In Popular Culture
The title character of Vito Corleone in Mario Puzo's The Godfather was considered by many to be largely based on Bonanno, although the character is in many ways a composite of several figures.
The Judge Dredd character Joe Bananas, henchman for Don Uggie Apelino, was named after Bonanno.
In 1999, the Lifetime TV network produced a biographical film called Bonanno: A Godfather's Story. The film chronicles the rise and fall of organized crime in the United States.
In 1991, Bonanno's daughter-in-law, Rosalie Profaci Bonanno, published the memoir Mafia Marriage: My Story. This book was eventually converted to the 1993 Lifetime Network film Love, Honor, & Obey: The Last Mafia Marriage.
In 2006, episode 66 of The Sopranos, "Members Only", Eugene Pontecorvo wants to retire and uses Joe Bananas as an example of a retired mob member.
In 2004 Joe's daughter-in-law began putting Joe's personal items up for auction on eBay. This continued until 2008.
In 2009, Joe's cousin Thomas Bonanno participated as a Mafia expert in the filming of the "Mafia vs. Yakuza" episode of Deadliest Warrior, demonstrating his skills and marksmanship with a Thompson submachine gun, as well as talking about "true" Sicilian Mafia philosophy and culture.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Bonanno
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“All our civilization had meant nothing. The same culture that had nurtured the kindly enlightened people among whom I had been brought up, carried around with it war. Why should I not have known this? I did know it, but I did not believe it. I believed it as we believe we are going to die. Something that is to happen in some remote time.”
—Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966)