He and his wife Carmela have four children: three sons, Santino ("Sonny"), Frederico ("Fredo") and Michael ("Mike"), and one daughter, Constanzia ("Connie").

Vito 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.

He is also known as a traditionalist who demands respect commensurate with his status; even his closest friends refer to him as "Godfather" or "Don Corleone" rather than "Vito".

In 2019, Francis Ford Coppola wroteMario told me that all of the great dialogue, those quotable lines he put into the mouth of Don Corleone, were actually spoken by Mario's mother.

In 1901, the local mafia chieftain, Don Ciccio, murders Vito's father Antonio when he refuses to pay him tribute.

Paolo, Vito's older brother (presumably ret-conned as the one born in 1887), swears revenge, but Ciccio's men kill him too.

At Ellis Island, an immigration official renames him Vito Corleone presumably by mistake, using his village for his surname.

In 1920, Vito 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.

It eventually becomes the nation's largest olive oil importing company, and the main legal front for Vito's growing organized crime syndicate.

When Ciccio asks him to approach, he reveals himself to be the son of Antonio Andolini and carves open the elderly Don's stomach, thus avenging his family.

By the early 1930s, Vito has organized his criminal operations as the Corleone crime family, one of the most powerful in the nation.

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

He agrees to have Clemenza's men beat up two college students who sexually assaulted family friend Amerigo Bonasera's daughter, and to send Hagen to Hollywood to persuade movie mogul Jack Woltz to cast Fontane in his latest movie.

Sollozzo is backed by the rival Tattaglia family, and wants Vito's political influence and legal protection.

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

At the same time, Michael and Vito secretly plan to eliminate the other New York dons, while allowing them to whittle away at Corleone family interests to lull them into inaction.

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

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

He sent Sacheen Littlefeather to accept the award on his behalf, who said Brando declined it because of "the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry ... and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.

[8] In his auditions, he stuffed Kleenex tissues between his lower lips and teeth to create this appearance, which were replaced by a custom-made "plumper" oral prosthetic during filming.

[9][10] Since then, the role of Anita in West Side Story has also matched this feat by winning multiple Oscars for Best Supporting Actress, the first for Rita Moreno in 1961 and then for Ariana DeBose in 2021.