"I am Plácido Domingo." "There are two generations of music lovers for whom the name Mario Lanza is magic." "The young man who was called the American Caruso." "Mario Lanza was a superstar before that word was even invented." "He died unexpectedly at the age of 38." "His career had lasted a little more than a dozen years, but he entertained and influenced also all an amazing success story." "And yet, it is also the story of an unfulfilled dream for Mario Lanza didn't get what he really wanted, what he always believed he was born to have." "This is what he wanted." "The stage of an Opera House." "From stages like this, facing standing-room all the audience, night after night, in many difficult roles, interpreting the great masters, in front of very demanding listeners, and afterward, the aclamation of those audiences." "and the admiration of music critics." "This is what Mario Lanza wanted from boyhood." "Throughout his life," "Lanza considered his voice God-given, and Enrico Caruso his divine mentor." "He was born in 1921, the year Caruso died." "It was the high point of his movie career when he acted all the fantasy that had both strengthened and tormented him." "Lanza played Caruso." "It was a role he had been rehearsing all his life." "'The Great Caruso' included at least a dozen wonderful arias, and tantalizing samples of the greatest operas of the whole times." "Mario Lanza brought opera in that way." "To a new audience and attracting the classical music fans back to the movies." "Lanza, everybody knows, and everyone that has has known and met all know that he was very spoiled by the movies, movie people, by Mr. Mayer especially, who kept calling him Caruso." "And his head became larger and larger." "And he was just impossible to handle." "He would get terribly fat and then they'd have to pin him down and we'd had a great deal with worried about whether he was going to show up on the set half of the time." "But it was, he was really sounded fantastic." "In the film, because he had to do many takes, but his voice was, I think, I've always said, that I think Mario Lanza probably could have been the American Caruso." "He could have had any opera house in this country that he wanted if he could have learned." "He had exactly what Caruso had." "Caruso is big famous not because of a beautiful voice, because you cannot recognize a little voice through a microphone, particularly not on the old" "recordings which's been doctored up now completely got a modeled engineering by turning a dial, what can make a small voice in a big voice." "He had the most brilliant, natural, broad voice, without limitation and he has a natural peasant aggressive bass which is so what in Caruso's recording, because what in Caruso's recording made him famous was not the quality of the voice" "but his vitality, his tremendous vitality exactaly what Mario absolutely had." "Yet and he would really had become what already his neighbors in" "Philadelphia said "an American Caruso."" "'The Great Caruso' was the biggest money-making movie in America that year." "And it went on to play all over the world." "I was a boy of 10 living in Mexico when" "I saw it." "Mario Lanza truly inspired me and many other young singers too." "My first question when he had auditioned at Tanglewood, and they loved him so much, and they paid for his studies and everything," "I said please tell me what was the voice like?" "What was it like?" "and they raved that, the bigness was was from the bottom to the top." "It never stopped." "It was huge, and round, and rich and we were really in love with Mario Lanza and he was sort of, someone to look up to." "As a soprano I can only say the tenor voice per se is always a very physical, experience a high C from a tenor will always be more exciting than a high C from a soprano." "I don't know if that sexuality, maybe it's a matter of physics." "I don't know It's his voice, more than most, did have a very sexy character to it." "I also was working with Giacomo Spadoni, who was the choirmaster at the MET and after several years he went out to Hollywood and became the opera coach for all the people like Mario Lanza and Kathryn Grayson, anyone who was going to sing" "anything big and every other getting in the movies and, of course, he did a lot of work with with Mario Lanza, on his pictures, and every time I'd work with him he'd say" "Oh, if that boy could only sing the opera, is that if he would only get away from the movies and concentrate on the opera and he really, he said he would be the biggest biggest opera star that we had since Caruso." "I loved singing with Mario and he had such a, it was a warm voice and yet it had a great thrill at the, especially at the top of the voice." "And he never spared the horses at all he just let it loose." "Mario Lanza worked in this neighborhood." "In his grandfather's was on Christian" "In their house." "He became known as the singer truck driver and we all were proud that we made it to the big time." "Mario Lanza's voice was the greatest." "I can remember I was a kid I saw him driving a truck in that movies." "It's fabulous." "Fantastic." "I remember when I was a kid and I grew up in Philadelphia before I move to the West Coast." "We used to sing walking on the street "Be My Love" and everything, it was fantastic." "Surely always a great voice." "That voice was to get it to my heart like can I say he was going to sing "Mama", things like this, I was to get a" "I was to get emotioned, I'm very emotioned when I was in those years of boy, still now when I hear his voice" "I feel great, you know, I feel