Vito Corleone - Early Years

Early Years

Vito was born in the small town of Corleone, Sicily, on December 7, 1891. Antonio Andolini, his father, is murdered by the local Mafia boss, Don Ciccio, because he refused to pay tribute to him. His older brother, Paolo, swears revenge, but he too is murdered soon afterwards. Eventually, Ciccio's henchmen come to the Andolini's home to kill Vito. In desperation, Vito's mother takes her son to see the Mafia chieftain herself and begs him to spare Vito. Ciccio refuses, reasoning that Vito will also seek revenge as an adult. Upon Ciccio's refusal, Vito's mother puts a knife to his throat, allowing her son to escape while she is killed. Later that night, he is smuggled away, fleeing from Sicily to seek refuge in America on a cargo ship full of immigrants. In the film, he is renamed "Vito Corleone" because the immigration workers at Ellis Island mistake "Andolini" for his middle name and the name of his town for his last name. According to The Godfather Part II, he later adopts the middle name "Andolini" to acknowledge his heritage.

Vito is later adopted by the Abbandando family in Little Italy on the Lower East Side and he befriends their son, Genco, who becomes like a brother to him. Vito begins making an honest living at Abbandando's grocery store on Ninth Avenue, but the elder Abbadando is forced to fire him when Don Fanucci, a blackhander and the local neighborhood padrone, demands that the grocery hire his nephew.

He soon learns to survive and prosper through petty crime and performing favors in return for loyalty. During this time, he also befriends two other low-level hoods, Peter Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio. In 1920, he commits his first murder, killing Fanucci, who had threatened to turn him, Clemenza and Tessio into the police unless he got a cut of their illegal profits. Vito chooses the day of a major Italian festival to spy on Fanucci from the rooftops as Fanucci goes home, and surprises him at the door to his apartment. He shoots Fanucci three times, as the din from the festival and the towel he had wrapped around the gun as a makeshift silencer drowns out the noise from the gunshots. Vito then takes over the neighborhood, treating it with far more respect than Fanucci had.

As a young man, Vito starts an olive oil importing business, Genco Pura (simply known as Genco Olive Oil in the films), with his friend Genco. Over the years he uses it as a legal front for his growing organized crime syndicate. Nevertheless, Genco Pura is highly successful and grows to become the largest olive oil importing company in the nation. Between Genco Pura and his illegal operations, Vito becomes a very wealthy man. In 1925, he returns to Sicily for the first time since fleeing as a child. He and his partner, Don Tommasino, then set up a meeting with the aging Don Ciccio, where he kills him by carving his stomach open, thus avenging his murdered family.

By the early 1930s, Vito Corleone has organized his illegal operations into the Corleone crime family. Abbandando becomes his consigliere, with Clemenza and Tessio as caporegimes. Although it is relatively small, it is soon reckoned as the most powerful crime family in the nation. Later, his oldest son Santino (nicknamed "Sonny") becomes a capo as well, and eventually his underboss. Around 1939, he moves his base of operations to Long Beach, New York on Long Island. While he oversees a business founded on gambling, bootlegging, and union corruption, he is known as a generous man who lives by a strict moral code of loyalty to friends and, above all, family. At the same time, he is known as a traditionalist who demands respect commensurate with his status.