Word: lanza
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Last week Tenor Lanza, a onetime street-gang wiseguy who never did a day's work until he was 21, was working hard for his money. In a sweltering rubber suit, he puffed along California roads or sparred with his bodyguard-trainer, trying valiantly to sweat off the excess poundage that was costing an exasperated M-G-M many thousands of dollars for an eleven-day delay in the start of his next picture, Because You're Mine. For the moment, Lanza looked more like Mike Di Salle than Lieut. Pinkerton or any other operatic dream prince. Just...
Reducing Diet. Lanza, who once weighed close to 300 Ibs., peeled down to a svelte 169 for his first movie, 1949's That Midnight Kiss; that time, Director Norman Taurog kept a scale on the set and weighed him in like a jockey every morning. His weight went up in 1950's The Toast of New Orleans, and again in his latest picture. "I gained weight on purpose during those pictures," insists Lanza, who is sensitive on the subject. "I wanted to look like Caruso, didn't I? What do they want to have...
...long as he eats the way he does between pictures, such mechanical fakery should never be necessary. Lanza's idea of dieting, based on his own theory that proteins can add no weight, is to pile chicken legs, half-pound chunks of rare steak and a mound of barbecued kidneys on his plate, devour them and then heap on a second helping. For breakfast, he holds down to a steak and four to six eggs. He usually skips lunch. With great effort ("I go crazy"), he resists the spaghetti, ravioli and pizza he dearly loves, and the beer...
Tears of Gratitude. Mario likes the grand gesture, whether he is in a temper tantrum or a mood of warmhearted generosity. When he learned that Louis B. Mayer, cofounder and chief of the M-G-M lot, seemed to be on his way out, Lanza remembered that Mayer had fought an almost lone battle to get The Great Caruso made. He telephoned Mayer to express concern and ask whether he could help the man long ranked as Hollywood's No. 1 executive. Mayer-as Lanza recalls the incident-wept tears of gratitude...
When the mood is on him, Lanza, can gorge his ego as freely as his stomach, and his studio bosses have sometimes tried needling him to deflate his head as well as his hide. Whether such needling does him much good is a question. Lanza hungers for praise of his voice, and, though he gets plenty, from 500 fan letters a day and from the personal entourage of nine which he rules like a comic-opera Latin American dictator, he also supplies it himself. From idolizing Enrico Caruso as far back as his childhood, he has passed through the stages...