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• 
  

• 
  California
  California (pronounced ⁱ/kælɨˈfɔrnjə/) is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third most extensive (after Alaska and Texas). It is home to the nation's second- and sixth-largest census statistical areas (Los Angeles Metropolitan Area and San Francisco Bay Area), and eight of the nation's fifty most populated cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, Long Beach and Oakland). The capital city is Sacramento.
  California's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west, to the Sierra Nevada mountains in the east – from the Redwood–Douglas-fir forests of the northwest, to the Mojave Desert areas in the southeast. The center of the state is dominated by Central Valley, a major agricultural area. California contains both the highest and lowest points in the contiguous United States (Mount Whitney and Death Valley), and has the third-longest coastline of all states (after Alaska and Florida). Earthquakes are a common occurrence due to the state's location along the Pacific Ring of Fire: about 37,000 are recorded annually.
  
  wn.com/California
• 
  Corleone
  Corleone (Sicilian: Cunigghiuni) is a small town and comune of approximately 12,000 inhabitants in the Province of Palermo in Sicily, Italy.
  It is known primarily as the birthplace of several Mafia bosses, some fictional, such as The Godfather's Vito (Andolini) Corleone, and some real, such as Jack Dragna, Giuseppe Morello, Michele Navarra, Luciano Leggio, Leoluca Bagarella, Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano.
  The local mafia clan, the Corleonesi, led the Mafia in the 1980s and 1990s, and were the most violent and ruthless Mafia clan ever to take control of the organization.
  During the Emirate of Sicily, the city was known as Qurlayun. The Normans later achieved prominence after their conquest of Sicily.
  A lookout tower built between the 11th and 12th century, known as Saracena, still stands. The view from the tower includes the Cascata delle Due Rocche, a sheer drop following the path of the Corleone river.
  At one time the town was surrounded by defensive walls that connected the Castello Soprano and Castello Sottano. The latter is better preserved than the Soprano, but it cannot be visited since it serves as a Franciscan retreat.
  
  wn.com/Corleone
• 
  Cuba
  Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, (ⁱ/ˈkjuːbə/; Spanish: República de Cuba, pronounced: [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈkuβa] ( listen)) is an island country in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. To the north of Cuba lies the United States (140 km or 90 mi away) and the Bahamas, Mexico is to the west, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica are to the south, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic are to the southeast.
  In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on and claimed the island now occupied by Cuba, for the Kingdom of Spain. Cuba remained a territory of Spain until the Spanish–American War ended in 1898, and gained formal independence from the U.S. in 1902. A fragile democracy, increasingly dominated by radical politics eventually evolved, solidified by the Cuban Constitution of 1940, but was definitely quashed in 1952 by former president Fulgencio Batista, and an authoritarian regime was set up, intensifying and catalyzing already rampant corruption, political repression and crippling economic regulations.Batista was ousted in January 1959 by the July 26 movement, and a new administration under Fidel Castro established, which had by 1965 evolved into a single-party state under the revived Communist Party of Cuba, which holds power to date.
  
  wn.com/Cuba
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  Dominican Republic
  The Dominican Republic (ⁱ/dəˌmɪnɨkən rɨˈpʌblɪk/; Spanish: República Dominicana [reˈpuβlika ðominiˈkana]) is a nation on the island of Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries. Both by area and population, the Dominican Republic is the second largest Caribbean nation (after Cuba), with 48,442 square kilometres (18,704 sq mi) and an estimated 10 million people.
  Taínos inhabited what is now the Dominican Republic since the 7th century. Christopher Columbus landed on it in 1492, and it became the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, namely Santo Domingo, the country's capital and Spain's first capital in the New World. Santo Domingo can boast of many firsts in the Americas, including the first cathedral, and castle, both in the Ciudad Colonial area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  
  wn.com/Dominican_Republic
• 
  Empire of Japan
  The Empire of Japan (Kyūjitai: 大日本帝國; Shinjitai: 大日本帝国; Romaji: Dai Nippon Teikoku; literally Great Imperial State of Japan; officially Great Japan or Empire of Great Japan; commonly as Imperial Japan or the Japanese Empire) was an empire and world power that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of Japan on 3 May 1947.
  Imperial Japan's rapid industrialization and militarization under the slogan Fukoku Kyōhei (富国強兵^?, "Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Army") led to its emergence as a world power, eventually culminating in its membership in the Axis alliance and the conquest of a large part of the Asia-Pacific region. At the height of its power in 1942, the Japanese Empire ruled over a land area spanning 7,400,000 square kilometres (2,857,000 sq mi), making it one of the largest maritime empires in history.
  After several large-scale military successes during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the Pacific War, the Empire of Japan also gained notoriety for its war crimes against the peoples of the countries it conquered. After suffering many defeats and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allies on 2 September 1945. A period of occupation by the Allies followed the surrender, and a new constitution was created with American involvement. The constitution came into force on 3 May 1947, officially dissolving the Empire. American occupation and reconstruction of the country continued well into the 1950s, eventually forming the current nation-state whose title is simply that ("the nation of Japan" Nippon-koku) or just "Japan" .
  
  wn.com/Empire_of_Japan
• 
  Havana
  Havana (/həˈvænə/; Spanish: La Habana, [la aˈβana] ( listen)) is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of 726.75 km² (280.60 sq mi) — making it the largest city by area, the most populous city, and the fourth largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean region. The city extends mostly westward and southward from the bay, which is entered through a narrow inlet and which divides into three main harbours: Marimelena, Guanabacoa and Atarés. The sluggish Almendares River traverses the city from south to north, entering the Straits of Florida a few miles west of the bay.
  Havana was founded by the Spanish in the 16th century and due to its strategic location it served as a springboard for the Spanish conquest of the continent becoming a stopping point for the treasure laden Spanish Galleons on the crossing between the New World and the Old World. King Philip II of Spain granted Havana the title of City in 1592. Walls as well as forts were built to protect the old city. The sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana's harbor in 1898 was the immediate cause of the Spanish-American War.
  
  wn.com/Havana
• 
  Israel
  Coordinates: 31°N 35°E / 31°N 35°E / 31; 35
  Israel, officially the State of Israel ( /ˈɪzriːəl/ or  /ˈɪzreɪəl/; Hebrew: מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל‎, Medīnat Yisrā'el, IPA: [me̞diˈnät jisʁäˈʔe̞l] ( listen); Arabic: دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل‎, Dawlat Isrāʼīl, IPA: [dawlat ʔisraːˈʔiːl]), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south, and it contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is defined as a Jewish and Democratic State in its Basic Laws and is the world's only Jewish-majority state.
  Following the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption and implementation of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine, on 14 May 1948 David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, a state independent from the British Mandate for Palestine. Neighboring Arab states invaded the next day in support of the Palestinian Arabs. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied the West Bank, Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Portions of these territories, including east Jerusalem, have been annexed by Israel, but the border with the neighboring West Bank has not yet been permanently defined.^{[neutrality is disputed]} Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, but efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have so far not resulted in peace.
  
  wn.com/Israel
• 
  Miami
  Miami ( /maɪˈæmi/ or /maɪˈæmə/) is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625. The 42nd largest city proper in the United States, with a population of 408,568, it is the principal, central, and most populous city of the South Florida metropolitan area, and the most populous metropolis in the Southeastern United States. According to the US Census Bureau, Miami's metro area is the seventh most populous and fifth-largest urban area in the United States, with a population of around 5.5 million.
  Miami is a major center and a leader in finance, commerce, culture, media, entertainment, the arts, and international trade. In 2010, Miami was classified as a Alpha- World City in the World Cities Study Group’s inventory. In 2010, Miami ranked seventh in the United States in terms of finance, commerce, culture, entertainment, fashion, education, and other sectors. It ranked thirty-third among global cities. In 2008, Forbes magazine ranked Miami "America's Cleanest City", for its year-round good air quality, vast green spaces, clean drinking water, clean streets and city-wide recycling programs. According to a 2009 UBS study of 73 world cities, Miami was ranked as the richest city in the United States, and the world's fifth-richest city in terms of purchasing power. Miami is nicknamed the "Capital of Latin America", is the 2nd largest U.S. city (after El Paso) with a Spanish-speaking majority, and the largest city with a Cuban-American plurality.
  
  wn.com/Miami
• 
  Nevada
  Nevada (ⁱ/nəˈvædə/ or /nəˈvɒdə/) is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. Nevada is the 7th most extensive, the 35th most populous, and the 9th least densely populated of the 50 United States. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in one single county, Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area, where the state's three largest incorporated cities are located. Nevada's capital is Carson City.
  Nevada is largely desert and semiarid, with much of it located within the Great Basin. Areas south of the Great Basin are located within the Mojave Desert, while Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada mountains lie on the western edge. Approximately 86% of the state's land is owned by the US government under various jurisdictions, both civilian and military.
  The name Nevada is derived from the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains, which means "snow-capped mountain range" in Spanish. The land comprising the modern state was inhabited by Native Americans of the Paiute, Shoshone, and Washoe tribes prior to European contact. It was subsequently claimed by Spain as a part of Alta California until the Mexican War of Independence brought it under Mexican control. The United States gained the territory in 1848 following its victory in the Mexican-American War and the area was eventually incorporated as part of Utah Territory in 1850. The discovery of silver at the Comstock Lode in 1859 led to a population boom that was an impetus to the creation of Nevada Territory out of western Utah Territory in 1861. Nevada became the 36th state on October 31, 1864.
  
  wn.com/Nevada
• 
  New York City
  New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
  Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km²), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km²), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.
  
  wn.com/New_York_City
• 
  Santo Domingo
  Santo Domingo, known officially as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, and estimated at 3,712,391 in 2010. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River. Founded by Bartholomew Columbus in 1496, it is the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas, and was the first seat of Spanish colonial rule in the New World. It lies within the boundaries of the Distrito Nacional (D.N.; "National District"), itself bordered on three sides by Santo Domingo Province.
  Santo Domingo was called "Ciudad Trujillo", from 1930 to 1961, after the Dominican Republic's dictator, Rafael Trujillo, named the capital after himself. Following his assassination, the city resumed its original designation. Today, Santo Domingo is the Dominican Republic's major metropolis, and is the largest city in the Caribbean by population.^{[citation needed]} Santo Domingo is ranked as a Gamma world city by Loughborough University.
  
  wn.com/Santo_Domingo
• 
  Sicily
  Sicily (Italian and Sicilian: Sicilia, [siˈtʃiːlja]; [sɪˈɕilja]) is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea; along with surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana (Sicilian Autonomous Region).
  Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean. It extends from the tip of the Apennine peninsula from which it is separated only by the narrow Strait of Messina, towards the North African coast. Its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, which is at 3,320 m (10,890 ft) the tallest active volcano in Europe and one of the most active in the world. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate.
  The earliest archeological evidence of human dwelling on the island dates from 8000 BC. At around 750 BC, Sicily became a Greek colony and for the next 600 years it was the site of the Greek-Punic and Roman-Punic wars, which ended with the Roman destruction of Carthage. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Sicily often changed hands, and during the early Middle Ages it was ruled in turn by the Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Arabs and Normans. Later on, the Kingdom of Sicily lasted between 1130 and 1816, subordinated to the crowns of Aragon, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and finally the Bourbons, as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It was united with the rest of Italy in 1860, but a subsequent economic collapse led to a wave of emigration, separatism, and the emergence of the Mafia, whose criminal activities pose problems to this day. After the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946, Sicily was given special status as an autonomous region.
  
  wn.com/Sicily
• 
  Turin
  Turin (Italian: Torino, pronounced [toˈriːno] ( listen); Piedmontese: Turin, pronounced [tyˈɾiŋ]; Latin: Augusta Taurinorum) is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 (November 2008) while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 1.7 million inhabitants. The Turin metropolitan area is estimated by the OECD to have a population of 2.2 million.
  The city has a rich culture and history, and is known for its numerous art galleries, restaurants, churches, palaces, opera houses, piazzas, parks, gardens, theatres, libraries, museums and other venues. Turin is well known for its baroque, rococo, neo-classical, and Art Nouveau architecture. Much of the city's public squares, castles, gardens and elegant palazzi such as Palazzo Madama, were built in the 16th and 18th century, after the capital of the Duchy of Savoy (later Kingdom of Sardinia) was moved to Turin from Chambery( nowadays France) as part of the urban expansion.
  
  wn.com/Turin

• 
  Abe Vigoda
  Abe Vigoda (pronounced /vɨˈɡoʊdə/; born February 24, 1921) is an American movie and television actor who appeared in such movies as The Godfather and Good Burger. Vigoda is well known for his portrayal of Sal Tessio in The Godfather and for his portrayal of Detective Sgt. Phil Fish on the sitcom television series Barney Miller from 1975 to 1977 and on its spinoff show Fish that aired from February 1977 to June 1978 on ABC. Vigoda was also appearing on Barney Miller at the same time as he was on Fish during the 1976–1977 TV season; at the start of the 1977–1978 season, his character retired from the police force and left Barney Miller to focus full time on the spinoff.
  Following an erroneous report of his death in 1982, and another in 1987, Vigoda has been the subject of running gags about whether he is alive or dead. A website was mounted and a Firefox extension was written solely to report on Vigoda's status. Good naturedly, he made regular appearances on television shows to make fun of the error. In February 2010, Vigoda appeared with fellow octogenarian Betty White in a widely seen and well-liked Superbowl ad for Snickers candy bars.
  
  wn.com/Abe_Vigoda
• Al Neri
  Albert "Al" Neri is a fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather and the three films based on it. In all three motion pictures, he is portrayed by actor Richard Bright. In The Godfather: The Game, he is voiced by Gary Chalk. He functions as the personal bodyguard of and chief assassin for Michael Corleone.
  In the novel The Godfather, Neri begins his career as a New York City patrolman, where he earns a reputation for a fierce temper, quick reflexes, and tremendous physical strength. He frequently patrols with a large flashlight, which he uses to great effect, either cracking the foreheads of Italian youths who run with gangs or shattering the windshields of diplomats who show no regard for traffic or parking laws. After his wife leaves him in fear of his temper, he kills a drug dealer and pimp by shattering his skull with the flashlight, and is convicted of manslaughter. Neri's defense at trial for this act was that he was taught at the police academy that black people had thicker skulls than whites or Italians.
  
