The Reel Thing
vs.
The Real Thing(s)

Left: Don Carlo (Real),
Right: Don Paul (Real)
and
Middle: Don Vito (Reel),

For all the

TRUTH

revealed by history, biography, science, mathematics, philosophy, and good citizenship, there remains yet one unanswered question in the Universe. And its resolution is no nearer today than in Millennia past.

Well, then, what is that profound question? We'd really like to know what it is.

I thought you would as Captain Mephisto said to Sidney Brand. It's very simple really.

     JUST HOW

 ACCURATE

      WAS THE

THE
    GODFATHER?

We mean the book and the movie, of course.

You'll read that yes, both tomes give us a realistic depiction of the Mafia - its code of honor, the separation of the "business" from personal family life, and the avoiding of socially disruptive crimes like drugs in favor of more commonplace nefariousness like gambling, booze, women, loansharking, extortion, labor racketeering, not to mention belchin', splittin', and cussin'. Still the Mafia is an organization that was always willing to deal harshly, even brutally, with those who transgressed the Godfather's commands.

Others say it's all balderdash, hogwash, and poppycock. Yes, the Mafia is brutal. But it's also one of the most dysfunctional organizations imaginable. There is no honor among thieves, and if you want a picture of a Mafia boss, forget about the thoughtful, intelligent Don Vito Corleone.¹ Instead, think about Ralph Kramden.²

Organized crime? More like disorganized crime.

The problem with finding out what - quote - "The Mafia" - unquote - is - quote - "really like" - unquote - is the question presupposes a homogeneity in an organization composed of a myriad of individuals whose behavior, personalities, and philosophies are about as divergent as the theologies expounded during the Council of Nicea.

But first things first. Just where did Mario Puzo dream up the character of Don Vito Corleone?

Well, you'll hear about some real life Mafiosi. There's "Don" Carlo Gambino, Frank "The Prime Minister" Costello, Angelo "The Gentle Don" Bruno, and "Big" Paul Castellano. Maybe even Joseph "Joe Bananas" Bonanno. And of course, as is common in fiction, a character may very well be a composite.

For his part, Mario himself said he never knew anyone from the Mafia. Instead, the novel was simply based on his research. As far as the model for Don Vito Corleone, we know who it was since he told us. It was his mother.

Now that doesn't mean that Mrs. Maria Puzo was involved in iniquitous activities or made people offers they couldn't refuse. Instead Mario meant that Don Vito's attitude to his family reflected his mom's. She wanted her children to grow up to success even though she had been forced to raise her seven kids after her husband skinned out (he was later committed to a mental hospital). From Mario's own description his mom was not a woman to be denied and when he heard Marlon Brando delivering the lines, he could hear his mother.

As far as saying "no" to drugs, the Mafia was an early and big trafficker in narcotics, particularly heroin. The trade went back a long time and it was Charles "Lucky" Luciano, the mob boss who decided to run crime like a business, who became big time in smuggling in "the white stuff". Even when he was deported to Italy after World War II, Charlie was rumored to have snuck H into the United States - by hiding it in dolls no less.

The appeal of the heroin racket was not just the cash. It also fit in with the economics of the large metropolitan areas of the early 20th century. Not only were there plenty of customers, but most businesses were small, privately owned, and operated on a cash basis. So they were perfect "fronts" for many a mob boss pushing the smack.

One of the more infamous cases was a heroin ring tied in with a number of New York City's pizzerias - the "Pizza Connection". The modus moberandi was for the boss to buy up a number of restaurants around the city. Then each day the "take" from the neighborhood racket would be funneled through the shop. With the dough in hand - not pizza by the way - the manager would simply write up some fake sales receipts to cover the drug money. As long as the big boss was the official shop owner, it looked like he was just getting his proper percentage of a legitimate business. And who could say no?³

But anyone who saw The Godfather realizes the movie did not represent - quote - "The Mafia" - unquote - wanting to stay away from drugs. Instead it was Don Vito who wanted to stay away from drugs. Other mobsters were fine with it, including Don Vito's son Sonny as played by James Caan.

