It could probably be anyone....

But I personally think it was a hybrid of Charlie Luciano and Frank Costello.

It was a composite. Although TB would disgree, I think Vito was primarily based on Joe Bonanno.

Definitely a composite. I think the relationship with the Sinatra-like character was based on Willie Moretti. The olive oil distribution is definitely Joe Profaci.

Luciano : hell lot of things similar, but if i had to pick one.....then, the shooting of Vito Corleone and Luciano's shooting in the Castellamarese war was kinda same.

Costello : Vito's refusal to be handling the narcotics business, among many other things

He is indeed a composite of various mobsters, but in particulary Frank Costello, Carlo Gambino, Lucky Luciano and Joe Profaci.

His personality was said by Puzo to be based on his mother. But I'm sceptic as to how serious he was about that statement.

But his behaviour/beliefs are cleary inspired by old time Sicilian mob bosses from the early 20th century.

You can find more about this here:

http://godfather.wikia.com/wiki/Vito_Corleone

I saw a program on OC that said Joe Bonanno would meet with people every Tues and Thurs. and listen to their personal non-mob related problems and do favors. The description was exactly as depicted in the opening scene of the movie. I don't know if any of the other major bosses regularly did this though. Of course the similarities would end with Vito's ban on drugs.

I have this documentary, it's broadcasted by National Geographic. Anyway, it's his son who tells us this in this docu and he's known to be unreliable. He and his father have made a living of romanticizing their former life style.

Vito's most important attribute was his devotion to family. Among all the real life Dons, that attribute is most associated with Bonanno, so that's why I think he was the primary inspiration for Vito.

But Bonanno was up to his neck in drugs.

Up to his neck, ears, nose and throat in drugs.

I don't know if it's true or not, but I had to wonder what would motivate a mob boss to do something like that..perhaps alleviate guilt for being a mob boss or projecting a positive image among the paesans?

In terms of his personality and having some old world traditional values, you may be right. There's Vito's well-known line "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man." Of the major bosses from that period, I can picture Bonanno saying something like this.

C'mon it wasn't his fault. Unbeknownst to him, his underboss was dealing behind his back...just kidding.

I don't think any really successful Mob boss feels too much guilt but I guess that could be a motive. I think the more likely motive is to, as you write, get good PR. Back in the day mob experts and law enforcement created analyses of Mafia families that had all these little boxes and arrows when the more appropriate analogy may have been the cosca (artichoke).

Whether fictional or real, a mob boss, captain or soldier who did favors for non-Mob people in the neighborhood was making connections that he might be able to use some day. It's a way of binding people to you very closely.

Maybe because a mafiosi did something nice for someone 1 day out of the year, someday down the road someone tells him of an unmarked FBI surveillance in the neighborhood, or he's able to reach out to a jury member whose brother-in-law he helped out of a jam or he gets early information about pending indictments or someone tells him about a criminal opportunity he doesn't know about or a cop looks the other way on his bookmaking deal because he protects the cop's elderly mother from neighborhood thugs or he gets a really good deal on his transmission repair or whatever.. Basically I think this would just be about building a network of people you can call on in a pinch as well as playing neighborhood big shot.

One of the major raps on Castellano (and one of the reasons for his demise) was that he never met with subordinates in a friendly way, in the street. He was a near-recluse who summoned (very few) of them to his palace in Staten Island.

Joe bannano,i remember

It is surely Frank Costello. I have heard a lot about this.

Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello

The most likely source of inspiration for Vito Corleone is Joseph Bonanno, for various reasons
First, like Vito, was a young Mafia boss and gave his name to the family,
Second, made and then tried to make boss his son Bill, sparking the famous banana war in the late 60s
Third he was apparently contrary to the drugs, but actually did a lot of business with heroin and sent to deal Carmine Galante,
Fourth; in a scene Sonny says, that''there are 100 men on the streets''; the Bonannos have always been small for this Joe had alliance with his cousin Joe Magaddino from Buffalo
Fifht, as Vito, he was born in Sicily.

Source? Bonanno himself stated that his family had 300 made members. He inherited the Maranzano organization which defeated Masseria's outfit. They apparantly had 150 made members during the 1960s to the 1980s, and again in the late 1990s. And you shouldn't take Sonny's statement too serious. The Corleones were the most powerful crime family in the country, and saying that there were 100 men on the streets doesn't mean that these were the only men they had. The Corleones still had rackets and other businesses to attent to or to protect.



Yeah, like 99% of the other crime bosses of his era.

Joseph Bonanno

Pizza Boy!

I heard some people say he was based on Sammy "The plumber" Decavalcante. Or at least partially. Brando even kind of looks like him. I'd say a cross between Costello(politics in his pocket), profaci(olive oil business), Decavalcante(quietness among other things).

In the past, I thought he was mostly based on Frank Costello, with the raspy voice, Long Island mansion, and political connections. But, I have to reluctantly admit that after reading Bill Bonanno's book, he convinced me that Vito was based on Joe Bananas.

The huge wedding between Bill Bonanno and Rosalie Profaci, with Tony Bennett singing, was comparable to the opening wedding scene with Johnny Fontaine.

Vito retiring and passing the reigns to Michael was reminiscent of Joe handing the torch to Bill.

DeCavalcante has always reminded me of Dennis Farina.

It's not based on anybody, really. Puzo didn't know all that much about the mob. I think he lived in little italy in manhattan so he was very much aware of the mob's existance and the locally famous people in it, but he didn't really know anything specific about anything and just made all the people up based on what he saw/his experiences.

Mario Puzo took a lot of elements of different bosses and incorporated them into character of Vito Corleone. I think the large home and grounds in New Jersey where Vito lived was based on Profaci.

NJ??

I'd have to disagree. Although Puzo presents us with a heavily-romanticized vision of the Mafia, it was published near the end of almost a decade of revelations about the real thing (e.g. The Valachi Papers had finally been published just a year earlier), which is one of the reasons for The Godfather's huge success - in 1969 the general public was morbidly fascinated by this shadowy underworld they'd all heard and read so much about over the past few years.

There's no doubt in my mind that Puzo was able to research the theme for his novel fairly thoroughly, including drawing on real mafiosi, past and present, for his characters: he just found 'the real thing' distinctly lacking for his purposes, so instead gave us the fascinating Corleone Family and their world.

As mentioned above by some, the Vito Corleone character as well as some of the story was a compilation of several well known mobsters / real life events.

The wedding scene was most definitely based on the wedding of Bill & Rosalie Bonnano.

The story about Luca Brazi assisting Vito in getting Johnny out of a contract with a big time band leader is loosely based on Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey. Real life gangster Willie Moretti was alleged to be the one who held a gun to the band leaders head.

Vito being the king of Olive Oil.....Joe Profaci
Vito's political connections.....Frank Costello
Vito being soft spoken and and low key......Carlo Gambino

I heard Marlon Brando studied Frank Costello's voice to use in the film. Also, wasn't Costello against the drug trade? Maybe that was connected to Vito being against drugs as well...

Costello's arch-enemy, Vito Genovese, who engineered Costello's retirement with a botched hit, was strongly behind drugs. Some accounts have it that the abortive 1957 Apalachin meeting was called, in part, by Genovese to bless drug-trafficking.