  wn.com/Al_Neri
• 
  Al Pacino
  Alfredo James "Al" Pacino (/pəˈtʃiːnɵ/; born April 25, 1940) is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy and Tony Montana in Scarface, though he has also appeared several times on the other side of the law — as a police officer, a detective and a lawyer. His role as Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman won him the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1993 after receiving seven previous Oscar nominations, one of them being in the same year.
  He made his feature film debut in the 1969 film Me, Natalie in a minor supporting role, before playing the leading role in the 1971 drama The Panic in Needle Park. Pacino made his major breakthrough when he was given the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather in 1972, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor were for Dick Tracy and Glengarry Glen Ross. Oscar nominations for Best Actor include The Godfather Part II, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, ...And Justice for All and Scent of a Woman.
  
  wn.com/Al_Pacino
• Aldo Trapani
  Aldo Trapani is the protagonist and player character of the video game The Godfather: The Game, based on the film The Godfather. He also briefly appears in the sequel, The Godfather II, which is based on The Godfather Part II.
  Aldo Trapani is the son of Serafina and Johnny Trapani. In the game, Aldo seeks revenge against Don Emilio Barzini for killing his father in the game's introduction. Aldo makes his way as an associate of the Don of the Corleone family in New York throughout the game, by taking over businesses, rackets, and acting as an assassin.
  The character is not featured in Mario Puzo's novel, as he is the author of many crimes and missions attributed to other, separate characters from both the novel and the film.
  In the first game, he is voiced by Andrew Pifko. His first name is, by default, Aldo, although this may be changed by the player during the character's creation. His surname is revealed on a newspaper clipping gathered by the FBI in the game. The sequel confirmed that Aldo Trapani is the canon name.
  
  wn.com/Aldo_Trapani
• Amerigo Bonasera
  Amerigo Bonasera is a fictional character created by Mario Puzo who appears in his novel The Godfather, as well as Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film adaptation. Though he is not a major character, he plays a vital role in revealing the merciful side of main character Vito Corleone. The novel opens with the words: "Amerigo Bonasera sat at New York Criminal Court...". The film also starts with his famous line, "I believe in America".
  Bonasera is an Italian-American undertaker who tends to keep away from the Corleone Family, knowing they are involved with the Mafia, though Don Corleone's wife is a godmother to Bonasera's daughter. His daughter is brutally beaten by her boyfriend and his friend, when she refuses to have sex with the two young men after having been made to drink whiskey. The men escape any serious penalty because they are from wealthy, politically connected families.
  Desperate, Bonasera decides to go to Don Corleone on the day of his daughter Connie's wedding to ask him to kill the young men; according to tradition, a Sicilian never refuses a favor on the day of his daughter's wedding. His proposition angers Don Corleone, who reprimands him for asking for a favor without showing the proper respect. Nevertheless, Vito agrees to grant a favor in return for Bonasera's "friendship" and the respectful address of "Godfather". Vito Corleone also gently reprimands Bonasera for attempting to seek justice through the courts first, as he ought to have first sought aid from him.
  
  wn.com/Amerigo_Bonasera
• 
  Amerigo Tot
  Amerigo Tot (September 27, 1909 – December 13, 1984) was a Hungarian sculptor and occasional actor. He was born in Fehérvárcsurgó, Hungary and moved to Rome, where he lived for the rest of his life. He studied in Budapest under Ferenc Helbing and György Leszkovszky from 1926 until 1928, and under László Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus in Germany until 1933. As the Nazis came to power he moved to Rome and worked sculpting memorials on a stipend from the Roman Hungarian Academy, where he eventually became an adviser. He fought in the Italian resistance movement starting in 1943.
  He first received international recognition for his work on the frieze in Roma Termini station. He began doing abstract works in the 1950s. He returned home to Hungary several times, including 1937, 1939 and in 1969 which was a long prepared step from the side of the Hungarian communist culture-buro. At home he was a highly celebrated "world famous" artist. He had big exhibitions. He did traditional works, including a Madonna sculpture in his hometown, and very famous abstract sculptures, public monuments too, like Microcosm in Macrocosm (a tribute to Béla Bartók), His Majesty, the Kilowatt in Kecskemét. The Amerigo Tot Museum in Budapest is named after him.
  
  wn.com/Amerigo_Tot
• 
  Anthony Corleone
  Anthony "Tony" Vito Corleone is a fictional character in The Godfather trilogy of films directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He is portrayed by Anthony Gounaris in the first film, James Gounaris in the second, and singer Franc D'Ambrosio in the third. The character was given the name Anthony because it was thought that the three-year-old Gounaris of the first film would respond best if his own name was used. He is the son of Michael (Al Pacino) and Kay Corleone (Diane Keaton), and the older brother of Mary Corleone (Sofia Coppola). While Anthony was never a major character in the first two films, major events in his life were the backdrop of key parts of the second film, and his relationship with his father is a plot point in the third film. He was not mentioned by name in the novel.
  Anthony has a small role in the first film; his only scene of consequence is one in which he witnesses the death of his grandfather, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando).
  The second film's plotline opens in 1958, with Anthony's first communion. It continues with an extravagant banquet held in his honor near Lake Tahoe. During this banquet, his father is largely tied up with family business, a theme which would repeat itself throughout the film. Anthony receives many gifts, mostly from people he does not know.
  
  wn.com/Anthony_Corleone
• Archbishop Gilday
  Archbishop Gilday is a fictional character and one of the main antagonists in The Godfather Part III. He is portrayed by Donal Donnelly. His character is said to have been based on Paul Marcinkus.
  Gilday is an Irish archbishop in the Roman Catholic Church, and also the head of the Vatican Bank. At the outset of the film, he bestows one of the Church's highest honors, the Order of St. Sebastian, on Michael Corleone. Later, at a meeting with Michael and B.J. Harrison, he convinces Michael to deposit $600 million in the Vatican Bank in exchange for majority control over International Immobiliare, a European real estate company in which the Church owns a quarter interest. However, it is all a scam: Gilday, along with the Bank's chief accountant Frederick Keinszig and Don Licio Lucchesi, had conspired to swindle Michael out of the money and give it to pezzi da novanta (bigshots) in high political places. He even backs Michael when his ownership of Immobiliare is threatened by other shareholders, in order to give Michael the impression that he is his ally, but constantly brings up the ill health of Pope Paul VI (whose approval was needed to ratify the deal) in order to stall the deal and highlight his own supposed powerlessness in the situation.
  
  wn.com/Archbishop_Gilday
• 
  Art Carney
  Arthur William Matthew “Art” Carney (November 4, 1918 – November 9, 2003) was an American actor in film, stage, television and radio. He is best known for playing Ed Norton, opposite Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden in the situation comedy The Honeymooners.
  Carney, youngest of six sons (Fred, Jack, Ned, Phil, Robert), was born in Mount Vernon, New York, the son of Helen (née Farrell) and Edward Michael Carney, who was a newspaper man and publicist. His family was Irish American and Catholic. He attended A B Davis High School. Carney was drafted as an infantryman during World War II. During the Battle of Normandy, he was wounded in the leg by shrapnel and walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
  Carney was a comic singer with the Horace Heidt orchestra, which was heard often on radio during the 1930s, notably on the hugely successful Pot o' Gold, the first big-money giveaway show in 1939–41. Carney's film career began with an uncredited role in Pot o' Gold (1941), the radio program's spin-off feature film, playing a member of Heidt's band. Carney, a gifted mimic, worked steadily in radio during the 1940s, playing character roles and impersonating celebrities. In 1941 he was the house comic on the big band remote series, Matinee at Meadowbrook.
  
  wn.com/Art_Carney
• Barry Malkin
  Barry M. Malkin (born October 26, 1938) is an American film editor with about 30 film credits. He is noted for his extended collaboration with director Francis Ford Coppola, having edited most of Coppola's films from 1969-1997. In particular, Malkin worked with Coppola on four of the component and compilation films of the Godfather Trilogy, although he was not involved in the original 1972 film.Roger Ebert has written of The Godfather Part II, which Malkin edited, "... why is it a "great movie"? Because it must be seen as a piece with the unqualified greatness of "The Godfather." The two can hardly be considered apart ("Part III" is another matter). When the characters in a film take on a virtual reality for us, when a character in another film made 30 years later can say "The Godfather" contains all the lessons in life you need to know, when an audience understands why that statement could be made, a film has become a cultural bedrock."
  Malkin worked as an apprentice to editor Dede Allen on the film America, America (directed by Elia Kazan-1962), and became acquainted with editor Aram Avakian, who was an occasional visitor. Malkin became Avakian's assistant editor on Lilith (directed by Robert Rossen-1964). Malkin got his first credits as a full editor on The Patty Duke Show (TV) and on the "Z movie" The Fat Spy (1966). Francis Ford Coppola heard of Malkin from Avakian, who had edited Coppola's film You're a Big Boy Now (1966); it turned out that Malkin and Coppola had been acquainted as teenagers growing up in the same Queens neighborhood. Coppola engaged Malkin to edit his fourth film as director, The Rain People (1969). He worked as an associate editor on two additional films edited by Robert Q. Lovett: End of the Road (directed by Aram Avakian-1970), and Cotton Comes to Harlem (directed by Ossie Davis-1970). Malkin was the editor for the 1973 film directed by Avakian, Cops and Robbers.
  
  wn.com/Barry_Malkin
• Billy Van Arsdale
  William Brewster 'Billy' Van Arsdale III is a fictional character in Mark Winegardner's novel The Godfather Returns.
  Billy Van Arsdale is born in New York in 1935. His family makes a fortune selling citrus juice for many businessmen, including Vito Corleone. He meets Vito Corleone's granddaughter, Francesca, in college in 1955; they are married a couple of years later after Francesca gives birth to their son, William Brewster Van Arsdale IV, whom they call 'Sonny', after Francesca's late father, Santino "Sonny" Corleone. He starts working as a Law Assistant in the Attorney General's office after graduating, due to his family connections. Shortly after, it is revealed that he has secretly been collecting evidence against the Corleone Family, most likely due to a grudge he has against Michael Corleone because he had his leg broken for infidelity.
  By 1961, he begins an affair with one of Danny Shea's secretaries. Francesca never knows about this and thinks he would not have sex with her simply because she is pregnant. In early 1962, Francesca learns of her husband's infidelity and spying on her family. Distraught, she follows him in his own car one night, she finds him drunkenly stumbling out of a local bar, so she runs him down in a fit of rage, literally cutting him in half. She then leaves the scene and calls her Uncle Michael for help.
  
  wn.com/Billy_Van_Arsdale
• Bruno Kirby
  Bruno Kirby (April 28, 1949 – August 14, 2006) was an American film and television actor. He was perhaps best known for his roles in the Hollywood films City Slickers, When Harry Met Sally..., Good Morning, Vietnam, The Godfather Part II, and Donnie Brasco.
  Kirby was born Bruno Giovanni Quidaciolu, Jr. in New York City, New York. His father is actor Bruce Kirby (born Bruno Giovanni Quidaciolu). His brother, John Kirby, is a notable acting coach. Bruno Kirby attended Power Memorial Academy.
  Kirby was a popular character actor through the late 1980s and early '90s, although the frequency of his film appearances waned. Kirby's film debut was in the little-seen The Young Graduates (1971). Early television appearances included the series Room 222 and The Super, but it was his role in The Godfather Part II, as the young Pete Clemenza, that raised his profile in Hollywood. He can be glimpsed in the pilot episode of M*A*S*H, playing the character Boone, though he has no lines. He can also be found in the 1974 Columbo episode By Dawn's Early Light alongside his father Bruce Kirby. In The Super, Kirby portrayed Richard Castellano's son. Coincidentally, Castellano appeared in The Godfather (1972) as hefty Pete Clemenza, a prominent member of the Corleone crime family, and Kirby subsequently played a younger version of Clemenza in the sequel, The Godfather Part II.
  
  wn.com/Bruno_Kirby
• Bruno Tattaglia
  Bruno Tattaglia is a fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather and the first installment of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather trilogy of films. He also appeared in The Godfather: The Game, where the player kills him in an act of revenge. In the films he was portrayed by actor Tony Giorgio.
  Bruno is son and underboss to Philip Tattaglia, head of one of New York's Five Families. Along with business partner Virgil Sollozzo, he strikes the first blow in the war with the Corleone family by helping murder Corleone enforcer Luca Brasi, who had met with Bruno to try to infiltrate the rival faction. After the Tattaglia family's subsequent attempt on the life of Don Vito Corleone fails, Corleone's son Sonny has his men assassinate Bruno as revenge. When Sonny is assassinated later on, the two deaths are instrumental in prompting Dons Tattaglia and Corleone to seek an end to their conflict.
  Despite Bruno being credited as Don Phillip's underboss, the book states that he is very displeased with and detracted from his father's prostitution business. This would make him a less likely candidate for underboss, as would the fact that he is Phillip's youngest son, as per the book. John Tattaglia, in the novel, is on Sonny's vendetta list, and is presumably Phillip's true underboss. In The Godfather: The Game, the player, as Aldo Trapani, is asked by Tessio to carry out an optional hit on Johnny Tattaglia who is one of Phillip's sons.
  
  wn.com/Bruno_Tattaglia
• Cardinal Lamberto
  Cardinal Lamberto is a fictional character appearing in The Godfather Part III. He is portrayed by Raf Vallone.
  Lamberto is a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, and the man favoured to succeed the terminally ill Pope Paul VI as head of the Church. He is visited by Michael Corleone on the advice of Don Tommasino, and Michael tells him of his swindle at the hands of Frederick Keinszig, Licio Lucchesi, and Archbishop Gilday. Lamberto encourages Michael to confess his sins; Michael is initially reluctant, but eventually gives in under the Cardinal's gentle prodding. He breaks down in tears when confessing that he ordered the murder of his brother Fredo. Upon the conclusion of the confession, Lamberto tells Michael that it is just that he suffers for his sins, yet absolves him and tells him he still has a chance for redemption.
  Upon the death of Paul VI, Lamberto is elected the new Pontiff; he takes the name John Paul I upon his accession to the papacy. A moral, thoroughly honest man, he immediately calls for an investigation into the activities of the Vatican Bank and requests a meeting with Keinszig, the Bank's chief accountant. However, Keinszig had left Rome with a large sum of money and several documents. Fearing that their corruption would be exposed, Keinszig, Lucchesi, and Gilday plot to murder the Pope; Gilday poisons his tea, killing him in his sleep.
  
