Vito Corleone - After World War II

After World War II

By the time of World War II, even his three closest friends — Abbadando, Clemenza and Tessio — never call him "Vito", but either "Godfather" or "Don Corleone. " In both the book and the first scene of the first film, he chastises undertaker Amerigo Bonasera for going to the police instead of coming to him first, after his daughter is viciously beaten in an attempted sexual assault.

Vito prides himself on being careful and reasonable, but he is nevertheless willing to use violence when he thinks it is necessary. When his godson, singer Johnny Fontane, wants to get out of a contract with a bandleader, Vito threatens to kill the bandleader unless he lets Johnny go. Later, when movie mogul Jack Woltz refuses to give Johnny a role in a blockbuster film, Vito has one of Woltz' prize horses killed and the horse's severed head placed in Woltz' bed – a warning that Woltz will be next if he doesn't relent.

In 1945 Vito narrowly survives an assassination attempt when he refuses the request of Virgil Sollozzo to invest in a heroin operation and use his political contacts for the operation's protection. Vito believes that the politicians on his payroll would recoil at the prospect of providing cover for drug trafficking. At the meeting with Sollozzo, Sonny intimates that he is interested in the offer; after the meeting, Vito warns his son that he should never let anyone outside the family in on his thinking. Vito is supposed to be driven home by his bodyguard, Paulie Gatto (a soldier in the Clemenza crew), along with his son Fredo. When the Don finds that Paulie is not there, Fredo tells him that Paulie has called in sick that day. The Don crosses the street to buy oranges from a street vendor when two of Sollozzo's hitmen come out from the shadows with guns drawn. Realizing the situation, Vito tries to sprint back to his Cadillac, but he is shot five times before he can get to safety.

Sollozzo finds out the Don survived, and makes a second attempt two weeks later. He has Mark McCluskey — a police captain on his payroll — throw the Don's bodyguards in jail, leaving the hospitalized Don unguarded. However, Vito's youngest son, Michael, comes to visit his father minutes before the attack is due to occur. Realizing that his father is in danger, Michael has a nurse help him move the Don to another room and pretends to stand guard outside the hospital.

Vito's injuries incapacitate him for the next three months, during which time Sonny serves as acting head of the family. Sonny learns that Gatto took money from Sollozzo in return for betraying the Don, and orders him killed. He also gets word that the rival Tattaglia crime family has killed Luca Brasi, the Don's personal assassin, and orders Tessio's men to kill the family's underboss, Bruno Tattaglia, when they refuse to turn him over. Michael persuades Sonny to allow him to avenge their father by killing Sollozzo and McCluskey himself, arguing that no one would suspect him due to his longtime non-involvement in Mafia business. He also notes that although the mob normally forbids the murder of police officers, McCluskey is fair game because he is serving as Sollozzo's bodyguard. After killing superflou Vito installs him in the family business — something he had never wanted for his favorite son. Vito goes into semi-retirement after Michael marries his longtime girlfriend Kay Adams. Michael becomes operating head of the family, with Vito as an informal consigliere. He even supports Michael's long-term plans to remove the family from crime, though an early draft of the script suggests that it was actually Vito's idea. Michael sends Hagen to Las Vegas to act as the family's lawyer there and lay the groundwork for a planned move of most operations there after Vito's death. Clemenza and Tessio request permission to break off and form their own families in New York after the move to Las Vegas; Michael's bodyguards Al Neri and Rocco Lampone are chosen to be the future caporegimes of the family.

Vito dies of a heart attack while playing with his grandson Anthony in his garden. His last words in the novel are, "Life is so beautiful. " Vito's funeral is a grand affair, with all the other dons, capos and consiglieres in New York attending.

Some days before his death, Vito tells Michael that Barzini would set him up to be killed under cover of a meeting "to fix up things". Barzini would use a trusted member of the Corleone family as an intermediary, and that whoever came to Michael about the meeting with Barzini was a traitor. At the funeral, Tessio tells Michael that he had set up a meeting on his territory in Brooklyn, where Michael would presumably be safe. Michael concludes that Tessio is the traitor. A few days later, Michael orders the deaths of the other New York Dons, as well as Tessio. He also avenges Sonny's death by having Carlo murdered. In truth, Michael and Vito had begun planning this mass slaughter soon after Michael's return to the United States; in a last demonstration of Vito's cunning, they had deliberately allowed the Barzini-Tattaglia alliance to whittle away at their interests in order to lull them into inaction. Late in the novel, it is revealed that Vito figured out early on that Carlo had helped set Sonny up to be killed. However, Vito couldn't bring himself to order the death of his son-in-law, and went into semi-retirement in part because he knew Michael would carry out that duty without reservation.