Word: vito
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lend a tint of life to their gangster stories. Secondly, Puzo's Corleone family has manly standards. Gambling, labor extortion, an occasional unavoidable murder and some judicious bribery are all in order. But no prostitution or drugs. These enterprises offend the strait-laced sensibility of the Godfather, Don Vito Corleone...
...young Sicilian immigrant and hard-working family man in New York's Little Italy, Don Vito discovered (somewhat to his own surprise) he was "a man of force." The phrase is recurrent and a key to understanding the qualities that distinguish a true captain of business and industry. Don Vito is the sort of man who would undoubtedly grump at such academic non sequiturs as "political science," since the years have taught him there is no greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate one's faults...
Arrayed before Don Vito like vassals at a feudal court are scores of coarsegrained characters who provide the sub-and sub-subplots that enable Puzo to illustrate the broad reach of the Godfather's influence. It is a mark of his power that he commands fierce loyalties because he treats his petitioners with respect-though they range from an obscure paisano seeking revenge for a damaged daughter to a famous Italian-American crooner who needs help to branch out into acting and producing...
...Died. Vito Genovese, 71, vice lord and Mafia chieftain who reputedly directed a multibillion-dollar underworld empire from federal prisons for the past nine years; of heart disease; in Springfield, Mo., Penitentiary. Arriving in the U.S. from Italy in 1913, Genovese proved himself a tough and shifty "soldier" and then "capo" (officer) in the Mafia ranks. Over the years he was indicted 13 times, including a conspiracy-to-murder rap he beat when the state's key witness was found poisoned. In 1957, Genovese assumed the Cosa Nostra throne after the barbershop slaying of rival Albert Anastasia (no indictment...
...June morning in 1962, he beat a fellow convict to death with a two-foot length of iron pipe at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta. By then, Valachi was fighting for his own life. He had received the "kiss of death" from his capo (boss) and cellmate Vito Genovese. In the end, Valachi did what the Cosa Nostra presumed he had done already. He became the first man to confess his membership in the shadowy organization and spilled his story to the Bureau of Narcotics...