  wn.com/Cardinal_Lamberto
• Carlo Tramonti
  Carlo Tramonti is a fictional character in the novels The Godfather and The Godfather's Revenge. In the universe of the novels, he is the Don of the New Orleans syndicate from 1931 to 1964.
  Tramonti emigrates from Sicily as a young boy and settles in Florida. He exterminates rivals who were backed by police and takes over their gambling operations. He then opens ties with Cuba and Batista, supplying the dictator with illegal casinos and whorehouses.
  By the 1950s, he owns a very luxurious Miami beach hotel. He also owns every business in New Orleans. He gets his nickname, "The Whale," by swallowing up every business that came his way. He is also a reputed womanizer and has many children out of wedlock. Over time, he and his brother, Agostino, establish the Tramonti family as a force to be reckoned with.
  By 1963, Tramonti is arrested by Immigrant agents at the behest of Attorney General Danny Shea. Angered by the embarrassment, he conspires with Nick Geraci to kill President James Shea, the district attorney's brother. By 1964, he sends hitman Juan Carlos Santiago to assassinate President Shea, and pins the murder on Geraci. In 1968, he is called to an investigation committee about the president's assassination. Before he could testify, he is shot twice in the head in his car and stabbed with a meat cleaver.
  
  wn.com/Carlo_Tramonti
• Carmela Corleone
  Carmela Corleone is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's The Godfather. She is the wife of Don Vito Corleone. Though she features somewhat prominently in the book and the films, she is nowhere given a name, and is only referred to as "Mama". She receives one seemingly as an afterthought in the DVDs' special features. Mrs. Corleone is portrayed by Morgana King, who is better known as a singer, and she is briefly given a chance to display her vocal skills in the wedding reception scene of The Godfather.
  Carmela was born in Sicily in 1897, and emigrated to the United States shortly after the turn of the century. She married Vito in 1914; they were married for just over 40 years until Vito's death in 1955. They had four children – Sonny, Fredo, Michael and Connie.
  In the novel, Mama Corleone is portrayed as a traditional Italian immigrant woman who speaks in very broken English. In the movies, however, she speaks near-flawless English, with a marked New York accent. In the novel, she develops a close relationship with Michael's girlfriend and future wife, Kay. She is given more expansive dialogue in The Godfather Part II, notably when she confronts her daughter Connie about her behavior early in the film, and when she discusses family life with Michael, who fears that his role as Don of the Corleone criminal empire will cost him his family. Mama Corleone dies toward the end of the second movie.
  
  wn.com/Carmela_Corleone
• Carmine Caridi
  Carmine Caridi (born January 23, 1934) is an American television and film actor. He has appeared in a wide variety of roles over the past 30 years. He lives in West Hollywood.
  His most notable film roles are Albert Volpe in The Godfather Part III and Carmine Rosato in The Godfather Part II. He is one of three actors to play two different roles in the Godfather films (the others being Frank Sivero, who played a young Genco Abbandando in Godfather Part II, and a bystander to the fight between Sonny Corleone and Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather, and Sofia Coppola, who played Mary Corleone in Godfather Part III, and the infant son of Carlo and Connie baptized in the final scenes of The Godfather). According to studio executive Robert Evans in his 1994 memoir The Kid Stays in the Picture, Caridi was director Francis Ford Coppola's first choice for the role of Sonny Corleone, but Evans insisted on James Caan because Caridi was too tall to play opposite Al Pacino.
  Caridi also appeared in the cult movie classic Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, playing amusement park manager Calvin Richards.
  
  wn.com/Carmine_Caridi
• Carmine Coppola
  Carmine Coppola (June 11, 1910 – April 26, 1991) was an American composer, flautist, editor, musical director, and songwriter. Coppola was a composer and conductor who contributed to many of the musical scores in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Godfather Part III, and Apocalypse Now directed by his son Francis Ford Coppola.
  Coppola was born in New York City, the son of Marie (née Zasa) and Agostino Coppola. His brother is Maestro Anton Coppola. He was the father of August Coppola, Francis Ford Coppola, and Talia Shire, and grandfather of Nicolas Cage, Sofia Coppola, Jason Schwartzman and Robert Schwartzman. His wife, Italia Coppola, died in 2004 in Los Angeles. Coppola died in Northridge, California at the age of 80. Upon his death, Coppola's grandson Robert Schwartzman changed his last name to 'Carmine' in his grandfather's honor.
  
  wn.com/Carmine_Coppola
• Carmine Rosato
  Carmine Rosato is a fictional character in the film The Godfather Part II, as well as its video game adaptation. He is known as one of the Rosato Brothers, along with his brother Antonio "Tony" Rosato. Carmine works in Pete Clemenza's regime after Michael Corleone moves to Lake Tahoe, Nevada. He is also known to have ties with Hyman Roth in Miami, Florida. In the film, he is portrayed by Carmine Caridi.
  Carmine joins Pete Clemenza's regime in 1955 along with his brother Tony. Carmine and Tony are loyal to Clemenza, and are promised three territories in the Bronx. In 1957, Clemenza dies of a heart attack. Clemenza's successor, Frank Pentangeli takes over as the Don of New York for the Corleone Family. Pentangeli thinks that the Rosatos are running their businesses like "a disgrace", and so refuses to give them the promised territories. Pentangeli also blames Carmine and Tony for Clemenza's death due to their greed over the territories. The Rosatos then split from the Corleones and begin to form their own crime syndicate.
  
  wn.com/Carmine_Rosato
• Charles Bluhdorn
  Charles Bluhdorn, born Blühdorn (September 20, 1926 – February 20, 1983) was an Austrian-born American industrialist.
  Per Who's Who in Ridgefield (CT), he was considered such a "hellion" that his father sent the 11-year-old to an English boarding school for disciplining. At 16, he came to New York, studying at City College and Columbia and, in 1946, went to work at the Cotton Exchange, earning $15 a week.
  Three years later, he formed a company that would make him a millionaire at 30; in 1956, he acquired Michigan Bumper, a small auto parts company that eventually grew into Gulf+Western Industries, a conglomerate that ranked 61st in the Fortune 500 by 1981.
  Subholdings of Gulf+Western were blue chip names such as Paramount Pictures (acquired in 1966), Madison Square Garden, and Simon & Schuster publishing as well as less glamorous holdings such as mining, New Jersey Zinc Company. It was during Gulf and Western's ownership of Paramount that it went from being Number 9 at the boxoffice, based upon total receipt sales, to number 1 with such hits as The Godfather and Chinatown.
  
  wn.com/Charles_Bluhdorn
• Connie Corleone
  Constanzia "Connie" Corleone (previously Constanzia Corleone-Rizzi), is a fictional character from The Godfather by Mario Puzo. In the films, Connie is portrayed by Talia Shire, the sister of director Francis Ford Coppola.
  Connie is the 3rd of four children and only daughter, of Don Vito Corleone and Carmela Corleone. She is the sister of Sonny, Fredo and Michael Corleone. In The Godfather, she marries Carlo Rizzi, a small-time hood from Nevada and a friend of Sonny's. This choice (and the fact that Carlo is of Northern Italian descent) greatly displeases her father, who only agrees to the marriage on the condition that they hold an old-style Sicilian wedding. She has twin sons by Carlo: Victor and Michael Francis. A brief glimpse in Mama Corleone's funeral scene is the only time that Victor appears in the trilogy.
  Carlo — whom Puzo characterizes as "a punk sore at the world" — periodically abuses and cheats on Connie. She complains to her parents, but her father coldly refuses to help, presumably to punish Connie. In truth, Vito is outraged at how Connie is being treated, but Italian tradition forbids a father — even one as powerful as Vito — from interfering in his daughter's marriage. However, her brothers grow to resent Carlo for his mistreatment of their sister, and Sonny has to be restrained from attacking Carlo.
  
  wn.com/Connie_Corleone
• Corleone family
  The Corleone family is a fictional Sicilian Mafia family settled in New York City. The family was created by Mario Puzo and appears in his 1969 novel The Godfather. It is said that the Corleone family is inspired by the real-life Borgia family from Renaissance Italy in the late 15th century.
  Compared with the real-life Five Families the Corleone family has the most in common with the Genovese family .
  The family traces its roots to 1920, when Vito Corleone assassinated Little Italy's padrone, Don Fanucci, and took over Fanucci's territory along with fellow hoodlums Genco Abbandando, Peter Clemenza and Salvatore Tessio. Shortly afterward, he founded the Genco Pura Olive Oil Company as a front for his criminal activities. Around 1925, Vito formally organized the family, with Genco as his consigliere and Peter and Sal as caporegimes. They became the most powerful crime family in New York after defeating Salvatore Maranzano during the Olive Oil War in the early 1930s. It was during this time that Vito's eldest son, Sonny, made his reputation and eventually became a capo himself.
  
  wn.com/Corleone_family
• 
  Danny Aiello
  Daniel Louis "Danny" Aiello, Jr. (/aɪˈɛloʊ/; born June 20, 1933) is an American actor who has appeared in numerous motion pictures, including Once Upon a Time in America, Ruby, The Godfather: Part II, Hudson Hawk, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Moonstruck, Léon, Two Days in the Valley, and Dinner Rush. He had a pivotal role in the 1989 Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing as Salvatore 'Sal' Frangione, the pizzeria owner, which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Aiello is also known for his role as Don Domenico Clericuzio in the miniseries Mario Puzo's The Last Don.
  Aiello, the second youngest of six children, was born in Manhattan, the son of Italian American parents Frances (née Pietrocova), a seamstress who was a native of Naples, Italy, and Daniel Louis Aiello, Sr., a laborer. Aiello's father deserted the family even though his wife had gone blind. For many years, Aiello had publicly condemned his father's desertion of his children and his blind wife. Aiello reconciled with his father in 1993, but to this day harbors a resentment of his father's conduct. He moved to the South Bronx when he was age 7 and later attended James Monroe High School. At the age of 16, Aiello lied about his age in order to enlist in the U.S. Army. After serving for three years, he returned to New York City and did various jobs in order to support himself and later his family. Aiello also once served as a union representative for Greyhound bus workers and was a night club bouncer.
  
  wn.com/Danny_Aiello
• Danny Shea
  Daniel Brandon 'Danny' Shea is a fictional character in Mark Winegardner's novels The Godfather Returns and The Godfather's Revenge. He is based on Attorney General and US Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
  Danny, as he is affectionately called by his family, grows up in a poor neighborhood in the Bronx. He idolizes his brother, James. His father is a bootlegger, and they become rich working with Vito Corleone. By the early 1950s, he becomes the assistant Attorney General in New York. He and his brother are both womanizers.
  By 1956, his father makes a deal with Corleone family consigliere Tom Hagen to get his son, James, elected president. Danny works on his brother's campaign and in 1960, he becomes Attorney General after James is elected president.
  He is depicted as involved in key moments in American history, like the assassination of Fidel Castro's bodyguard, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the hit on Carmine Marino, and the prosecution of crime lords, such as Carlo Tramonti. He is depicted as the prosecutor in Tramonti's case.
  
  wn.com/Danny_Shea
• Dean Tavoularis
  
  Dean Tavoularis (Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Ταβουλάρης; born May 18, 1932) is an American motion picture production designer whose work appeared in numerous box office hits such as The Godfather films, Apocalypse Now, The Brink's Job, One from the Heart and Bonnie and Clyde.
  Although born in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Greek immigrant parents, Tavoularis spent his entire childhood and teenage years in Los Angeles, in the shade of the Hollywood studios. He studied architecture and painting at different art schools and landed a job at the Disney Studios first as an 'in-betweener in the animation department, and later as a storyboard artist. In 1967, Arthur Penn called him to take charge of the artistic direction of Bonnie and Clyde. Three years later, Penn called him once again to invent the no-longer-existing Little Big Man. But it was a meeting with Francis Ford Coppola in 1972 on the set of The Godfather that set the creative tone of his career. The Godfather II and The Conversation, in 1974, consolidated their collaboration and laid the way for what was to be their joint creative challenge: Apocalypse Now, the Vietnamese odyssey for which Tavoularis created a nightmare jungle kingdom, inspired by Ankor Wat. It was also on set of Apocalypse Now where he met his future wife, French actress Aurore Clément. (Clément's role was eventually edited out of final cut of the film and only restored in the Apocalypse Now Redux version in 2001.
  
  wn.com/Dean_Tavoularis
• 
  Diane Keaton
  Diane Keaton (born Diane Hall; January 5, 1946) is an American film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. Keaton began her career on stage, and made her screen debut in 1970. Her first major film role was as Kay Adams-Corleone in The Godfather (1972), but the films that shaped her early career were those with director and co-star Woody Allen beginning with Play It Again, Sam in 1972. Her next two films with Allen, Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975), established her as a comic actor. Her fourth, Annie Hall (1977), won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
  Keaton subsequently expanded her range to avoid becoming typecast as her Annie Hall persona. She became an accomplished dramatic performer, starring in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) and received Academy Award nominations for Reds (1981) and Marvin's Room (1996). Some of her popular later films include Baby Boom (1987), Father of the Bride (1991), The First Wives Club (1996), Something's Gotta Give (2003) and The Family Stone (2005). Keaton's films have earned a cumulative gross of over US$1.1 billion in North America. In addition to acting, she is also a photographer, real estate developer, author, and occasional singer.
  
  wn.com/Diane_Keaton
• 
  Dominic Chianese
  Dominic Chianese ( /ˌkiːəˈnɛzɛ/; born February 24, 1931) is an American film, television and theatre actor, perhaps best known for his role as Corrado "Junior" Soprano on the HBO TV series, The Sopranos.
  Chianese was born in the borough of The Bronx in New York, the son of a bricklayer. He graduated from Bronx High School of Science in 1948. He worked as a bricklayer with his father and attended night school during the 1950s, graduating with a bachelor's degree in speech and theater from Brooklyn College in 1961. His earliest stage work occurred in 1952 with a Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company of singers, actors and musicians called The American Savoyards, under the direction of Dorothy Raedler.
  After a decade of attending college and appearing in off-broadway theatre, Chianese attended his first professional acting class at HB Studios in Manhattan, with renowned teacher Walt Witcover. Drama and musical theater became Chianese's passion. His first Broadway show was Oliver! in 1965. He has continued to perform in Broadway theatre, Off Broadway, and regional theatre. To supplement income in the dry periods, he played rhythm guitar and sang in taverns and restaurants. Chianese's first television credit occurred when George C. Scott recommended him for a role in the acclaimed series East Side, West Side. In 1974, Francis Ford Coppola cast Chianese as Johnny Ola in The Godfather Part II, which sparked a film career, culminating in several films (and plays) with Al Pacino.
  
