Vito says this to Micheal during a conversation which takes place in part 1.

My question is this: What were Vito's plans/aspirations for the future of the family? Where did he hope Micheal would take them? "there just wasn't enough time" for what exactly?

People have suggested in other threads that Vito didn't share the same insatiable appetite for success as Micheal and was aware that the family could never become completely legitimate. Do you agree with this? If yes, then what do you think Vito envisaged for the Corleones after his death?

Personally I believe that Vito and Micheal were actually more alike than we realise and that Vito would have pursued similar goals to what Micheal did had he been alive at the the time of Micheals reign.

The short-hand answer is that Vito's and Michael's version of legitimate were not what it is for most people. I don't believe that Vito envisioned his sons abandoning the crime family. He wanted at least Michael in a position of political power to advance the interests of the Corleone family. Afterall, as TB pointed out in another thread, Vito exhorted Sonny to become a lawyer because lawyers can steal more thanmen with guns.

In the novel, "not enough time" referred to getting all of Vito's political connections wired into Michael. But the novel never makes clear why that would have been necessary, given Michael's plan to move to Nevada after the Great Massacre of 1955. That leaves three possibilities, IMO:

--"Not enough time" meant not enough time to make a foolproof plan for successfully bringing off the razor's-edge-timed Great Massacre;
--Michael needed all the political contacts to protect him from fallout after the Great Massacre;
--He needed them associated with him so he could hand them off to protect Clemenza after he moved to Nevada.

I don't know TB. Mike tells Tom that they needed another 4 months to get all of the political connections tied in (How could they put that in temporal terms?).

I always thought that Mike's stepping into Vito's shoes was not what Vito had anticipated. Instead, he wanted Mike to become that Senator or Governor in order to help the Corleones. However, Vito's getting shot, the war, and Michael's having to take over the family ruined that timetable and objective.

Oh, by the way, the massacre was in '50.

This one. Michael didn't need the political protection to support him due to the massacre as that wasn't pinned on him.

Olifant: SB -- can you get me off the hook? Can you admit it was 1950? For Ol' Times' sake?

SB

Can't do it, Oli. It was 1955. Period.

(SB nods to TB who takes Oli to the car)

Just like so many Board topics, we've done the dance over the massacre year beaucoup of times. But, I am preparing the definitive timeline that is indisputable.

You mean you're going to find Vito's tombstone, chisel off "1955" as his date of death, and substitute "1950"?

No, I'm going to produce the original tombstone order form on which it clearly shows that it was supposed to be 1950 and the newspaper article stating that the tombstone maker disappeared shortly thereafter.

Looking forward to that! We can't have enough of those discussions.

You have to take some things into consideration though:

*In the novel, Puzo states just after Vito's death that it was "almost ten years after Connie's wedding".
*Questadt was owned by Roth.
*Questadt was informed by Pentangeli or Cicci.
*He already made a mistake by stating that the murder of Sollozzo and McCluskey happened in "1947".
*"That was seven years ago Michael", referring to a scene which happened before the baptism.
*Last but not least: the final draft of The Godfather screenplay, based on the novel and made by Puzo and Coppola. It gives a clear timeline of the events and ends in 1955.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/The_Godfather.html

What was "supposed to be" means that it was changed. Originally, the younger Vito sequence was 'supposed' to begin in 1915, but later changed to 1917.

The final change is canon, not what was supposed to be in an earlier stage.

Still looking forward to you're finding ofcourse.

No, the tombstone maker erred, something that the Corleones were not very forgiving about. As a result, he diappeared shortly thereafter about the same time as Manolo disappeared. However, a month later Manolo returned tanned nearly black.

Yeah, I believe you're right. The tombstone maker made a mistake with Vito's birthday. He was mistaken with Vito's elder brother and thought he was born in 1887 while it actually was 1891.