Word: valli
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...generated earnings for an obscure Los Angeles company, the Four Seasons Partnership. Like many businesses in the entertainment field, the firm employs technicians, musicians and other professionals, but the heart of the company is a 25-year- old creative and financial partnership between two men -- Bob Gaudio and Frankie Valli -- that is highly unusual, if not unique, in the world of business. Gaudio, 46, is a composer, pianist, arranger and producer who has worked on records with Sinatra, Ross, Diamond, Michael Jackson and Barry Manilow. Valli, 53, is the veteran pop singer whose high-pitched voice (a critic once likened...
Though Gaudio stopped performing with the group more than 15 years ago and his career took off on a different course from Valli's, their fortunes have remained intertwined. Reason: they are still partners despite their professional separation, and they split all income -- whoever earns it -- down the middle. When Gaudio co-produced the music for Manilow's TV special Copacabana, he gave half of his earnings to Valli, who had nothing to do with the show. When Valli headlined a big concert last year at New Jersey's Meadowlands Arena, Gaudio got half the profits even though...
...arrangement dates back to 1962, when Gaudio and Valli, who came from working-class Italian neighborhoods in the Bronx and Newark, respectively, were only dreaming of hitting it big. At the time, Valli was a barber, Gaudio worked in a printing plant, and the Four Seasons was an unknown group playing on weekends in small clubs and bowling alleys. Sitting one evening in Valli's apartment in a Newark low-income housing project, the two friends decided to be partners forever and share their earnings equally. Recalls Gaudio: "We said, 'Neither one of us knows where we're going...
...frustrating. On the other hand, his spare comments enhance a sense of mystery and allure. Photos of his sister in her 20s reveal mischievous Tartar eyes and a determined jaw. In the 1940s, she could have been one of the European film beauties who used only one name, like Valli and Annabella. In the '80s, her diary could yet make her a "hot property." Perhaps even now, Meryl Streep's telephone is ringing off the hook...
...achieving that end. "If the country rejected us, and it did," said John Ruehlmann, 37, a former Army sergeant, "we can get together here, bound by the monument." That harmony was expressed in a variety of ways, from a candlelight vigil to a '60s nostalgia concert by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons; the mood throughout shuttled between tearful meditation and joyous, beery reunions. At the end, just about everyone seemed to feel a little better...