  wn.com/Dominic_Chianese
• Don Fanucci
  Massimo Fanucci is a fictional character appearing in the Mario Puzo novel The Godfather and the film The Godfather Part II, sequel to the film based on the novel of the same name. He is portrayed by Gastone Moschin.
  In the novel, Fanucci is a freelance Black Hand extortionist in New York City's Little Italy. Fanucci demands protection money from neighborhood businesses, but does not confine his demands to non-Italians, which is considered a sign of disrespect in the Mafia. Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) witnesses Fanucci threatening to disfigure a young girl when her father refuses to pay him, and almost intervenes but is stopped by his friend, Genco Abbandando, who tells him who Fanucci really is. He also loses his own job when Fanucci demands that Genco's father provide employment for Fanucci's nephew, Sandiago.
  
  wn.com/Don_Fanucci
• Don Tommasino
  Don Lionele Tommasino is a fictional character from The Godfather series of books and films.
  Tommasino is an old friend of Vito Corleone from Vito's native village of Corleone, Sicily. By the 1920s, he has become a top-ranking soldier in the local Mafia family, headed by Don Ciccio. As Vito's Genco Olive Oil Company--the front for his criminal activities--expanded its operations, Vito cut a deal in which he would distribute Tommasino's olive oil in the United States.
  When Vito returned to Sicily to kill Don Ciccio and avenge the deaths of his parents and brother, Tommasino assists him in his scheme. They went to Ciccio's home, ostensibly to get his blessing for their venture. They succeeded in killing Ciccio, but in the midst of their escape, Tommasino is hit by a blast from a lupara shotgun, fired by one of Ciccio's bodyguards, and is shown sitting in a wheelchair as Vito and his family leave by train. Tommasino succeeds Ciccio as the local Mafia chieftain of the town of Corleone, and will remain one of the Corleone family's strongest allies for almost half a century.
  
  wn.com/Don_Tommasino
• Eddie Paradise
  Edward 'Eddie' Paradise is a fictional character in the novels The Godfather Returns and The Godfather's Revenge.
  He is a Sicilian gangster and Soldato in the Corleone crime family under Nick Geraci.
  Eddie Paradise grew up in the same neighborhood as friend as fellow Soldato Cosimo 'Momo' Barone. He was 'made' after Geraci took over the regime of Salvatore Tessio. He was recognized as a tough enforcer for the family.
  Paradise got his nickname, "the turtle", as in "slow and steady wins the race".
  After Geraci is expelled from the family in 1962, Eddie became the junior caporegime in the family. He is chosen over 'Momo' Barone, an event that came back to haunt Michael Corleone.
  He is never put in charge in the effort to locate Geraci, but rather is made to keep an eye on Barone. In 1963, he is put in charge of a commission meeting on his territory, the BQE expressway. After the police arrest Tom Hagen, everybody blames Paradise for the misfortune.
  In 1964, Geraci is lured to a meeting that he thinks will make him the boss of the Corleone family. It is an ambush, however; Paradise is forced to kill Geraci and Barone. He then regains his standing in the family.
  
  wn.com/Eddie_Paradise
• Edward Falco
  Edward Falco is an American author. His novel Saint John of the Five Boroughs was published by Unbridled Books in 2009. His novel Wolf Point and short story collection Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha were both published by Unbridled Books in 2005. Falco’s In the Park of Culture, a collection of short fictions from the University of Notre Dame Press, also appeared that year.
  In addition to the works mentioned above, Falco's earlier books include the novel Winter in Florida (Soho, 1990), the hypertext novel A Dream with Demons (Eastgate Systems, 1997), the hypertext poetry collection Sea Island (Eastgate Systems, 1995), and a chapbook of prose poem, Concert in the Park of Culture (Tamarack, 1985), as well as two collections of short stories: Acid (Notre Dame, 1996) and Plato at Scratch Daniel's & Other Stories (University of Arkansas Press, 1990).
  Acid won the 1995 Richard Sullivan Prize from the University of Notre Dame and was a finalist for The Patterson Prize. He has won a number of other prizes and awards for his fiction, including the Emily Clark Balch Prize for Short Fiction from The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Mishima Prize for Innovative Fiction from The Saint Andrews Review, a Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, two Individual Artist's Fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and The Governor's Award for the Screenplay from The Virginia Festival of American Film.
  
  wn.com/Edward_Falco
• 
  Francis Ford Coppola
  Francis Ford Coppola ( /ˈkoʊpələ/ KOH-pə-lə; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors. He epitomized the group of filmmakers known as the New Hollywood, that includes Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, William Friedkin, Philip Kaufman, and George Lucas who emerged in the early 1970s with unconventional ideas that challenged contemporary film-making.
  He co-wrote the script for Patton (1970), which won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay). His directorial fame escalated with the release of The Godfather (1972), a film which revolutionized movie-making in the gangster genre, earning praise from critics and public alike. It won three Academy Awards, including his second, for Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), and was instrumental in cementing his position as a prominent American film director.
  Coppola followed it with a critically successful sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974), which became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was highly praised and won him three Academy Awards—for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. The Conversation, which Coppola directed, produced and wrote, was released that same year, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. He next directed Apocalypse Now (1979); notorious for its overlong and strenuous production, but critically acclaimed for its vivid and stark depiction of the Vietnam War, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. To this day, Coppola is one of only seven filmmakers to win two Palme d'Or awards, and is the only filmmaker to win both in the same decade.
  
  wn.com/Francis_Ford_Coppola
• Frank Pentangeli
  Francesco "Frankie Five Angels" Pentangeli is a fictional character from the film The Godfather Part II. In the film, he was portrayed by Michael V. Gazzo, who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance, which he lost to Robert De Niro, his co-star from the same film (as young Vito Corleone). He gets his nickname from his last name, which is Greco-Italian for five angels.
  Pentangeli is a caporegime in the Corleone family, running the family's operations in New York City while Michael (Al Pacino) and Fredo Corleone (John Cazale) are in Nevada. He was a top soldier in the regime of Peter Clemenza (Richard S. Castellano), and succeeded Clemenza on his death. Pentangeli is a very old associate and family friend, having worked with Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) in the early days of their olive oil business. He now lives in Vito's former estate on Long Island. His bodyguard is longtime soldier Willi Cicci.
  Pentangeli's character was conceived when Castellano declined to reprise his Peter Clemenza role for The Godfather, Part II. Pentangeli's role in the plot of the film was originally intended for Clemenza's character.
  
  wn.com/Frank_Pentangeli
• 
  Frank Sivero
  Frank Sivero (born January 6, 1952) is a Sicilian-American character actor, perhaps best known for playing the roles of Genco Abbandando in Mario Puzo's and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II and Frankie Carbone (based on Angelo Sepe) in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.
  Sivero was born Francesco LoGiudice in Siculiana, Sicily, Italy, and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He can be seen as an extra in The Godfather as one of the witnesses to Sonny Corleone's brutal beating of his brother-in-law, Carlo. Director Martin Scorsese cast him as Frankie Carbone after seeing his performance in The Godfather: Part II. He also appeared in the The Wedding Singer with Adam Sandler.
  
  wn.com/Frank_Sivero
• Fred Roos
  Frederick Ried "Fred" Roos (born May 22, 1934) is an American film producer.
  Roos was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Florence Mary (née Stout) and Victor Otto Roos. Beginning in television as a casting director for The Andy Griffith Show, Roos went on to produce most of Francis Ford Coppola's films subsequent to The Godfather, including Apocalypse Now and Youth Without Youth. Roos won the Oscar for Best Film for producing The Godfather Part II.
  
  wn.com/Fred_Roos
• Fredo Corleone
  Frederico "Fredo" Corleone is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather. In the fictional universe of the novel and its film adaptation, he is the second son of Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), head of a powerful Mafia family. He is the second oldest of Vito's four children; he is the younger brother of Sonny (James Caan) and elder brother of Michael (Al Pacino) and Connie (Talia Shire).
  Fredo was portrayed by Italian-American actor John Cazale in Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation of the novel, as well as in its sequel.
  In Puzo's novel, Fredo is thought of in the Corleone family as the weakest and least intelligent of the three Corleone brothers, and is based off of Michael Fiorentino, the real life son of a childhood friend of Puzo's, and therefore is given its unimportant businesses to run. Nevertheless, Fredo is the most obedient and dutiful of the Corleone children, despite being largely ignored by his father.
  In a pivotal scene in the novel and film, Fredo is with his father when men working for drug kingpin Virgil Sollozzo (Al Lettieri) attempt to assassinate Vito, but Fredo fumbles with his gun and fails to return fire. He then sits on the street curb next to his badly wounded father and weeps. In the novel, he becomes sick after his father's shooting, going into shock after the incident. To help him recover and to protect him from any possible reprisals, Sonny sends him to Las Vegas under the protection of former hitman Moe Greene (Alex Rocco). While in Las Vegas, Fredo learns the casino trade and becomes a power in his own right.
  
  wn.com/Fredo_Corleone
• 
  Fulgencio Batista
  Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (Spanish: [fulˈxensjo βaˈtista i salˈdiβar]; January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was the United States-aligned Cuban President, dictator and military leader who served as the leader of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown as a result of the Cuban Revolution.
  Batista initially rose to power after being under "peer-Pressure" by long time mentor Nicholas C. Sumners, as part of the 1933 "Revolt of the Sergeants" that overthrew the authoritarian rule of Gerardo Machado. Batista then appointed himself chief of the armed forces with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the five-member Presidency. He maintained this control through a string of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was himself elected President of Cuba on a populist platform. He then instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba, deemed progressive for its time, and served until 1944. After finishing his term he lived in the United States, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup that preempted the election.
  
  wn.com/Fulgencio_Batista
• Gastone Moschin
  Gastone Moschin (born June 8, 1929) is an Italian actor.
  Born in San Giovanni Lupatoto (Veneto), he began his career in the 1950s as theatre actor, first with the Stable Theater in Genoa and then with the Piccolo Teatro di Milano in Milan. In the same period Moschin also began to play in feature films, such as La rivale (1955) and L'audace colpo dei soliti ignoti (1959). In 1965, he was featured in Pietro Germi's Signori e signore. In 1968 he starred in Seven Times Seven.
  He starred with Barbara Bouchet in Milano Calibro 9 in 1972. His most famous role is that of Rambaldo Melandri in the Amici miei series (1975–1985). He also had a part in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II, as Don Fanucci.
  Moschin subsequently worked in productions for both Italian and French television.
  
  wn.com/Gastone_Moschin
• Genco Abbandando
  Genco Abbandando was the first consigliere of the Corleone family, and childhood friend Vito Corleone. He's portrayed by Frank Sivero in The Godfather Part II and by Franco Corsaro in The Godfather Trilogy.
  Born and raised in Hell's Kitchen, Genco worked at his father's grocery store from an early age. He became firm friends with the hired hand, Vito Corleone and was upset when Vito was moved out by the neighbourhood Don, Massimo Fanucci, even offering to steal from his father to help his jobless friend. Vito refused, saying this would be an offense to his father.
  When Vito became the new Don of the neighbourhood, he hired Genco to act as his consigliere, and named his front company 'Genco Pura' after his friend. Genco served him loyally, showing incredible insight, especially when Vito's son Santino wanted to join the family business, the wily consigliere had the youth closely assigned to his father as a bodyguard so he could closely learn the family business, as well as be kept under Vito's control.
  
  wn.com/Genco_Abbandando
• Gianni Russo
  Louis Giovanni "Gianni" Russo (born December 12, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American actor and singer.
  Russo was raised in Rosebank, Staten Island. He claims that he has Mafia connections and that his uncle was a soldier in the Gambino crime family. There are claims that the Gambinos persuaded Francis Ford Coppola to cast Russo as Carlo Rizzi in the 1972 movie The Godfather. According to Russo, his father was a longshoreman and a musician who worked at the Brooklyn waterfront who was ashamed his only son was crippled from polio and refused to acknowledge him during his early childhood. He suffered from a "gimp arm" as a result of the disease.
  After reprising the Rizzi character in a brief flashback scene at the end of The Godfather Part II, Russo went on to act in more than 35 movies, including The Freshman, Super Mario Bros., Any Given Sunday, and Seabiscuit.
  Russo claims that he started a fledgling career in organized crime working as an errand boy and mob associate for Frank Costello as an adolescent but later abandoned the dangerous and volatile lifestyle of organized crime.
  
  wn.com/Gianni_Russo
• Gordon Willis
  Gordon Willis, ASC, (born May 28, 1931) is an American cinematographer best known for his work on Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather series as well as Woody Allen's Annie Hall and Manhattan.
  His fellow cinematographer William Fraker has called Willis's work "a milestone in visual storytelling", while one critic suggested that "more than any other director of photography, Willis defined the cinematic look of the 1970s: sophisticated compositions in which bolts of light and black put the decade’s moral ambiguities into stark relief".
  When the International Cinematographers Guild conducted a survey in 2003 they placed Willis among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.
  Willis's work became celebrated for his ability to use shadow and underexposed film "with a subtlety –and expressivity– previously unknown on colour film stock", as one commentator had it, citing as examples Don Corleone's study in The Godfather and Deep Throat's parking garage in All the President's Men. His friend the cinematographer Conrad Hall named him "The Prince of Darkness" but Willis himself preferred to talk in terms of "visual relativity", saying: "I like going from light to dark, dark to light, big to small, small to big". Discussing The Godfather he said:
  
  wn.com/Gordon_Willis
• 
  Harry Dean Stanton
  Harry Dean Stanton (born July 14, 1926) is an American actor, musician, and singer. Stanton's career has spanned over fifty years, which has seen him star in such films as Paris, Texas, Kelly's Heroes, Dillinger, Alien, Repo Man, Pretty In Pink, The Last Temptation of Christ, Wild at Heart, The Green Mile and The Pledge. In the late 2000s, he played a recurring role in the HBO television series Big Love. In 2012, he had a brief cameo in the superhero blockbuster The Avengers.
  Stanton was born in West Irvine, Kentucky, the son of Ersel (née Moberly), a hair dresser, and Sheridan Harry Stanton, a tobacco farmer and barber. His parents divorced when Stanton was in high school and later remarried.^{[citation needed]} He has two younger brothers, Archie and Ralph, and a younger half-brother, Stan.^{[citation needed]} Stanton attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky, where he studied journalism and radio arts.^{[citation needed]} He also studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California, where his classmates included his friends Tyler MacDuff and Dana Andrews.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Harry_Dean_Stanton
• Herbert Ross
  Herbert David Ross (May 13, 1927 – October 9, 2001) was an American film director, producer, choreographer and actor.
  Born Herbert David Ross in Brooklyn, New York, he made his stage debut as Third Witch with a touring company of Macbeth in 1942. His Broadway credits as a performer included Something for the Boys (1943), Laffing Room Only (1944), Beggar's Holiday (1946), and Look, Ma, I'm Dancin'! (1948). His career as a choreographer began with the American Ballet Theatre in 1950; the following year he choreographed his first Broadway production, the Arthur Schwartz-Dorothy Fields musical adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
  His first film assignment was as uncredited choreographer on Carmen Jones in 1954. He choreographed the dance numbers for the Cliff Richard films The Young Ones (1961) and Summer Holiday (1963). In 1968, Ross worked with Barbra Streisand as choreographer and director of musical numbers for the film Funny Girl. The following year, he made his motion picture directorial debut with a musical version of the classic Goodbye, Mr. Chips, starring Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark. Other movies followed for Ross, including The Owl and the Pussycat, Funny Lady (both starred Barbra Streisand), Pennies From Heaven, T.R. Baskin, and the original Footloose.
  