Of course, if a mob boss didn't want to "deal with drugs", that didn't mean he wasn't willing to profit from drugs. Any independent operator working in the mob's territory would have to set aside a portion, say 20% of their sales, for the boss. But direct involvement just brought too much heat and bad publicity. Worse, the long prison sentences gave a perpetrator too much of an incentive to forget the oath of silence - the notorious omertà.

Look at it this way. If you were caught running some numbers to the local bank, then with parole and good time release, you could be out in a few months - or like as not you wouldn't got to jail at all. So it paid to keep your mouth shut about the "business".

But say you were arrested for smuggling "horse" and were staring at three consecutive sentences of 35-to-50. Now you had a real incentive to cut a deal with the prosecutors. Just testify against your boss, and hey, presto!, you'd get a new identity on the witness protection program. So "flipping" became more and more of a problem as the "war on drugs" really began to take off.

As time went on the increasing number of mobsters turning state's evidence made the bosses nervous. This in turn produced a positive feedback loop. That is, as more mobsters flipped, the more nervous the big bosses got. And the more nervous the big bosses got, the more suspicious they got. And the more suspicious they got, the more they began to take Iago's advice to heart:

But I, for mere suspicion in that kind
Will do, as if for surety.

So it wasn't a question to flip or not to flip. But when.

Returning to more mundane matters there's even the question about whether the words "godfather" and "don" were even used by the Mafiosi. After all in 1997, Mario said...

The term "godfather" was a term I invented. It was never used for a criminal figure. In Italian neighborhoods, you could call a close friend of your parents "compare"⁴ or "godfather" even though he wasn't your godfather... But nobody ever used the term "godfather" in reference to criminals, not even the Mafia. The term didn't exist before I used it.

However, the Oxford English Dictionary cites a use from 1963 when the low level Mafiaso Joseph Valachi testified before the McClelland Committee - officially and garrulously titled The United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management. Joe has been credited as the first "rat" to spill the beans to the government about the Mafia and to testify publicly about its existence. And in his testimony he specifically used the word "godfather" to refer to one of the men leading the initiation ceremony for new Mafia members.

So a Mafia higher-up could indeed be called a "godfather". However, from Joe's context this did not necessarily mean it was the big boss. Instead, it seems to have been the sponsor - the master of ceremonies, if you will - of the initiate. A bigwig perhaps but not necessarily the Godfather as it was used in the novel and the film.

Exactly how the word "don" was used by the Mafiosi is a bit more problematical. Again you'll read that its use for a crime boss was invented by Mario. But "don" was a title of respect that goes back to the early Italian and Spanish Middle Ages. As far as its use in the Mafia, in 1964 - five years before The Godfather was published - a US government document specifically mentioned "Don" Carlo Gambino as one of the most powerful underworld leaders in the United States. It also stated Carlo was involved in large scale narcotics smuggling (so much for being against drugs), and among his - quote - "legitimate businesses" - unquote - was a labor consulting firm.

Now here's where we wonder if the government's information was as good as it could have been. The same document also mentions Carlo as being 5'7" and 200 pounds. That gives a Body Mass Index of 31.3 - an index indicative that Carlo was quite tubby, even obese. Now Carlo had many faults, yes, but being obese wasn't one of them.

But what about the word "Mafia" itself? Joe Valachi said that was the term used by outsiders. Instead, the Mafia members themselves said they belonged to Cosa Nostra⁵ - "Our Thing". Or as Joe put it, "This thing of ours".

Sometimes you'll read hardly anyone even knew about the Mafia before the 1960's. But the word "Mafia" to mean a criminal organization with origins in Italy and Sicily is documented even in the 19th century - even Sherlock Holmes battled the Mafia.⁶ On the other hand the story is it wasn't until 1957 that the US government acknowledged that the Mafia actually existed. Until then the official opinion was that organized crime was a local phenomenon and not part of any larger interconnected national organization.

