When I was growing up, in the 1940s and 1950s, the tenor Mario
Lanza was all over the place.
He had his own national radio program.
His record, “Be My Love,” in 1951,
was a million-dollar hit.
His movies for MGM, like “Toast of New Orleans,” made tons of
money … in particular, “The Great Caruso.” It was the top-grossing film of
1951. Someone joked that the film company should be re-named
Metro-Goldwyn-Mario.
Movie magazines were forever
writing about him.
Maria Callas allegedly called him
“Caruso’s successor.”
Toscanini allegedly said that his
was “the voice of the century.” (I doubt he really said it.)
When he was introduced to Queen
Elizabeth, she said, “Mr. Lanza, I didn’t know that such big sounds could come
out of the human throat.”
And he did have a big, thrilling voice, effortlessly hitting
high notes. Caruso himself sometimes had trouble with high notes.
But Lanza never sang at the Met—although
he was interested and although the Met, at one time, was interested. La Scala actually
wanted him to open a season!
Still, near
the end of his short life—he died at 38-- he owed $200,000 in taxes…MGM fired
him—his wife, going off the deep end herself, was ready to divorce him (she
died at age 36)—he became angry and paranoid. Here’s what he said about one of
his co-stars in the movie “That Midnight Kiss”:
“That old bitch, Ethel Barrymore, she’s trying to steal my scenes! I’ll
tell her where to get off!”
The author of the
best biography of Lanza (subtitled “Tenor in Exile”), Roland L. Bessette, put
it this way: “His was a glorious and natural voice, with one of the broadest
and most powerful ranges ever recorded. The worlds of music and film had not
seen his like before. If he ultimately failed or disappointed, it was only when
measured against his own dazzling potential.”
The essential question
is: What went wrong? He was dealt four aces and a king, and still managed to get wiped out.
***
His birth name was Alfred Arnold Cocozza (“Lanza” was his
mother’s maiden name), and he lived from 1921 to 1958. He was born in the year
Enrico Caruso, his idol, died.
His parents
indulged him, and for the rest of his life he seemed to think he was someone
special, someone who needn’t obey the rules, someone privileged. As a young
man, he would drive without a license. In the army, he sometimes wouldn’t
salute officers; his excuse: he hadn’t seen them. He was expelled from high
school for misconduct and never went to college.
After Serge Koussevistsky, the conductor, heard him sing, he arranged for Lanza to
study music at Tanglewood. Later Lanza joined a famous singing trio, with
George London and Frances Yeend. He was the star, but both of them--unlike Lanza--managed to sing at the Met later in
life. His big break came after singing at the Hollywood Bowl; Louis B. Mayer
heard him and promptly offered him a contract. Mayer said that he hoped Lanza
would become a singing Clark Gable.
For a tenor, after all, he wasn’t bad looking--although
he had a terrible tendency to become bloated from overeating and overdrinking.
He was 5 feet 7 or almost 5 feet 9.
His
arrogance and sense of superiority were one handicap. Another was his vulgarity. A book about him, “Lanza: His
Tragic Life,” by Raymond Strait and Terry Robinson, published in 1980 by
Prentice-Hall, contains so much that is coarse and gross that I can give only a
few examples.
While he was
making “That Midnight Kiss” with Kathryn Grayson, he”occasionally relieved
himself on the set, choosing a potted plant, a bucket, a corner on a stage where
Kathryn Grayson was rehearsing. Louis B. Mayer was furious” when he learned
about the complaints and gave him a talking to.
As for Doretta
Morrow, a young singer who had been educated in a convent, he used such “vile”
language toward her during the filming of “That Midnight Kiss” that she would
leave the set in tears. (He told her she should be so close to him in the film that
he could feel her sex organ.)
He boasted of his sexual conquests…in front
of his wife! Among them: Judy Garland, Inger Stevens.
Another time he
got mad at one of his film’s directors, so—to get even—he drove over to the
director’s house in Hollywood at night and…pooped on his lawn.
Another time…no,
I better skip the tale about Inger Stevens. But get the book and read pages 78
and 79.
He wasn’t well
educated. He read mainly fan magazines and body-building magazines. He couldn’t
read music, and learned songs by listening to recordings. Frances Yeend, who
sang with him, said, “He provided a great treat for the ear, but there was
nothing for the mind.”
He didn’t
associate with the best people. He did associate with gangsters. Rocky
Marciano, the heavyweight champion, introduced him to some Mafia types. Like
Lucky Luciano.
Lanza gained
prodigious amounts of weight. He went up to 260 at one time. When he made
movies, the people who made the costumes had to have two or three sets for him. Fat,
not-so-fat, and very, very fat. To lose weight, he had himself injected with
urine from pregnant women. He was put to sleep—and lost weight presumably while
he slept.
I’ll pass along his
diet:
A grapefruit for
breakfast, a hard-boiled egg and a cup of coffee (no sugar) for lunch,
And some fresh shrimp for dinner. Yes, he lost weight when
he followed the diet.
He became somewhat paranoid, talking about quote “all those
fuckers who are out to get me.” Here’s a memorable quote: “That old bitch,
Ethyl Barrymore, she’s trying to steal my scenes! I’ll tell her where to get
off!” Bessette, who consulted with a psychiatrist, concluded that Lanza was
bipolar.
Among all his woes later in life, the IRS hit him with a
bill for $200,000 for back taxes.
He had trouble with MGM – which fired him because he
repeatedly didn’t show up for work. MGM sued for almost $700,000 in special
damages and $4.5 million in general damages.
Lanza did so much
damage at hotels when he was angry and drunk that some hotels would no longer rent
to him--and some restaurants would not serve him.
Ed Sullivan wrote
in the New York Daily News, “Temperamental antics of Mario Lanza driving MGM
daffy. The studio never having met a performer so incapable of handling
success.”
His death was sudden, and there were rumors that the Mafia
had done him in because he didn’t show up at a performance that Lucky Luciano
had arranged for him. But his health wasn’t good. Bessette believes that Lanza died
of acute phlebitis.
Today, some critics dismiss Lanza as singer. He overdid it. There was no subtlety,
no gradations. He tended to sing
everything the same. Loud and louder. Bessette the biographer put it well: “He
leaned toward Pagliacci on arias that called for Rodolfo….”
Rudolf Bing, manager of the Met from 1950 to 1972, felt that
Lanza’s films and his singing had cheapened opera, and regarded the idea
of Lanza singing at the Met as as joke. (He also despised Beverly Sills.)
But when Lanza was
young, his voice was powerful and beautiful. And as a human being, he was
sometimes kind—as in his genuine concern for a child dying of cancer, a child
he had befriended.
His biographer, Bessette, seems to have two primary
feelings about Lanza: (1) dislike and (2) utter loathing. But he does finally admit
that “There was much that was genuinely good about the man.”
And Bessette was
grateful to Lanza for his singing. Music can be therapeutic, and whenever Bessette
had trouble in his own life—the death of a son , the death of a brother—“the
antidote was … a voice that could reach me like no other: that of Mario Lanza.“
***
His Worst Recording?
Little Known
Lanza Recordings:
A Pretty Girl Is like a Melody (Berlin)
On the Street Where You Live (Loewe)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98xxI-RAOvk&list=PL6ACBB8D2D1AC5881
Trees
Charmaine
Donkey
Serenade (Friml)
Roses
of Picardy
Ah sweet mystery (Herbert)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MezcPUe3-Y&index=3&list=PLdOiqur1qGkrW2z3JtVhoSOI7gkV1-oGM
Lord’s Prayer
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mario+lanza+lord%27s+prayer
Bill Murray mocking Mario Lanza singing “Be My Love”