  wn.com/Herbert_Ross
• Hyman Roth
  Hyman Roth is a fictional character in the Godfather series of books and films. He was a Jewish investor and a business partner of Vito Corleone, and later his son Michael Corleone. He is based on the late Florida based mobster, Meyer Lansky.
  Born as Hyman Suchowsky, Hyman Roth settled in Hell's Kitchen, New York. In the early 1920s, while working as a car mechanic, he was noticed by Peter Clemenza, who called him "Johnny Lips". Clemenza introduced him to Vito Corleone who suggested to change his name. When Vito asked who he admired, Suchowsky told him Arnold Rothstein for fixing the World Series. He had one brother, Sam and a wife named Marcia, who always remained loyal to her husband.
  Roth worked diligently for the Corleone family during Prohibition, and was a close friend and ally of Moe Greene, the "inventor" of Las Vegas. Roth, as well as Don Corleone, both got their starts working together running molasses out of Cuba. It is suggested, however, that Vito never fully trusted Roth, nor did many of his associates, including Frank Pentangeli.
  
  wn.com/Hyman_Roth
• 
  James Caan
  James E. Caan (born March 26, 1940) is an American actor. He is best known for his starring roles in The Godfather, Thief, Misery, A Bridge Too Far, Brian's Song, Rollerball, Kiss Me Goodbye, Elf, and El Dorado. He also starred as "Big Ed" Deline in the television series Las Vegas.
  Caan was born in The Bronx, New York City, the son of Sophie (née Falkenstein) and Arthur Caan, Jewish immigrants from Germany. His father was a meat dealer and butcher. Caan had a sister, Barbara, and has a brother, Ronald. He grew up in Sunnyside, Queens, New York City. He was educated at P.S. 150 40-01 43rd Avenue School in Queens, at the private Rhodes Preparatory School, also in New York City, and then attended Michigan State University. He later transferred to Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, but did not graduate. While studying at Hofstra University, however, he became intrigued by acting and was interviewed for, accepted to, and graduated from, New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. There, one of his instructors was Sanford Meisner.
  
  wn.com/James_Caan
• Joe Lucadello
  Joseph P. Lucadello (also known as Ike Rosen) is a fictional character in The Godfather Returns and The Godfather's Revenge. Both are written by Mark Winegardner and based on the original novel The Godfather by Mario Puzo. He is missing one eye, and wore an eyepatch, and later a glass eye.
  Lucadello, an informant to the Corleone family, is a CIA agent who originally enlists in the Canadian Air Force under Billy Bishop in 1941. Before this, he served in the Civilian Conservation Corps with Michael Corleone. Fearing Benito Mussolini's rise to power, the two falsify pilot's licenses to join Bishop, but Michael's father Vito Corleone tips Bishop off, and Michael admits the truth to avoid damaging Lucadello's chances. After World War II, Lucadello leaves the Air Force and becomes a CIA agent.
  Around this time, he begins informing the Corleone family of the CIA's plans to confront organized crime. Lucadello meets with Michael Corleone several times, although these meetings are not specifically for business. He is also the main assistant of the director, Albert Soffet.
  
  wn.com/Joe_Lucadello
• Joe Spinell
  Joe Spinell born Joseph J. Spagnuolo (October 28, 1936 – January 13, 1989) was an American character actor, who appeared in numerous films in the 1970s and 1980s.
  Joe Spinell was born Joseph J. Spagnuolo in Manhattan, New York of Italian immigrant parents, and the last of six children. His father, Pelegrino Spagnuolo (b. 1892, d. 1950), died from liver and kidney disease. His mother Filomena Spagnuolo (b. 1903, d. 1987) was a bit-part actress who acted in a few movies, some of them alongside her son. Spinell stood 5 foot and 11 inches. He was born at his family's apartment in Manhattan's Little Italy on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan. A few years after the death of his father, he moved with his mother and older siblings to Woodside, Queens, New York where he lived off-and-on for the remainder of his life. He was known to abuse drugs and alcohol heavily on and off throughout his career, especially during periods of unemployment. Spinell also suffered most of his life from hemophilia as well as chronic asthma.
  
  wn.com/Joe_Spinell
• Joe Zaluchi
  Don Giuseppe 'Joe' Zaluchi is a fictional character in the novels The Godfather, The Godfather Returns, and The Godfather's Revenge. He is the boss of the Detroit syndicate. He is based on real-life Detroit crime boss Joseph "Joe Z" Zerilli. The character also appeared in film version of The Godfather, portrayed by Louis Guss.
  Growing up poor in Sicily, he and his family went to America to have a better life. They moved to Detroit in the early 1900s. There, Zaluchi makes his fortune and starts a family. He owns a business, and starts paying protection to the feared Purple Gang. After he sees that the gang is destroying Detroit, he takes matters into his own hands, going to New York to negotiate with a rising Vito Corleone. Vito himself pulls some strings to get some people in Detroit to help Zaluchi.
  In 1930, after amassing more political influence, men, and allies, Zaluchi wipes out the Purple gang. After a year of fighting, in 1931, Zaluchi becomes the don of Detroit. Corleone sends him alcohol from Canada, and Zaluchi makes a big profit. After that, he starts extending his power in Detroit. He acquires a horse-racing tracks and soon controls a large part of the gambling in Detroit.
  
  wn.com/Joe_Zaluchi
• John Aprea
  John Aprea (born March 4, 1941) is an American actor, known for his role as "Young Sal Tessio" in The Godfather: Part II (1974) and on television as "Lucas Castigliano" on the soap opera Another World, from 1989 to 1992. As of 2006, he is currently filming a new soap opera in Southern California called, "The Heiress", which can be found on The Internet Movie Data Base. He also played the father of John Stamos's character, Jesse Katsopolis, on Full House for two seasons. He also costarred with Lee Horsley in Matt Houston during the 1980s.
  Aprea was born and grew up in Englewood, New Jersey. He is the father of one daughter, Nicole Alexandra Aprea (born 1988).
  
  
  
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• John Cazale
  John Holland Cazale (/kəˈzeɪl/; Italian pronunciation: [kaˈdzaːle]; August 12, 1935 – March 12, 1978) was an American film and theater actor. During his six-year film career he appeared in five films, each of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Dog Day Afternoon and The Deer Hunter. He is the only actor to have this multi-film distinction.
  From his start as an acclaimed theater actor he became one of Hollywood's premiere character actors, starting with Coppola's The Godfather in which he played Fredo Corleone, the weak link in the Corleone crime family. "Cazale broke hearts on screen with portrayals of volatile, vulnerable, vacillating men, including Pacino's tragic bank-robbing partner in Dog Day Afternoon," writes David Germain of the Associated Press. He is described as an actor "whose intense face is known to just about any serious cinema fan but whose name often escapes them." In his final film, The Deer Hunter, he chose to continue acting despite being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and died in New York City on March 12, 1978, shortly after completing his role. He was 42 years old.
  
  wn.com/John_Cazale
• John Megna
  John Megna (November 9, 1952 – September 5, 1995) was an American actor whose Broadway success at the age of seven in 1960's All the Way Home led to his being cast as Charles Baker 'Dill' Harris, the toothy young summer visitor in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. According to Mockingbird author, Harper Lee, the character was based on her childhood friend, writer Truman Capote.
  A half-brother of actress/singer/businesswoman Connie Stevens, Megna appeared in many television programs throughout the 1960s and 1970s; he played a small role as one of the "Onlies" in the "Miri" episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, and starred as Little Adam in the NASA-produced animated shorts The Big World of Little Adam. As an adult, he turned to stage directing. He appeared in two car chase films starring Burt Reynolds and directed by Hal Needham in cameo roles: Smokey and the Bandit II and Cannonball Run.
  John Megna later became a high school English teacher, and last taught at James Monroe High School in North Hills, California. On September 5, 1995, in Los Angeles, California, he died from AIDS-related complications at the age of 42.
  
  wn.com/John_Megna
• Johnny Fontane
  John "Johnny" Fontane is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather and the series of films based upon it. In Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation of the novel, he was portrayed by Al Martino, the role having been turned down by Vic Damone.
  In the novel and film, Fontane is a famous crooner and occasional movie star in the vein of Frank Sinatra. He is also the godson of Don Vito Corleone, the head of a major Mafia crime family. There are four occasions on which the Corleone family intervenes to help his career. The first, years before the main time frame of the original novel and film, is when Vito Corleone uses violent persuasion (an "offer he can't refuse") to buy out a contract that Fontane is locked into with a big band leader; after the bandleader turns down Vito Corleone's offer to buy out the contract, the Mafia chieftain orders his personal assassin Luca Brasi to put a gun to the man's forehead and says that, in five seconds, either the man's signature or his brains will be on the contract.
  
  wn.com/Johnny_Fontane
• Johnny Ola
  Johnny Ola is a fictional character appearing in Francis Ford Coppola's film The Godfather Part II. Ola was portrayed by actor Dominic Chianese.
  Johnny Ola is a Sicilian mobster and right hand man to Jewish mobster Hyman Roth. He is part of Roth's plan to assassinate Michael Corleone at his home at Lake Tahoe, with unwitting help from Michael's brother Fredo. When Michael asks if Fredo and Johnny had ever met, they deny knowing each other, but Fredo later inadvertently reveals that he and Ola had spent time together in Havana; Michael then realizes that Fredo had betrayed him. Michael sends his bodyguard Bussetta to kill Ola and Roth. Moments later, Bussetta strangles Ola on the balcony.
  Johnny Ola was based on real life mobster Vincent Alo, who was Meyer Lansky's right hand man.
  
  wn.com/Johnny_Ola
• 
  Lee Strasberg
  Lee Strasberg (November 17, 1901 – February 17, 1982) was an American actor, director and acting teacher. He cofounded, with directors Harold Clurman and Cheryl Crawford, the Group Theatre in 1931, which was hailed as "America's first true theatrical collective". In 1951, he became director of the non-profit Actors Studio, in New York City, considered "the nation's most prestigious acting school". In 1969, Strasberg founded the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City and in Hollywood to teach the work he pioneered.
  He is considered the "father of method acting in America," according to author Mel Gussow, and from the 1920s until his death in 1982 "he revolutionized the art of acting by having a profound influence on performance in American theater and movies". From his base in New York, he trained several generations of theatre and film's most illustrious talents, including Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Julie Harris, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and director Elia Kazan.
  
  wn.com/Lee_Strasberg
• 
  Leonard Maltin
  Leonard Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.
  Maltin was born in New York City, son of singer Jacqueline (née Gould), and Aaron Isaac Maltin, a lawyer and immigration judge. He is married to researcher and producer Alice Tlusty. He has one daughter Jessie, born in 1986, who works with him. Maltin is Jewish. Maltin grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, and graduated from Teaneck High School. He is a friend of film critic Roger Ebert.
  Maltin began his writing career at age fifteen, writing for Classic Images and editing and publishing his own fanzine, Film Fan Monthly, dedicated to films from the golden age of Hollywood. After earning a journalism degree at New York University, Maltin went on to publish articles in a variety of film journals, newspapers, and magazines, including Variety and TV Guide.
  As an author, Maltin is best known for Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, (some editions titled as his ...Movie and Video Guide), a compendium of synopses and reviews that first appeared in September 1969 and has been annually updated since October 1987. (It was published under the title TV Movies until the 1990s, and in 2005 spawned a spin-off, Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide, limited to films released in 1960 and earlier to allow the regular book to cover a larger number of more recent titles.) He has also written several other works, including Behind the Camera, a study of cinematography, The Whole Film Sourcebook, Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia, Our Gang: The Life and Times of the Little Rascals, and Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons.
  
  wn.com/Leonard_Maltin
• 
  Leopoldo Trieste
  Leopoldo Trieste (3 May 1917, Reggio Calabria – 25 January 2003) was an Italian actor, film director and script writer.
  Trieste was born in Reggio Calabria. He worked with directors such as Pietro Germi, Francis Ford Coppola, Giuseppe Tornatore, Tinto Brass, Charles Vidor, René Clément and Federico Fellini.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Leopoldo_Trieste
• Licio Lucchesi
  Licio Lucchesi, often referred to simply as Don Lucchesi, is a fictional character in The Godfather Part III, in which he is, along with Don Altobello, one of the two chief antagonists. He is portrayed by Italian actor Enzo Robutti.
  A powerful figure in Italian politics who never goes anywhere without a team of police bodyguards, Lucchesi is the chairman of International Immobiliare, the world's largest real estate holding company. Having worked with the corrupt Catholic Church officials Archbishop Gilday and Frederick Keinszig to drain the coffers of the Vatican Bank to the tune of several hundred million dollars, he now schemes to put it back before it can be missed by persuading Michael Corleone to purchase the Holy See's 25% share in Immobiliare. Michael is already Immobiliare's largest single shareholder, and with the purchase of the Vatican's share he will have controlling interest.
  Once Michael has transferred the money to the Vatican Bank, however, Lucchesi orders Gilday and Keinszig to stall the deal by claiming it can't be ratified without the signature of Pope Paul VI, who is gravely ill. Meanwhile, Lucchesi — through his ally Don Altobello, a New York City Mafia chieftain that Michael believes is still his ally — makes a deal with Joey Zasa, the boss of the Corleone family's criminal operations. In exchange for Altobello and Lucchesi's backing of his bid to become capo di tutti capi of the Five Families, Zasa agrees to have Michael killed. Although Zasa's assassination attempt — a helicopter and submachine gun raid on a meeting of the Commission in Atlantic City, which leaves most of the bosses dead — puts him in a position of power, he fails to kill Michael or his new protégé, Vincent Mancini. Shortly thereafter, Vincent (acting without Michael's knowledge) assassinates Zasa.
  
