegal operations, Vito Corleone becomes a wealthy man.

Fredo, Vito Corleone's second-born son, is deemed too weak and unintelligent to handle important family business and takes on only minor responsibilities.

Vito Corleone has a difficult relationship with his youngest son, Michael, who wants nothing to do with the family business.

When Michael is wounded in combat, Vito Corleone pulls strings to have him honorably discharged and sent back to the US, without Michael's knowledge.

When his godson, singer Johnny Fontane, wants to be released from his contract with a bandleader, Vito Corleone offers to buy him out, but the bandleader refuses.

Vito Corleone then makes the bandleader an "offer he can't refuse": he has his fearsome personal assassin, Luca Brasi, put a gun to the bandleader's head, and tells the bandleader that, in five seconds, either his signature or his brains will be on the contract.

When Woltz refuses, he wakes up to find the severed head of his prize race horse, Khartoum, in his bed; it is implied that Vito Corleone ordered the horse killed.

Vito Corleone declines, believing the politicians and judges on his payroll would turn against him if he engaged in drug trafficking.

Shortly afterward, as Vito Corleone goes to buy oranges from a fruit stand, Sollozzo's hitmen emerge with guns drawn.

Vito Corleone survives so Sollozzo makes a second assassination attempt at the hospital.

Shortly afterwards, on July 29,1955, Vito Corleone dies of a heart attack in his garden while playing with his grandson, Michael's son Anthony.

In one stroke, the Vito Corleone family regains its status as the most powerful criminal organization in the country.

Vito Corleone appears in The Sicilian, acting as a guide for Michael while he is in Sicily.

Vito Corleone was portrayed as a boy by Oreste Baldini and as a younger man in The Godfather Part II by Robert De Niro.

For 48 years, Vito Corleone was the only role in history to have two Academy Awards won for playing it.

Vito Corleone was selected as the 53rd greatest film character by Empire.

Star Wars character Marlo the Hutt was inspired by Marlon Brando's portrayal of Vito Corleone, appearing among the Hutt Council in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.