His Big Break? The Corleones Killed Him

Correction Appended

Start spreading the news. Gianni Russo, best known for his role as Carlo Rizzi in "The Godfather," is back in old New York with his pinstriped Brioni suits, startling white teeth and perma-tan.

The reluctant killer, who in real life was once a delivery boy for the mob boss Frank Costello, has a publicist and a new dream: to be a big-name crooner, the kind who makes women swoon.

"At 62, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve," he said one recent night after belting out a string of Sinatra tunes at Nino's, an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side where he is treated like Sicilian royalty. "I'm like a cockroach. You can't kill me."

In recent months he has appeared on the reality show "Growing Up Gotti," and has had a tell-all chat with Howard Stern. He stars in a series of cooking CD's. His forthcoming autobiography is called "Godfathers, Popes and Presidents," a reference to some of his dearest acquaintances. As he explains it, "I've known three popes, five presidents and every Mafia boss."

His stories sometimes defy credulity -- past lovers, he says, included Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minnelli and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

"Gianni tells a lot of tales but they're all true," said the lawyer Barry I. Slotnick, who met him in the early 1970's when Mr. Russo was mediating a dispute between the producers of "The Godfather" and the mob boss Joe Colombo, who had threatened to shut down the film, which he thought would slander Italian-Americans.

Mr. Russo, who had never acted before, was given the part of Carlo as a reward for his peacemaking role. Since then he has appeared in 40 films doing small parts that show off his Little Italy-rooted bravado.

Over the years he has owned a Las Vegas casino, dated Dionne Warwick for more than a decade and beat 23 federal indictments, he said. But Mr. Russo is best known for his role in "The Godfather," playing the backstabbing, wife-beating thug who marries Don Corleone's daughter, is beaten badly by Corleone's son Sonny, played by James Caan, and ends up with piano wire for a necklace. Mr. Russo's grisly end is hard to forget because the 1972 movie is played over and over on television.

Mr. Russo's singing act leans heavily on his "Godfather" past, with cheeky references to Marlon Brando punctuated by the recorded sound of machine-gun fire.

To spend a few days with Mr. Russo is to step into a vanished world of omnipotent gangsters, shady politicians and spangled showgirls.

Although he was on a first-name basis with men like John Gotti, Mr. Russo says he was never a made man. Even when he was working as a gofer for Mr. Costello, Mr. Russo says, he remained detached from his employer's criminal enterprises. "I could have gotten involved and hit the jackpot but it's a terrible life," he said. "I mean, all the guys I grew up with are dead or in jail."

He has had his share of run-ins with the law, but he has never been convicted of any crime, and was not charged in a 1988 killing that took place at his Las Vegas club and casino, Gianni Russo's State Street.

According to Mr. Russo, the victim, who turned out to be a member of the Medellín drug cartel, was harassing a female patron and when he tried to intervene, the man plunged a broken wine bottle into his stomach. As the man tried to lunge again, Mr. Russo pulled out a handgun and fired twice.

The Clark County prosecutor ruled the killing a justifiable homicide, but the family of the victim dispatched a hit man, Mr. Russo said, and he decided that it would be best to disappear in Miami and Sicily for a few years. He lost the casino, but still kept interests in a dizzying array of businesses, from deli meats to diamond exporting.

With most of the Mafia largely moribund, Mr. Russo has decided to go public with the details of his life, partly in the hope that his colorful past will fuel interest in his various endeavors.

An inveterate charmer who favors Bentleys, diamond-covered money clips and open-collar shirts that show off 24-karat gold chains, Mr. Russo is the kind of man who will slip the coat check girl a $20 bill along with a business card.

His paramount interest, he says, has always been women. He said he has fathered 11 children with 10 different women, three of whom he married and divorced. His virility is not diminished, and he notes that there are three paternity suits pending against him. "I've been a lousy father," he said. "But I never promised these women I'd be home for dinner."

On a recent stroll in Manhattan, Mr. Russo stopped at St. Patrick's Cathedral to pray at the shrine of St. Anthony, the patron saint of miracles. No matter where he is, he says, he visits a church to fulfill the promise he made as a child in New York, when he was partly paralyzed by polio. "I made a novena that if I ever walked again, I'd light five candles for St. Anthony every day," he said.

Mr. Russo was 7 when he got polio and spent five years in a state hospital. He said his father, a longshoreman and musician, was ashamed that his only son was a cripple and refused to acknowledge him on the street. To earn his keep, Mr. Russo sold ballpoint pens on Fifth Avenue.

He credits polio with giving him valuable skills.

"While all the other kids were playing cowboys and Indians and going to the prom, I was trying to survive with my gimp arm," he said.

It was on a Fifth Avenue street corner that he met Mr. Costello, who would stop almost daily to give him a $5 bill. When he learned that Mr. Russo was Italian, Mr. Costello offered him a job picking up bets from barbershops that doubled as numbers parlors. By the time he was 16, Mr. Russo was hanging out at the Copacabana and traveling across the country picking up and delivering envelopes.

Despite his long association with the underworld, Mr. Russo resents being called a mobster. After singing a few tunes at Nino's and drinking in the adulation of fellow diners, Mr. Russo gestured to a table where his cousin, Vinnie Russo, sat with Charles Gargano, the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, and other Italian-American businessmen.

The men waved from afar but none of them approached his table, which both amused and annoyed him. The men, he explained, were afraid to be seen with him. "After all these years, they still think I'm mobbed up," he said.

Correction: April 22, 2005, Friday An article on April 9 about Gianni Russo, an actor in "The Godfather" who is seeking a comeback as a lounge singer in New York, referred imprecisely to St. Anthony, at whose shrine Mr. Russo prayed after stopping at St. Patrick's Cathedral during a recent stroll in Manhattan. St. Anthony is known primarily as the patron saint of lost items, according to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, although some Catholics refer to him as the patron saint of miracles.