  wn.com/Licio_Lucchesi
• Louie Russo
  Luigi 'Louie' Russo is a fictional character in Mark Winegardner's The Godfather Returns. Russo serves as the Don of the Chicago Outfit from 1955 to 1961.
  Louie Russo goes as far back to Chicago as the 1920s. He and his brother, Willy, were 'made' under Al Capone. His brother was one of the men sent to kill Vito Corleone during the Castellamarese war (mentioned in The Godfather), although he was eventually killed by Luca Brasi.
  Russo holds a grudge against the Corleones for years, but after Michael Corleone becomes Don in 1955, Russo tricks him into believing that the bad blood between them is over. Under Russo, the Chicago mob expands into the New York area and interferes with the Corleones' Las Vegas casinos. Russo unsuccessfully conspires with Vincent Forlenza and Nick Geraci to kill Michael Corleone, in the process duping Michael's brother Fredo into betraying him.
  In June 1961, he invites Tom Hagen to his supper club/gambling house in rural Illinois with the intention of killing him. He, Hagen, a rower, and two Russo soldatos go out on a gondola in his man-made lake. On the course of the trip, as part of Michael's revenge, Hagen strangles one soldato while the rower hits the other soldato and Russo with his oar. Hagen then personally kills Russo on his boat, with Russo's own gun, and dumps the bodies in the lake. Russo is succeeded by John Villone.
  
  wn.com/Louie_Russo
• Luca Brasi
  Luca Brasi is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather, as well as its 1972 film adaptation. In the film, he was portrayed by Lenny Montana, ex-wrestler and ex-bodyguard for the Colombo Crime Family.
  In The Godfather, Luca Brasi was a feared personal enforcer for the Corleone family, known as one of the most dangerous men in the eastern underworld. Fluent in Italian and able to handle himself in any fight, he had a dark reputation among the underworld as a savage killer.
  Brasi's talent, it was said, was that he could do a job, or murder all by himself, without confederates or backup who might rat him out. Since Luca made sure to leave no witnesses either, this made a criminal conviction almost impossible. He is also known for killing, in two weeks, six men who attempted to kill Don Corleone. One of their men had managed to put the Don in the hospital, which prompted Luca's killing spree, and he might have continued had Vito not recovered enough to call him off. These six deaths ended the famous "Olive Oil War." His almost fanatical loyalty to Don Corleone was unquestioned, and was said to have killed a Corleone soldier just for making the Corleone family look bad. Brasi often claimed that he'd sooner kill himself than betray the Godfather. Since Vito was the only one who could make Brasi stop a killing spree, this made the Godfather a far more risky Don to attempt killing than the others.
  
  wn.com/Luca_Brasi
• Lucy Mancini
  Lucy Mancini is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's The Godfather. She was portrayed by Jeannie Linero in The Godfather and The Godfather Part III.
  She is one of the childhood friends of Vito Corleone's children, particularly his daughter, Connie. She is the maid of honor at Connie's wedding. Lucy has sex with Viro's son Sonny at the wedding, and has a brief extramarital affair with him. The novel and the films diverge with regard to their respective treatments of Lucy's fate after Sonny's death.
  In the novel, Lucy is a fairly important supporting character, with several chapters dedicated to her story. After Sonny is killed, Lucy is sent to Las Vegas by Vito's consigliere, Tom Hagen. There she is given a small interest (five and later ten "points") in one of the family's hotels, primarily so that she can keep an eye on Vito's middle son, Fredo, who is learning the hotel business. She also serves as a shareholder-of-record who has no criminal record of her own: several such owners are necessary for a valid gaming license. On paper, she is a millionaire, although she doesn't vote her shares in the casinos.
  
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• 
  Marianna Hill
  Marianna Hill (sometimes: Mariana Hill), born Mariana Schwarzkopf, in Santa Barbara, California[1][2] on February 9, 1941 is an American actress mostly working in American television.
  She has appeared in more than 70 films and television episodes. She co-starred in the Elvis Presley film Paradise, Hawaiian Style in 1966 as Lani Kaimana; the Clint Eastwood film High Plains Drifter as Callie Travers in 1973; and in The Godfather II as Deanna Dunn-Corleone.
  Hill guest-starred in several 1960s sitcoms, a short list of which include My Three Sons, Hogan's Heroes, Love American Style, and Batman.
  One of Hill's many TV appearances was as Dr. Helen Noel in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode, "Dagger of the Mind".
  She also guest-starred in the following drama series: Death Valley Days, Bonanza, The High Chaparral, Gunsmoke, The Wild, Wild West,'The F.B.I., Mission: Impossible, Quincy, M.E., S.W.A.T., Kung Fu, The Outer Limits, and Harry O, to name only a few.
  Hill lives in the Kensington area of London. In 2000, she taught at The Method Studio in London, England, which was formerly known as The Lee Strasberg Studio. She is also a former student of the same school.
  
  wn.com/Marianna_Hill
• Mario Puzo
  Mario Gianluigi Puzo (October 15, 1920 – July 2, 1999) was an Italian American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola. He won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in both 1972 and 1974.
  Puzo was born into a poor family from Pietradefusi, Province of Avellino, Campania, Italy living in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York. Many of his books draw heavily on this heritage. After graduating from the City College of New York, he joined the United States Army Air Forces in World War II. Due to his poor eyesight, the military did not let him undertake combat duties but made him a public relations officer stationed in Germany. In 1950, his first short story, The Last Christmas, was published in American Vanguard. After the war, he wrote his first book, The Dark Arena, which was published in 1955.
  At periods in the 1950s and early 1960s, Puzo worked as a writer/editor for publisher Martin Goodman's Magazine Management Company. Puzo, along with other writers like Bruce Jay Friedman, worked for the company line of men's magazines, pulp titles like Male, True Action, and Swank. Under the pseudonym Mario Cleri, Puzo wrote World War II adventure features for True Action.
  
  wn.com/Mario_Puzo
• Mark Winegardner
  Mark Winegardner (born November 24, 1961) is an American writer born and raised in Bryan, Ohio. His novels include The Godfather Returns, Crooked River Burning, and The Veracruz Blues. He published a collection of short stories, That's True of Everybody, in 2002. His newest novel, The Godfather's Revenge, was published in November 2006 by Putnam. His Godfather novels continue the story of the Corleone family depicted in Mario Puzo's The Godfather.
  He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Miami University and went on to receive a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing from George Mason University. He published his first book at age 26, while still in graduate school. He has taught at Miami, George Mason, George Washington, and John Carroll University, and is currently the Burroway Professor of English. He was formerly the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.
  Winegardner has won grants, fellowships and residencies from the Ohio Arts Council, the Lilly Endowment, the Ragdale Foundation, the Sewanee Writers Conference and the Corporation of Yaddo. His books have been chosen as among the best of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times, the New York Public Library, and USA Today. His work has appeared in GQ, Playboy, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, DoubleTake, Family Circle, The Sporting News, Witness, Story Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ladies Home Journal, Parents and The New York Times Magazine. Several of his stories have been chosen as Distinguished Stories of the Year in The Best American Short Stories.
  
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• 
  Marlon Brando
  Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Brando was one of only three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named by Time magazine as one of its 100 Persons of the Century in 1999.
  Brando had a significant impact on film acting, and was the foremost example of the "method" acting style. While he became notorious for his "mumbling" diction and exuding a raw animal magnetism, his mercurial performances were nonetheless highly regarded, and he is widely considered as one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century. Director Martin Scorsese said of him, "He is the marker. There's 'before Brando' and 'after Brando'." Actor Jack Nicholson once said, "When Marlon dies, everybody moves up one." He was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth greatest screen legend among male movie stars.
  
  wn.com/Marlon_Brando
• Mary Corleone
  Mary Corleone is a fictional character in The Godfather Part III, portrayed by Sofia Coppola. She is the daughter of Michael Corleone and Kay Adams and sister of Anthony Vito Corleone.
  Mary first appears in The Godfather Part II as the youngest child of Michael and Kay. She is a young child (aged about 4 or 5) in the late 1950s. Like Anthony, she doesn't have much of a role or story arc in the film.
  Mary is one of the pivotal characters of Godfather Part III, set in 1979-80. Her father's favorite, she is sheltered from the violent world of the Corleone crime family. Upon meeting, she falls in love with her cousin, Vincent Mancini, who is also Michael's protégé. While on a trip to Sicily, Michael tells Mary he disapproves of the romance, believing that Vincent's growing involvement in the "family business" will put her in danger.
  Toward the end of the film, Michael names Vincent as his successor, on condition that he break off his relationship with Mary. After her brother's debut concert, the assassin Mosca tries to kill Michael. One bullet grazes Michael's shoulder, but the other accidentally hits Mary in the torso, killing her instantly. Michael is devastated by Mary's death, which happens as he is beginning to finally put his life as Don Corleone behind him and rekindle his estranged relationship with Kay. A broken man, he retires to Sicily, where he eventually dies of old age.
  
  wn.com/Mary_Corleone
• Michael Corleone
  Michael Corleone is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's novels, The Godfather and The Sicilian. He is also the main character of the Godfather film trilogy that was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, in which he was portrayed by Al Pacino, who was twice nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal (Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather, and Best Actor for The Godfather Part II).
  Corleone, as portrayed by Pacino, was recognized as the 11th most iconic villain in film history by the American Film Institute, although some would consider Michael Corleone to be a tragic hero.
  Michael is the youngest son of Don Vito Corleone (played by Marlon Brando in The Godfather and Robert De Niro in The Godfather Part II). He is the younger brother of Santino "Sonny" (James Caan) and Frederico "Fredo" (John Cazale), and the older brother of Constanzia "Connie" (Talia Shire).
  Michael is introduced in The Godfather as a young man in his mid-20s. He initially wants nothing to do with the Corleones' "family business," hoping instead to lead a more conventional, Americanized life. Indeed, his father never intended for his favorite son to be involved in the family's criminal enterprises, instead hoping he would go into politics. In an early draft of the script, Vito expressly forbids anyone working for him from pulling Michael into the family's operations.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Corleone
• Mickey Shea
  Michael Corbett "Mickey" Shea is a fictional character who features prominently in the novel, The Godfather Returns. He is loosely based on former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General and US Senator Robert F. Kennedy and US Senator Ted Kennedy.
  Shea is born into a poor family in Ireland in 1890. At age 10, he immigrates to America and lives in the infamous Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. At age 30, he is the Ambassador to Canada. He also meets a young Vito Corleone and does business with him by using his olive oil trucks to import whiskey from Canada. He also at this time fathers two sons, James and Danny. By the end of Prohibition, his family is one of the richest in America. He also at this time does business with Robert Moses and expands his empire. By the 1940s, he has begun guiding his sons into political careers, seeing potential especially in James. By the 1950s, James is the Governor of New Jersey and Danny is the Assistant Attorney General of New York. In 1956, he retires to Manhattan.
  
  wn.com/Mickey_Shea
• Moe Greene
  Moe Greene is a fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather and movie. Moe Greene was a renowned Jewish mobster, and is heavily based on Bugsy Siegel.
  Moe Greene was a renowned Jewish mobster and former executioner for Murder Incorporated, credited with the development of Las Vegas into a gambling and entertainment mecca, bringing the interests of the most powerful organized crime organizations in America to the town. He was a childhood friend of Hyman Roth.
  Hyman Roth and many other mobsters said he was the king of Las Vegas: "He made Las Vegas and they don't even have a statue to remember his name."
  Among his powerful allies was Don Vito Corleone, who bankrolled the creation of Greene's first hotel-casino. In return, Moe took the Don's son Fredo under his wing during the war between the Five Families in New York, due to the intervention of West Coast Don, Anthony Molinari.
  Although Fredo was greatly influenced by the city and Greene, family heir Michael Corleone disapproved the effect it had on his brother, whom Greene reportedly chastised and slapped around in public.
  
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• 
  Morgana King
  Morgana King is an American singer and actress. She is a noted jazz singer, who is regarded as a "musician's singer." The musical œuvre of her stylized vocal artistry spans a period of more than four decades and has an "appeal that bridges generations, tastes and life styles".
  A sometime actress, she played Carmela Corleone, the wife of crime boss Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974).
  King was born Maria Grazia Morgana Messina in Pleasantville, New York. Her parents were of Sicilian descent "from Fiumefreddo di Sicilia, Province of Catania, Sicily." Her mother and father were the only members of their respective families to immigrate to the United States. The name DeBerardini(s) has been misidentified with her birth name. The name, DeBerardini(s), is actually from her second marriage to jazz trombonist Willie Dennis (William DeBerardinis (1926–1965)).
  She grew up in New York City with five siblings in an artistically talented family. Her father, who owned a coal and ice business, played the piano and guitar by ear. One of her sisters performed in the Italian theatre. The family experienced a difficult financial period when her "mother was widowed" early.
  
  wn.com/Morgana_King
• Nick Geraci
  Fausto Dominic 'Nick' Geraci Jr. is a central character in the Mark Winegardner novels The Godfather Returns and The Godfather's Revenge. He is a caporegime in the Corleone crime family, but later betrays the family, and becomes a sworn enemy to Don Michael Corleone.
  The Godfather Returns establishes Geraci's backstory. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His father, Fausto Geraci Sr., was a driver for Don Vincent Forlenza, who also served as his Godfather and became his trusted friend. Geraci has an uneasy relationship with his father, who resents that his son anglicized the Geraci family name, pronouncing it Jer-ay-cee instead of the original Jair-ah-chee.
  Geraci becomes a boxer in his teens, eventually becoming a heavyweight champion under the moniker "Ace Geraci". He is introduced to Salvatore Tessio through his contacts in Cleveland, and becomes part of his regime. He participates in fixed fights for Tessio's sports fixing ring, and works as an enforcer while he rose through the ranks. His injuries in the ring eventually lead to him developing Parkinson's disease.
  
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• 
  Nino Rota
  Nino Rota (December 3, 1911, Milan – April 10, 1979, Rome) was an Italian composer and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films, and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, receiving for the latter the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1974.
  During his long career Rota was an extraordinarily prolific composer, especially of music for the cinema. He wrote more than 150 scores for Italian and international productions from the 1930s until his death in 1979—an average of three scores each year over a 46 year period, and in his most productive period from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s he wrote as many as ten scores every year, and sometimes more, with a remarkable thirteen film scores to his credit in 1954. Alongside this great body of film work, he composed ten operas, five ballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works, the best known being his string concerto. He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, Zeffirelli and Eduardo de Filippo as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, where he was the director for almost 30 years.
  