Many reasons are advanced as to why the USA was in Mafia Denial for so long. Maybe it was the Mafiosi had pictures or maybe there simply wasn't much point is saying an organization existed when it was almost impossible to garner convictions. Because their actual involvement in criminal activities was hard to prove, the Mafia honchos were rarely sent to prison.

But an eventum crucis changed all this. Joseph "Joe the Barber" Barbara had summoned a meeting for November 14, 1957 at his house in Apalachin, New York. This famous Meeting of the Mobsters was called to divvy up the various operations after the demise of Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anatasia had left a lot of loose ends hanging.

The sudden appearance of a bunch of fancy cars with license plates from all over the country just sitting in Joe's driveway came to the attention of the local constabulary. So the cops set up roadblocks and then raided Joe's home.

Suddenly you had a bunch of middle aged and elderly men, all attired in their in expensive and tailor-made suits sprinting through the woods in rural New York. Some got away but others ended up getting nabbed and hauled to the Apalachin hoosegow⁷.

The problem though was trying to pinpoint exactly what the mobsters had done wrong. Meeting in a house isn't really a crime and it took some creativity to find some charges. These were mostly obstruction of justice since the mobsters were evasive when questioned as what they were all doing. The cases were indeed weak and all were tossed out on appeal.

But what the Apalachin meeting did was to emphasize that it was the hands off approach taken by the mob bosses that was making prosecution difficult. So in 1970 Congress finally passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act - usually abbreviated to RICO. This law permitted prosecution and conviction of mobsters who ordered crimes to be committed but they didn't do any of the rough stuff themselves. Originally intended to put Mafia members in jail, the law is most flexible and also been applied to judges, police departments, politicians, corporations, and sports leagues.

Regarding Don Vito's personal life, in The Godfather we see him as the quintessential family man and always loyal to "Mama" Corleone. However, other writers point out that it was common - almost de rigueur - for the Boss to have a girlfriend or a goomah. Supposedly this word is a corruption of the Italian comare⁸, which also means - strangely enough - godmother.

Instead we're told the character of Sonny Corleone is more in line with reality. Although Sonny was married, he had his girlfriends, a facet that Don Vito sometimes thought was softening his son's brain. Sonny's volatile personality and violent temper was also in line with what stand-up comedians and other entertainers found when they were still having to play in clubs run by the mob⁹.

However, sometimes the Bosses were one-woman men - but it might not be their wife who was that one woman. "Big Paul" Castellano had taken over the Gambino family after Carlo died (somewhat surprisingly in his bed and of natural causes). But Paul had also become infatuated with, Gloria, the family's live-in maid, an infatuation that prompted Mrs. Castellano to move out of their fancy Staten Island home. Of course, Gloria did not have spousal privilege, and when she was shopping, FBI agents would politely invite her to sit down for a cup of coffee. Naturally she was concerned about what to do. Paul told her not to worry. She should accept their invitations, answer their questions, and never lie.

Gloria didn't, and during the innocuous and innocent conversations the Feds learned that Paul had a satellite dish set up to receive his favorite television shows. Soon he started having reception problems, not knowing that some people - like electronics experts in the FBI - could disrupt the signal from afar. So he called in a repairman.

Of course, instead of the company's technician he got an undercover FBI agent. And by golly, the "repairman" found he needed to work on the wire that went through a cabinet in Paul's kitchen - exactly where Paul liked to sit and discuss business with his buddies. From the surreptitiously planted bug, soon Paul was inadvertently spilling the beans, and he and his buddies found themselves on trial. But before the trial ended Paul stepped out of his limousine to go into a swank New York restaurant and that was pretty much that.

Maybe Paul should have gotten cable instead.

References

"Mario Puzo at 100", Martin Chilton, The Independent, October 15, 2020.

"Wise Guy", Nicholas Pileggi, Simon and Schuster, 1986.

"Questions: Origin of 'Godfather' in English", English Language and Usage.