The Godfather (Historical Context)

Historical Context

Organized Crime

Mario Puzo has said that he wrote The Godfather as a compendium of tales about criminals that he heard while growing up in Hell's Kitchen, an Italian section of New York City, along with information that he gleaned from research. Fans of the book often try to guess which reallife incidents served as Puzo's inspirations, but in fact much imagination has gone into transmuting history into fiction.

Like Vito Corleone, many of the most powerful figures in American organized crime at the middle of the twentieth century had made their fortunes during Prohibition, smuggling liquor into the country. In 1920, the production and consumption of alcohol was prohibited by the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. There was still a great need for alcohol, and America had a prospering economy during the 1920s, and so it became a lucrative business to smuggle liquor in from Canada, Mexico, and Cuba. Smalltime gangs rose during this period to national prominence. Pressure from the FBI to combat the rise of organized crime in the twenties only eliminated small operators — J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's director, refused to acknowledge widespread syndicate activity until the late 1950s. Government pressure drove the small operators to seek protection under the umbrella of more powerful organizations. In 1933, Prohibition was repealed, in part because of the criminal activities that it caused and in part because the nation had entered an economic depression in the late 1920s and control of a popular substance seemed a silly and wasteful way to spend government resources. Like the fictional Corleone family, the crime organizations put the money they had made into other activities, most notably gambling, extortion, and political influence.

Control of organized crime passed through the ranks of different immigrant groups. In the early decades of the century, mobs were predominantly Irish. During Prohibition, Jewish and Italian immi-grants rose to control. After Prohibition, the crime organizations in the New York area were under the control of Italians, and these in turn organized a national syndicate, led by Charles "Lucky" Luciano. The organization of this syndicate was patterned after a centuries-old Sicilian paramilitary organization, the Mafia. Because the Italians were the most powerful group in the post-World War II period, when senate hearings on organized crime were televised, their group came to be associated with crime. This is a narrow impression that was cemented in the public imagination in the 1970s by the widespread popularity of The Godfather and its many imitators.

In 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression, the Nevada legislature passed a resolution allowing legal gambling in the state. After World War II in 1946, notorious gangster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel built the Flamingo Hotel with the financial backing of the East Coast syndicate. From this first casino came others, and the town grew into one of the nation's most popular vacation resorts in just a few short years. From its inception in the 1940s through the 1970s, Las Vegas was under the control of powerful crime organizations like the ones described in The Godfather.

While many of Puzo's details about organized crime are probably based on information readily available from research, there are specific incidents in the book that resemble events in crime history. The shooting of Don Corleone while he stands at a fruit stand is similar to the murder of Frank Scalise in 1957. The Godfather's political power, referred to so often in the book, mirrors the political control wielded by New York mobsters Thomas Lucchese and Frank Costello throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The story of Johnny Fontane being helped by Don Corleone and Luca Brasi to break his contract with bandleader Les Halley is based upon a common rumor that is probably not true, regarding Frank Sinatra's difficulty freeing himself from bandleader Tommy Dorsey when he was a young singer.

The Counterculture

In this novel, the Godfather is angry with his son, Michael, for having joined the Marine Corps during World War II. Puzo explains that arrangements were made for Michael to be exempt from military duty, along with mob operative Paulie Gatto and most of the other young men involved in the Corleone family operation. When the book was published in 1969, the country was enmeshed in the Vietnam conflict, a battle to keep the Russian-backed Communist government of North Vietnam from overcoming South Vietnam. It was a conflict that American soldiers had been involved in since 1961, regarding a political situation that had been unsettled since the 1940s.

To U.S. government strategists, it was imperative to stop the spread of communism in southeast Asia, and an American defeat would be too humiliating to accept. Therefore, the war escalated with each passing year. To many citizens, especially those on college campuses, American citizens were dying in order to win a pointless war in an unimportant, far-off country. The antiwar movement grew throughout the mid-1960s, with war protests covered almost daily in the media as celebrities and musicians spoke out against the military. Military-aged young men were encouraged to burn their draft registration cards and to sneak across the border into Canada, where the armed services could not get them.

Even though the youth of the country might have agreed with the Godfather on the subject of military service, there were also changes in the culture that would have shocked him. In the novel, he refuses to become involved in the drug trade, and in fact is shot for his resistance to it. In 1969, drug use ran rampant: marijuana was accepted as a casual recreation, and LSD was recommended by some as a consciousness-raising experience. As Harvard professor Timothy Leary advised in his 1965 book The Psychedelic Reader, 'turn on, tune in, drop out.' 1969 was also a high point for the sexual revolution. For the previous generation, sexual relations outside of marriage did happen, but they were socially frowned upon. In the 1960s, though, sexuality became more open. Women protested for equal rights, and homosexuals protested to show their resistance to persecution. The "straight-laced" values held by Don Corleone were giving way to radical new ways of thought throughout American society, while old-fashioned readers who bought The Godfather in 1969 could see the gentleman gangster of its title as a protector of traditional morality.

Compare & Contrast

• 1940s: American support for American involvement in World War II is overwhelmingly strong. The Godfather's anger that his son enlisted in the war is extremely unusual.
  1960s: American support for American involvement in The Vietnam War becomes weaker every day. More and more people sympathize with those who would like to keep their sons out of military service.
  Today: The United States has not drafted soldiers into military service since 1973.
• 1940s: Women have a narrow, specific place in society. There are only a few professions, such as nurses and teachers, which are deemed appropriate for them.
  1960s: Women are in the midst of the struggle for liberation, so that social laws and prejudices will not limit their potential.
  Today: Women are accepted in most professions and activities, although there are still a few areas where disparity between the genders exists.
• 1940s: Motion picture studio bosses have performers under strict contracts and can prohibit actors who are out of favor from working.
  1960s: Performers in motion pictures are free agents and can sign deals to work where they please.
  Today: Many top performers have formed their own production companies and in essence work for themselves.
• 1940s: The American economy is one of the few in the world that was not wrecked by World War II, making this the land of prosperity.
  1960s: By the end of the 1960s, the U.S. economy is booming. Unemployment is at the lowest level it has been at since 1954, and the stock market has reached record highs.
  Today: The country has gone through a long period of prosperity in the 1990s but has cooled to modest levels.
• 1940s: The government is concerned that communist agents are trying to subvert the American way of life.
  1960s: The government is concerned that agents of the Black Panthers and the Students for a Democratic Society are trying to subvert the American way of life.
  Today: The government is concerned that terrorists are trying to subvert the American way of life.