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• Pat Geary
  Pat Geary is a fictional character portrayed by G. D. Spradlin in the film The Godfather Part II. He is a U.S. senator from Nevada whose corruption and moral vices are exploited by Michael Corleone.
  At the beginning of the film, set in 1958, Geary and his wife attend the First Communion celebration for the son of Michael Corleone, the head of the Corleone crime family. Geary publicly accepts a contribution in the name of Anthony Corleone (Michael's son) ostensibly as a donation for the local public university. While speaking before the large gathering, Geary mispronounces the boy's middle and last names and initially misnames Michael Corleone's wife Kay as Pat.
  After the public ceremony, Geary meets with Michael in his office. The Corleone family had obtained control of several casinos in Nevada. Geary offers to help Michael obtain a disputed gaming license in exchange for an exorbitant bribe, and launching into a contemptuous tirade against Michael, the Corleone family, and Italian Americans in general, calling them "oily-haired" and "dirty". He says that he despises Michael and all he stands for and that he "intend[s] to squeeze" the Corleone family for all he can get. He gives Michael a day to respond to his offer. As Geary heads for the door, Michael responds by telling Geary that he should get them the license for free, and for Geary to pay the $20,000 licensing fee out of his own pocket. Geary then insults Michael again and leaves the room.
  
  wn.com/Pat_Geary
• Peter Clemenza
  Peter Clemenza is a fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather and two of the three films based on it. He is played by Academy Award-nominee Richard Castellano in Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation of the novel, and by Bruno Kirby (as a young man) in The Godfather Part II.
  Clemenza starts off as one of Don Vito Corleone's caporegimes and oldest friends, as well as the godfather of his eldest son, Sonny. He has a reputation as a superb judge of talent; his crew produced no fewer than five future capos — Sonny, Frank Pentangeli, Rocco Lampone, Al Neri and Joey Zasa.
  He is a supporting character in the story, but a few of his actions are important to the plot. For example, he is ordered by Don Corleone, via consigliere Tom Hagen, to handle the beating of two teenage boys who assaulted the daughter of undertaker Amerigo Bonasera, Mrs. Corleone's god-daughter, and escaped punishment for it. Clemenza then assigns his "button man" Paulie Gatto to the job, who then recruits two former professional boxers turned Corleone Family loan enforcers to assist. (A deleted scene from the film depicts Gatto delivering the reprimand.)
  
  wn.com/Peter_Clemenza
• Peter Zinner
  Peter Zinner (July 24, 1919 – November 13, 2007) was an Austrian-born American filmmaker who worked as a film editor, sound editor, and producer. Following nearly fifteen years of uncredited work as an assistant sound editor, Zinner received credits on more than fifty films from 1959 - 2006.
  He was born in Vienna, Austria, and studied music there in the Theresianum and at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. Following the occupation of Austria by Germany in 1938, Zinner and his parents, who were Jewish, emigrated. They went first to the Philippines, and in 1940 to the United States. As a young man, Zinner worked in Los Angeles as a taxi driver and occasionally as a pianist at screenings of silent films.
  In 1943 Zinner became an apprentice film editor at the 20th Century Fox Studios. In 1947 he became an assistant sound-effects editor at Universal Studios. Much of his work as an assistant sound and music editor is uncredited; he worked with composers Miklós Rózsa, Jacques Ibert, André Previn, Adolf Deutsch, and Bernard Herrmann on films including Quo Vadis (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Gigi (1958), and Gene Kelly's experimental Invitation to the Dance (1956). His first credit as a music editor was for For the First Time (1959); his other credits for music include X-15 (1961), the US version of King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), and Lord Jim (1965).
  
  wn.com/Peter_Zinner
• Philip Tattaglia
  Philip Tattaglia is a fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather, the first installment of The Godfather film trilogy and The Godfather video game. He was portrayed by actor Victor Rendina.
  Tattaglia is the head of one of New York's Five Families, which bears his name. Although his primary business is prostitution, he is the first to support Virgil Sollozzo's heroin connection, and goes to war with the Corleone family after Vito Corleone refuses to lend their political and police protection to the enterprise.
  Tattaglia's family strikes first, killing notorious Corleone enforcer Luca Brasi, but their further attacks flounder. Tattaglia is dealt a blow when the protracted and bloody conflict claims the life of his son, Bruno, and when Vito Corleone recovers control of his family. After Vito's son, Sonny Corleone, is murdered, the two agree to a sitdown to negotiate an end to the struggle. However, Tattaglia tellingly insists that Don Corleone guarantee not to break the peace. After conceding to his demands, Corleone realizes that Tattaglia had been the front for a plan masterminded by another don, Emilio Barzini, to bring down the Corleones, divide the spoils among the four remaining families, and embrace the heroin trade unopposed.
  
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• Raging Bull
  Raging Bull is a 1980 American biographical sports drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, and adapted by Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin from Jake LaMotta's memoir Raging Bull: My Story. It stars Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta, a middleweight boxer whose sadomasochistic rage, sexual jealousy, and animalistic appetite destroyed his relationship with his wife and family. Also featured in the film are Joe Pesci as Joey, La Motta's well-intentioned brother and manager who tries to help Jake battle his inner demons; and Cathy Moriarty as his abused wife. The film features supporting roles from Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, and Frank Vincent.
  Scorsese was initially reluctant to develop the project, though he eventually came to relate to La Motta's story. Schrader re-wrote Martin's first screenplay, and Scorsese and De Niro together made uncredited contributions thereafter. Pesci was an unknown actor prior to the film, as was Moriarty, who was suggested for her role by Pesci. During principal photography, each of the boxing scenes was choreographed for a specific visual style and De Niro gained approximately 60 pounds (27 kg) to portray La Motta in his early post-boxing years. Scorsese was exacting in the process of editing and mixing the film, expecting it to be his last major feature.
  
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• Richard Marks
  Richard Marks (b. November 10, 1943 in New York City) is an American film editor with more than 30 editing credits for feature and television films dating from 1972. In an extended, notable collaboration (1983–present), he has edited all of director James L. Brooks' feature films.
  Marks has been nominated for many awards including four times for the Academy Award (Oscars), three times for ACE Eddie Awards, three times for the BAFTA Award, and also for an Emmy.
  Marks has been elected to membership in the American Cinema Editors.
  The director of each film is indicated in parentheses; the filmography is based on the Internet Movie Database.
  
  
  
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• 
  Richard Matheson
  Richard Burton Matheson (born February 20, 1926) is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of The Incredible Shrinking Man, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return (filmed as Somewhere in Time), A Stir of Echoes, and I Am Legend, all of which have been adapted as major motion pictures, the last at least three times. Matheson has also written for several The Twilight Zone television show episodes such as "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", and adapted his 1971 short story "Duel" into a screenplay later that year for the Steven Spielberg–directed television movie of the same name.
  Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, the son of Norwegian immigrants Fanny (née Mathieson) and Bertolf Matheson, a tile floor installer. Matheson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1943. He then entered the military and spent World War II as an infantry soldier. In 1949 he earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and moved to California in 1951. He married Ruth Ann Woodson on July 1, 1952 and has four children, three of whom (Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson) are writers of fiction and screenplays.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Matheson
• 
  Robert De Niro
  Robert De Niro (pronounced /dəˈnɪəroʊ/; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973. In 1974, he played the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, a role that won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
  His critically acclaimed, longtime collaborations with Martin Scorsese began with 1973's Mean Streets, and earned De Niro an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in the 1980 film Raging Bull. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his roles in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and Cape Fear (1991). In addition, he received nominations for his acting in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) and Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990). Also in 1990, his portrayal as Jimmy Conway in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas earned him a BAFTA nomination.
  He has earned four nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: New York, New York (1977), Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000). De Niro directed A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). He has received accolades for his esteemed career, including the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.
  
  wn.com/Robert_De_Niro
• 
  Robert Duvall
  Robert Selden Duvall (born January 5, 1931) is an American actor and director. He has won an Academy Award, two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards and a BAFTA over the course of his career.
  A veteran character actor, Duvall has starred in some of the most acclaimed and popular films and TV shows of all time, among them The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, To Kill a Mockingbird, THX 1138, Joe Kidd, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, MASH, Network, True Grit, Bullitt, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, Tender Mercies, The Natural and Lonesome Dove.
  He began appearing in theater during the late 1950s, moving into television and film roles during the early 1960s in such works as To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) (as Boo Radley) and Captain Newman, M.D. (1963). He started to land much larger roles during the early 1970s with films like the blockbuster comedy MASH (1970) (as Major Frank Burns) and the lead in George Lucas' THX 1138 (1971). This was followed by a series of critically lauded performances in films which were also commercial successes: The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), Network (1976), The Great Santini (1979), Apocalypse Now (1979), and True Confessions (1981).
  
  wn.com/Robert_Duvall
• Rocco Lampone
  Rocco Lampone is a fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather and its film adaptation, as well as the sequel, The Godfather Part II. He was portrayed in the films by actor Tom Rosqui.
  Lampone is an associate of Peter Clemenza. When Clemenza is assigned to kill the treacherous Paulie Gatto in The Godfather, he decides to give Lampone a chance to "make his bones." Clemenza and Lampone drive Gatto to a remote spot near New York, making him think they're scouting out places to live in case Sonny orders them to "go to the mattresses." While Clemenza is waiting outside the automobile, Lampone kills Gatto with three bullets to the head.
  Lampone rises quickly in the Corleone family. After Michael Corleone takes over the family, he makes Lampone a caporegime. On the advice of Vito Corleone, Michael puts together a secret regime for Lampone, but makes sure that it is eventually discovered by Tom Hagen. Later in the film, Lampone and another unnamed associate kill Philip Tattaglia in his bed, and his men play a role in the wave of murders that cements Michael's power.
  
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  Roger Corman
  Roger William Corman (born April 5, 1926) is an Academy Award winning American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for his body of work. Corman has occasionally taken minor acting roles in such films as The Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather Part II, Apollo 13 and Philadelphia. A documentary about Roger Corman's life and career entitled Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel premiered at Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals in 2011, directed by Alex Stapleton. The film's TV rights were picked up by A&E IndieFilms after a well-received screening at Sundance.
  Corman has been a mentor to young film directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, James Cameron, Curtis Hanson, John Sayles, and many others. He has also helped launch the careers of actors including Jack Nicholson, William Shatner, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Talia Shire and Robert De Niro.
  
  wn.com/Roger_Corman
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  Roger Ebert
  Roger Joseph Ebert ( /ˈiːbərt/; born June 18, 1942) is an American journalist, film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
  Ebert is known for his film review column (appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and later online) and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The Movies, all of which he co-hosted for a combined 23 years with Gene Siskel. After Siskel's death in 1999, Ebert teamed with Richard Roeper for the television series Ebert & Roeper & the Movies, which began airing in 2000. Although his name remained in the title, Ebert did not appear on the show after mid-2006 after he suffered post-surgical complications related to thyroid cancer, leaving him unable to speak. Ebert ended his association with the show in July 2008, but in February 2009 he stated that he and Roeper would continue their work on a new show. Ebert's current show, Ebert Presents: At the Movies, premiered on January 21, 2011, with Ebert contributing a review voiced by someone else in a brief segment called "Roger's Office".
  
  wn.com/Roger_Ebert
• Roman Coppola
  Roman Coppola (born April 22, 1965) is an American film director and music video director.
  Coppola was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, the son of set decorator/artist Eleanor Coppola (née Neil) and Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola was born in the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine while his father was in Paris writing the screenplay of Is Paris Burning?. He attended New York University's film school, the Tisch School of the Arts.
  Coppola had a small role as one of the sons of Tom Hagen during the funeral scene in The Godfather. He also played Santino Corleone as a young boy in the 1974 film The Godfather Part II. He oversaw the in-camera visual effects for his father's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula.
  Coppola's feature-film debut, CQ premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. He founded the production company The Directors Bureau and directed all the music videos for songs of The Strokes' albums Is This It and "12:51" for Room on Fire. Coppola has directed clips for artists including Daft Punk, Moby, The Presidents of the United States of America, Ween, Green Day, and Fatboy Slim. He has also been a huge supporter of cousin Jason Schwartzman's musical side project, Coconut Records. His music video for Phoenix's "Funky Squaredance" was invited into permanent collection at the New York Museum of Modern Art. He is an accomplished television commercial director as well. Coppola is now the co-owner of American Zoetrope with his sister Sofia Coppola.
  
  wn.com/Roman_Coppola
• Sal Narducci
  Salvatore 'Laughing Sal' Narducci is a fictional character in Mark Winegardner's novel The Godfather Returns.
  He is born in Cleveland, Ohio; future mob boss Vincent Forlenza is his childhood best friend. As an adult, he runs half of the gambling rackets in Cleveland. By 1931, he and Forlenza have killed off the competition and become the most powerful gambling syndicate in the U.S.. By the 1940s, he is feared for his temper; he is known to stab people in the back (literally and figuratively.)
  By the early 1950s, Narducci is growing suspicious of Forlenza and starts plotting against him. In 1955, he orders a satchel containing a bomb delivered to a plane carrying Nick Geraci, Frankie Falcone, and Tony Molinari. Falcone and Molinari are killed in the explosion, but Geraci survives. Narducci visits him in a private hospital and tells him that Forlenza was behind it.
  In 1956, Geraci finds out that Narduci is a spy for Michael Corleone, and goes to Forlenza. Geraci and Forlenza plot to kill him and Hyman Roth, thereby strengthening the Chicago Mob and destroying the Corleones' operation in Cuba.
  
  wn.com/Sal_Narducci
• Salvatore Tessio
  Salvatore "Sal" Tessio is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather and the film based on it. In the film, Tessio was portrayed by Abe Vigoda. In the sequel, Vigoda reprised the role in a flashback, set in late 1941, at the end of the film. Actor John Aprea portrayed the younger Tessio in The Godfather Part II.
  Tessio starts out with his friends Peter Clemenza and Vito Corleone as low-level hoodlums in New York City's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. As Corleone rises to prominence in the Mafia underworld, he makes Tessio and Clemenza his main caporegimes. Tessio owns the Embassy Club in Brooklyn and makes it his base of operations. From there, he manages his Mafia soldiers and is very well-connected throughout the borough. Most federal investigators consider Tessio the smarter, savvier and more ruthless of the two capos. However, according to the book, he mellows considerably over the decade of peace between New York's Mafia families.
  Tessio's first name is never mentioned in the novel.
  
