Was paulie a capo and if so why was he contacting wiseguys i thought Capos didnt do that i the real mob as it could prove dangerous for them if the wiseguys turned state witness.

In theory, a Mob boss at any level protects himself by giving orders to subordinates one at a time, so there are no corroborating witnesses to nail him. In other words, if the guy he gave the order to turns rat, the prosecutors would need another (corroborating) witness to bring an indictment and get a convici tion. You saw Paulie do this a couple of times--when Tuddi (and young Henry) knock on his door in the rain to get his orders (and Tuddi, not Paulie, makes the call); and when he's grilling sausages and someone whispers something in his ear.

But, as a practical matter, only the Don has the day-to-day wherewithal to give orders to a consigliere, who gives them to an underboss, etc. A capo is still a street boss, and will often have to give orders to more than one person. And anyway, "Goodfellas" was a movie, and Scorsese needed to show Paulie interacting with others.

Thanks for that Turnbull.

I thought Paulie was a capo, not a family Don.

You're correct Olivant. The real Paulie Vario was a Capo, and at some point an underboss. But he was never the Don of a family.

Goodfellas is misleading in that fact. Vario was never the boss, it was Lucchese and then Corallo.

If you try searching our forums before shooting your mouth off, you'll find a definitive view from a respected and knowledgeable member who actually knows what he's talking about:

http://www.gangsterbb.net/threads/ubbthr...true#Post442353

I couldn't find anything that says Vario was the Lucchese Boss. In his time period it was, Lucchese then Tramunti then Corallo.
There must have been a new 3 man ruling panel where Vario had a voice. This ruling panel must have been between Tramunti and Corallo.

And nobody here is claiming he was.

Sorry, theres been a mix up on my part.

I understand now that Vario was the Underboss.

I thought Turnbull was directing me to a thread that stated that Vario was the Boss. He was'nt. It told me that Vario was the Underboss.

Vario was held in high esteem by the other Families as well as by Lucchese. He had a few guys whose main "job" was to arbitrate issues between the Families, and most of those "issues" were resolved peacefully.

In the time period portrayed in Goodfellas, Vario was a captain. He would briefly become consigliere later on.

Vario was never Lucchese consigliere. His cousin, Johnny Oddo, was a Columbo consigliere.

Paul Vario had been acting consigliere since the late 1960's while official consigliere Vincent Rao was in prison. Vario became official consigliere in 1973 after Rao retired and remained in that position until he was imprisoned in 1981. After that Chistopher "Christy Tick" Furnari became consigliere.

Do you have a source for that info? Or did Paulie whisper it in your ear before he passed on?