Vito Corleone Was a Composite of Real Mob Bosses — The Godfather’s Hidden True Stories
Vito Corleone wasn’t based on one person. Mario Puzo drew from Carlo Gambino, Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, and Joe Profaci to create fiction’s greatest don.
The Five Families
Stories from the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese families
How Joe Colombo Literally Rewrote The Godfather — and Put Real Hitmen on Set
Joe Colombo didn’t just protest The Godfather — he infiltrated the production, got the word ‘Mafia’ removed from the script, and placed real mob soldiers on Francis Ford Coppola’s set.
The $191 Million Housing Scam the Genovese Family Ran While Their Boss Pretended to Be Insane
While Vincent ‘The Chin’ Gigante wandered Greenwich Village in a bathrobe pretending to be crazy, his family was running one of the most sophisticated housing fraud schemes in New York history.