A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man, and if you’d like to spend time with your family in Vito Corleone’s mansion from the seminal 1972 mafia film "The Godfather," you are about to get your chance. On Wednesday, the house used in the film will be up for rent on Airbnb.
An offer you can’t refuse.
In celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary, the family that resides in the house has decided to let someone else relax in the digs for a while. For the very modest price of $50 a night, you can rent out the 6,248 square feet Staten Island home for a month, totaling a reasonable $1,500. It includes a saltwater pool, basement pub, game room, gym, five bedrooms, and seven bathrooms.
In case you are worried about maintaining the property during your vacation, house cleaners and landscapers will come once a week, and pool cleaners will clean out debris twice a week.
How did things ever get so far?
Built in 1930, the house was owned by Edward and Mary Norton for nearly six decades. Gianni Russo, who played turncoat and Corleone’s son-in-law Carlo Rizzi, suggested the home to the producers of the film after a scouting trip to Long Island didn’t turn up any locations they liked. Russo grew up near the now-famous mansion and thought it’d be a perfect fit. While the house resides in an upscale Staten Island neighborhood, in the film it was meant to be Vito Corleone’s home in Long Island.
When producers from Paramount asked if they could use the home, Edward Norton Jr.’s reaction was to close the door in their face, but when Norton told his wife who was at the door, Mary chased the producers down, asking them to come back. She agreed to let them use the location, asking only for a new slate roof.
“I could have gotten them much more money,” Russo told The New York Post.
After Edward Norton Jr. passed away in 2010 at the age of 96, Edward Norton III put the house up for sale. It stayed on the market until it was sold in 2012 for $1.7 million. It then went under a complete renovation, changing from an eight-bedroom, three-bath house into the layout it has now. It was then sold to its current owners in 2016 for $2.4 million.
Never tell anyone outside the Family what you are thinking again.
The listing says that the house is meant for five people and is best suited for two adults and three children. In case you are thinking of recreating the famous wedding scene from the start of the movie, don’t. Parties are not allowed at the residence. However, if you would like to do some Godfather-related sightseeing while you are there, you won’t have to travel far, just next door is the house of Vito’s youngest son, Michael Corleone.
Alternatively, if you’d rather be like Luca Brasi and sleep with the fishes, there is a WWII sea fort in the middle of the ocean for sale at the modest price of $60,000.