Word: lanza
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Whispering Campaign? Lanza's paycheck for Caruso was $100,000. For his next picture he will get $150,000 (less 10% to Manager Weiler and another 10% to his agent); for the next record album, he is dickering to improve the deal that now gives him a 10% royalty on sales. But he is none too happy about the new movie script, which he rejected several times and accepted only after what he calls "a vicious whispering campaign" about his temperamental refusals. The whole thing was making him so nervous that he could not sing. To Lanza, nothing seems...
Caruso himself, at any rate, never commanded the hysterical adulation that swamped Lanza last winter and spring on his latest concert tour. Sam Weiler has a nightmarish memory of a fracturing scene in Scranton, Pa., where the tour began: "We get to the department store [to autograph record albums], and we can't get through the people. They make an aisle for us. There were women everywhere. You couldn't move. They were trampling merchandise, standing on washing machines, on counters, everywhere. Some women yelled, 'Hey, Mario, be my love!' They started shoving. The Fire Department...
...Baltimore, the fans broke a plateglass window trying to get to Mario. In Pittsburgh, where 2,000 paid just to hear him rehearse, two girls had to be taken to the hospital. Says Lanza: "They go for your handkerchief. They go for your buttons. They rip at your lapels. They try to kiss you. Oh, how they try to kiss you! I love every minute of it." While the police grappled with mobs that tore detectives' badges off in their frenzy to reach their idol, Lanza collected an average of $4,530 from box offices in each...
...such serious musicians as Dr. Peter Herman Adler, the conductor who worked with him in The Great Caruso, the case of Mario Lanza is a peculiarly American tragedy. "Opera singers are like wild animals," says Dr. Adler. "They must be trained, kept in strict discipline. In Italy, there are a dozen opera houses for young singers to train where they can be in the right artistic atmosphere. Where in America can a young singer go but these two opera houses in New York (the Met and the N.Y. City Opera), to sing once or twice a week in minor roles...
Caught in a Dream. Something more than his overnight success and riches seems to bind Lanza to Hollywood. Caught in the daydream of a small boy, he is not ready to take up the role of the mature artist, the man from whom people have come to accept-and expect-a brilliant performance. It is easier to think of himself as a prodigy borne on the shoulders of the fans; every time he opens his mouth, he wants someone to be hearing his voice incredulously for the first fracturing time...