  wn.com/Salvatore_Tessio
• Sam Drago
  Salvatore Drago, a.k.a. "Silent Sam", is a fictional character in The Godfather's Revenge by Mark Winegardner, the sequel to Winegardner's The Godfather Returns.
  He plays a supporting role in the novel, in which he is the don of the Tampa, Florida Mafia syndicate. He is also Don of Florida from 1954 onward.
  The novel explains that he studied to become a painter in Italy. His father, Vittorio Drago, was the Don of the Florida syndicate. Much like Michael Corleone, Salvatore was initially reluctant to join the "family business", but was compelled to do so to help his father, who was under serious pressure from Commissioner of Sicily Cesare Mori.
  In 1954, Sam Drago becomes the don of the Florida syndicate. Under him, there are rarely any arguments between rival Families and peace is maintained through Tampa. He vouches for his old friend Carlo Tramonti.
  "Silent Sam" Drago is based on longtime Tampa Mafia don Santo Trafficante, Jr.
  
  wn.com/Sam_Drago
• Sandra Corleone
  Sandra Corleone is a fictional character appearing in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather, the Godfather film trilogy, and the Godfather video game. She was portrayed by Julie Gregg in the first film.
  Born in 1917, she married Sonny Corleone and mothered their four children:
  Sonny is a womanizer, and has a mistress, Lucy Mancini, with whom he fathers Vincent Corleone. Vincent would grow up to succeed Michael as the Don of the Corleone family in The Godfather Part III.
  In the novel, further details of Sandra's life are given; she is depicted as a large-breasted woman who immigrated from Italy when she was a child. She is unable to tolerate having sex with her husband, due to his excessively large penis; she is aware, and apparently thankful, that he is unfaithful. She and Sonny live in a house in the Corleone Mall. After Sonny's death, she takes her children to live with her parents in Florida.
  Sandra appears in a deleted scene in The Godfather Part II, trying to gain her brother-in-law Michael's blessing for her daughter Francesca's engagement. Michael approves but suggests that her fiance change his college studies. In a deleted subplot, Sandra becomes Tom Hagen's mistress, a fact that Michael uses to blackmail Hagen into remaining loyal to the family, despite Sandra urging Hagen to abandon the Corleone family. In the final film, Hagen is depicted as having died years earlier.
  
  wn.com/Sandra_Corleone
• Sonny Corleone
  Santino "Sonny" Corleone is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's 1969 novel The Godfather and its 1972 film adaptation. He also appears as an infant, as a young boy, and an adult in The Godfather Part II.
  In the novel and film, he is the oldest son of New York City Mafia Don Vito Corleone and Carmela Corleone. He has two brothers, Fredo and Michael, an adoptive brother, Tom Hagen, and a sister, Connie. In the film, Sonny was portrayed by James Caan, who reprised his role for a flashback scene in Part II. Director Francis Ford Coppola's son Roman Coppola played Sonny as a boy in the 1920s scene of that film.
  Born in 1916, Sonny is depicted in both the novel and the movies as the most impulsive and violent of Vito's children and the most involved in his father's criminal operations. The novel provides additional backstory for Sonny: when he was 16, he committed a robbery. His father learns about it from Peter Clemenza, who stood as godfather to Sonny. When Vito asks Sonny why he did this, Sonny tells him that he saw his father kill the blackhander Don Fanucci years earlier. He then tells his father, "I want to learn how to sell olive oil." Vito realizes what Sonny really means, and sends him to Clemenza for training.
  
  wn.com/Sonny_Corleone
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  Steven Soderbergh
  Steven Andrew Soderbergh (/ˈsoʊdərbɜrɡ/; born January 14, 1963) is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing critically acclaimed commercial Hollywood films like Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich and Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven. He has also directed smaller, less conventional works, such as Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Schizopolis, Bubble, The Girlfriend Experience and Che. His most recent works are Contagion and Haywire.
  Soderbergh was born in Atlanta, the son of Mary Ann (née Bernard) and Peter Andrew Soderbergh, who was a university administrator and educator. His paternal grandfather was a Swedish immigrant, from Stockholm. When he was a child, his family moved from Atlanta to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he lived during his adolescence, then moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father became Dean of Education at Louisiana State University (LSU). There he discovered filmmaking as a teenager, directing short Super 8 mm films with equipment borrowed from LSU students.
  
  wn.com/Steven_Soderbergh
• Talia Shire
  Talia Shire (born April 25, 1946) is an American actress most known for her roles as Connie Corleone in The Godfather films and Adrianna Balboa (née Pennino) in the Rocky series.
  Shire was born Talia Rose Coppola in Lake Success, New York, the daughter of Italia (née Pennino) and arranger/composer Carmine Coppola. Talia is the sister of director and producer Francis Ford Coppola and academic August Coppola, the aunt of actor Nicolas Cage and director Sofia Coppola, and the niece of composer and conductor Anton Coppola. She was married to composer David Shire, with whom she had a son, Matthew Orlando Shire. She has two other sons, actors/musicians Robert Schwartzman and Jason Schwartzman, from her second marriage to the late producer Jack Schwartzman.
  Shire first became famous for her role of Connie Corleone in The Godfather and its sequels. Later, she portrayed Adrianna Pennino Balboa, the girlfriend (and later wife) of Rocky Balboa in the Rocky movies. She also starred in such films as I ♥ Huckabees, Kiss the Bride and 2007's Homo Erectus.
  
  wn.com/Talia_Shire
• Theadora Van Runkle
  Theadora Van Runkle (March 27, 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – November 4, 2011, Los Angeles, California) was an American costume designer.
  The first films she designed costumes for were Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and The Arrangement (1969), all of which starred Faye Dunaway, for whom Van Runkle also designed the gown Dunaway wore to the 1968 Oscars, as well as Dunaway's complete off-screen wardrobe at the time.
  Van Runkle was nominated for an Oscar for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and has been nominated twice more, for The Godfather: Part II (1974) and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). She designed the costumes for Troop Beverly Hills (1989).
  She was the recipient of the Costume Designer Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Theadora_Van_Runkle
• Tom Hagen
  Thomas "Tom" Feargal Hagen is a fictional character in the Godfather books and films. He was portrayed by Robert Duvall in the films. He is the informally adopted son of Don Vito Corleone and serves as the family lawyer and consigliere (legal advisor). Mild-mannered and soft-spoken, he often serves as a voice of reason within the family. The novel and first film establish that he is of German-Irish ancestry.
  Hagen is introduced as an unofficial but important part of the Corleone family. As a child he grew up in a broken family, the son of an abusive alcoholic. Hagen is saved by Sonny Corleone, who finds him on the street and takes him in to live with the Corleone family. Vito Corleone becomes a surrogate father to Hagen, but does not officially adopt him out of respect for the boy's father.
  In the novel, Hagen offers to work for Vito after going through law school, knowing full well that his adoptive father is the most powerful Mafia chief in the nation. Vito is more than willing to take Hagen into his employ, telling him that lawyers can steal more than a phalanx of gangsters. Hagen marries an Italian, Theresa, and has two sons, Frank and Andrew.
  
  wn.com/Tom_Hagen
• Tommy Neri
  Thomas 'Tommy' Neri is a fictional character in the novels The Godfather, The Godfather Returns, and The Godfather's Revenge.
  The original novel explains Tommy Neri's backstory. He was born to Rita Neri and an unnamed father in an apartment in the Bronx. He grew up in the same neighborhood as Peter Clemenza. He was also frequently beat by his uncle, Al Neri, for his disrespect toward his mother. He never accepted that his uncle was a cop, and became a criminal just to spite him. He also wanted his 'button' but was told to wait until the right time.
  In 1955, he became a 'made man' in the Corleone family under Michael Corleone at a hotel/casino ballroom owned by the family, with others. He was placed in the regime of Rocco Lampone and served him faithfully. The later novels explain he also becomes a heroin addict around this time. He is placed in Ritchie Nobilio's regime after Rocco Lampone is killed in 1959.
  In The Godfather Returns, he is placed in charge of finding Nick Geraci. He makes no significant progress with finding Geraci, although he does look in Cleveland and gets tips from the C.I.A. He and his uncle Al torture and kill Nick Geraci's father.
  
  wn.com/Tommy_Neri
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  Troy Donahue
  Troy Donahue (January 27, 1936 – September 2, 2001) was an American actor, who was extremely popular from the late 1950s to early 1960s, though continued acting into the late 1990s.
  Born Merle Johnson, Jr., Donahue was initially a journalism student at Columbia University in New York City before he decided to become an actor in Hollywood, where he was represented by Rock Hudson's agent, Henry Willson. According to Robert Hofler's 2005 biography, The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson, Willson tried out the name Troy on Rory Calhoun and James Darren, with no success before it finally stuck to Donahue. The blond heartthrob established himself with uncredited roles in The Monolith Monsters and Man Afraid in 1957, leading to larger parts in several films.
  He starred in Monster on the Campus, Live Fast, Die Young, and The Tarnished Angels, all in 1958, and opposite fellow teen idol Sandra Dee in A Summer Place in 1959.
  The latter made him a major star, especially among teenage audiences. In 1961 an exhibitor poll listed him as the 24th biggest star in the US. He signed a contract with Warner Bros. and played several successive leading roles in films such as Rome Adventure and A Distant Trumpet. The two co-starred Suzanne Pleshette, whom he married in 1964, but divorced later that same year. It was also while at Warner's that Donahue starred in the hit Television series Surfside 6
  
  wn.com/Troy_Donahue
• Vincent Forlenza
  Vincent "The Jew" Forlenza is a fictional character in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather and Mark Winegardner's sequel The Godfather Returns.
  Forlenza is the Mafia boss of Cleveland. The Godfather establishes that the Forlenza crime family has many high-ranking Jewish associates, something rare in Mafia families, hence it became the Don's derisive nickname. His organization is the most powerful of strictly gambling-based crime families in the U.S..
  Vincent Forlenza is a minor character in The Godfather, but one of the main antagonists of The Godfather Returns. The latter novel established his backstory; he is an immigrant from Sicily who establishes himself in the underworld by running numbers for other gangsters, and then killing them and assuming their territories. By the 1940s, he is a force to be reckoned with, quietly expanding his empire through out Ohio until no one stands in his way.
  At around this time he employs Fausto Geraci, Sr. as a driver/associate and becomes godfather to his son, Nick.
  
  wn.com/Vincent_Forlenza
• Virgil Sollozzo
  Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo is a fictional character and one of the main antagonists in Mario Puzo's The Godfather.
  In the novel, it is said that he got his nickname because he has a nose like a Turkish scimitar, has a Turkish wife and kids and also because he does much of his business (growing poppy) in Turkey. In Francis Ford Coppola's film adaptation, he is portrayed by Al Lettieri.
  Sollozzo arrives in New York and enlists the aid of the Tattaglia family for his new heroin business. He then goes to the Corleone family to obtain money and protection from the police and courts. Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) refuses, however, stating that the drug business is bad for the neighborhoods and would strain his political connections.
  Sollozzo, realizing that Vito's eldest son and Corleone family underboss Sonny (James Caan) would be more receptive to the heroin trade, decides to murder Vito. At the same time, he abducts Corleone family consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and tells him to convince Sonny that he should accept the original deal and not avenge his father's death. Hagen promises to calm Sonny down, but warns of an inevitable reprisal by Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana), Vito's fanatically loyal bodyguard and hitman. Unbeknownst to Hagen, however, Sollozzo had anticipated this and already killed Brasi.
  
  wn.com/Virgil_Sollozzo
• Vito Corleone
  Vito Andolini Corleone is a fictional character and the main character in Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather, as well as Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather trilogy, where he was portrayed by Marlon Brando in The Godfather and by Robert De Niro in The Godfather Part II. Premiere Magazine listed Vito Corleone as the greatest movie character in history. He was also selected as the 10th greatest movie character by Empire Magazine.
  In Puzo's novel, Vito Corleone is Capo di tutti capi and the head of the Corleone crime family, the most powerful Mafia family in New York City. He is depicted as an ambitious Sicilian immigrant who moves to Hell's Kitchen and builds a Mafia empire, retaining (and strictly adhering to) his own personal code of honor. Upon his death at the end of the novel, his youngest son, Michael, becomes the Don of the Corleone family. Vito has two other sons, Santino ("Sonny") and Frederico ("Fredo" or "Freddie"), as well as a daughter, Constanzia ("Connie"), all of whom play major roles in the story. He also informally adopts another son, Tom Hagen, who grows up to become the Family's consigliere.
  
  wn.com/Vito_Corleone
• Willi Cicci
  Willi Cicci is a fictional character in The Godfather film series, portrayed by Joe Spinell. The character of Cicci is loosely based on real-life Mafia soldier and informant Joe Valachi.
  Cicci began working for the "Genco Olive Oil Company" in 1942. However, in reality he is a top enforcer for the Corleone family, working under longtime caporegime Peter Clemenza. He is introduced in The Godfather standing by a piano amid a group of Corleone soldiers who have "gone to mattresses" (in between battles) during the war between the Corleones and the Tattaglias (in the montage of scenes after Michael Corleone's assassination of McCluskey and Sollozzo). On the day of Michael's nephew's baptism, Cicci assassinates Don Carmine Cuneo in the revolving doors at the St. Regis Hotel after he gets a haircut and shave at the hotel's barber shop while waiting for Cuneo to appear. Later, Cicci tells Sal Tessio that Michael will not be travelling to the meeting as arranged by Tessio as part of a plan to have Michael killed. He then disarms Tessio after he realizes that Michael has found out about his treachery. He is not specifically named in the first film.
  
  wn.com/Willi_Cicci
• William Bowers
  William Bowers (Las Cruces, 1916 - Woodland Hills, California, 1987) was a reporter in Long Beach, California before becoming a screenwriter and specializing in writing comedy westerns and also turned out several thrillers. His first credited screenplay was My Favorite Spy in 1942.
  During World War II Bowers served in the United States Army Air Forces where he met Arch Hall Sr.. Bowers later wrote a screenplay based in his experiences called The Last Time I Saw Archie where Jack Webb played Bowers.
  His career noticeably picked up after his Oscar nomination for the gritty Gregory Peck Western The Gunfighter in 1950, leading to such assignments as the remake of My Man Godfrey in 1957 and The Sheepman in 1958 (a second Oscar nomination).
  Bowers produced the last film that he wrote, the Western parody Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969). He also had a bit part as an actor in The Godfather Part II (1974).
  
  wn.com/William_Bowers

Godfather Part Ii, The (1974)

Actors

• Lee Strasberg
• Michael V. Gazzo
• G.D. Spradlin
• Gastone Moschin
• Tom Rosqui
• Bruno Kirby
• Frank Sivero
• Francesca De Sapio
• Diane Keaton
• Al Pacino
• John Cazale
• Richard Bright
• Robert De Niro
• Robert Duvall
• Talia Shire

Director

• Francis Ford Coppola