Gastone Moschin, an Italian character actor remembered by American audiences as Don Fanucci, a dapper crime boss gunned down by Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II,” died on Sept. 4 in Terni, in central Italy. He was 88.

His daughter, Emanuela Moschin, said the cause was kidney failure.

Mr. Moschin’s long career in Italian cinema began in the mid-1950s. He appeared in dozens of films by Italian directors, among them Bernardo Bertolucci (“The Conformist,” 1970) and Mario Monicelli (“My Friends,” 1975, and its sequels).

His turn as Don Fanucci, a gangster in 1920s New York, was an indelible part of a beloved film, released in 1974, that won six Academy Awards. (His first name was spelled “Gaston” in the credits, as it often was in English publications.)

In the film, Fanucci extracts tribute from seemingly everyone in Little Italy in Manhattan, including a young Vito Corleone, played by Robert De Niro. Corleone grudgingly pays Fanucci, then stalks him as Fanucci makes his way through the annual San Rocco street festival.