like a ?" "." "Mario Lanza and I met in New York for the first time in August of 1945." "He had just returned from the army." "He had been in Hollywood for a big party in a movie version about the big airforce musical Winged Victory but nothing came in fact." "So he returned to New York with his bride Betty and that's when we met." "It seemed to be the perfect meeting of his talent and my business sense." "And Mario admitted to me that all his training up to that date had been erratic." "He had different teachers, he learned somethings somethings he didn't learn." "He just wasn't focused." "His voice was good." "Hell, it was it was terrific, but he was still terribly insecure." "RCA had given him a contract, but he knew that it was too early to start making records." "How apparently Mario had confidenced to me." "We cancelled all his commitments and we got down the hard work." "I put him with Enrico Rosati, the only coach of the great tenor Beniamino Gigli." "Mario worked coaching for nearly a year and he really worked." "and then went on an extended concert to two other fine talents:" "George London and Frances Yeend." "As the Bel Canto Trio." "Altogether he had had 10 years of disorder training and a hundred concerts on under his belt." "He was ready." "I arranged for him to appear at the Hollywood Bowl and I arranfed for Louis B Mayer, the man of MGM, to be there at the same time and that, I think, mark the turning point in Mario's whole career." "And Mr. Mayer and Mrs. Koverman and I went back to the stage, after the performance, and Mr. Mayer invited" "Mario to the studio the following morning, and wanted me to be there too so we were there the following morning and we sang together, and Mario sang arias and we sang operatic duets and different producers were invited in to listen and" "everybody loved his voice and none of the producers thought they could do anything with Mario, because they thought he was too heavy and that he didn't represent a romantic leading man." "So every other producers ?" "I was back there with Mario Lanza and Louis B Mayer" "Lanza looked like a Steve Balm or something, and I said 'alright'." "and I said I'll make a picture with him and I came in to the beauty parlor to take the kick out of his head" "I made a test." "They didn't believe it was the same guy." "In 1948, I was training movie stars at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and I met Mario at the studio." "He was signed to a contract to make his first picture called 'That Midnight Kiss'." "He had to lose 25 pounds." "And I had the job of taking Mario out every morning, down to the beach, we'd run, we'd get back to the studio, work out in a little gym I had there form and then he'd like the box" "and he was a rough tough little boy from South Philadelphia with a big chest and we worked with the medicine ball, we worked with weighty, he wanted to do it all run in the morning and I spent about 4 or 5 hours a day with Mario." "Not just always training, walking and watching that it did me too much." "Mr. Mayer said that he heard that boy had a great appetite and being an italian-born from South Philadelphia he sure did." "So I spent time with him watching him at his lunchtime and stayed with him, we took the 25 pounds off and he made his first film." "Thank you, Arty, thank you." "Hello!" "Goodbye!" "Wait a minute!" "Just sign here, lady, there's no extra charge for the song." "You know you have a wonderful voice." "Thanks." "You should do something with it." "I did I closed an opera house in New York." "You think I'm kidding, it's on the level" "I was in common in the soldiers chorus took me eight weeks to get the job I sang three performances of... paid me $38 to take all money." "The following day I went back to work." "The place was closed." "I still don't know how they found out it was me." "Then you have studied?" "Since I was that height." "Italy?" "Little Italy with my father, knuckle bombs." "Then two years in boston with Beretti." "And then what happened?" "I got hungry and I got some sense." "I came back to Philly got a" "GI loan and bought a truck." "Mario Lanza was never a truck driver." "His grandfather had a little Italian" "American grocery store." "And it may have a truck up back, but he never was a truck driver." "He never worked." "Mario's mother worked." "And when they found out this boy had a voice," "they gave him lessons." "His mother was the breadwinner." "His father was a disabled veteran World War I." "And he was on a pension." "But Lanza never worked." "He studied." "He studied languages, he studied voice." "I worked out with Mario vocally every day." "and we had fun, because Mario loved a competition and I had been raised with two older brothers and a younger sister where we all had fought after ranges and we did know that everyone didn't." "So Mario was like another brother and he didn't mind the competition and we were always trying to out singing with each other and we were really good for each other." "And the studio asked us to take" "'That Midnight Kiss' on tour" "And we had a built-in audience and we did and the tour was absolutely sensational and Mario was absolutely sensational." "The picture that really established him as a star was 'The Toast of New Orleans'." "The cast are Katheryn Grayson, David Niven, and J Carrol Naish as his lovable rascal uncle." "Caruso was his idle." "Caruso died in 1921." "And that's the year Mario Lanza was born, 1921." "So he always felt that perhaps Enrico's voice passed it to him and then one day he would live to make a motion picture called 'The Great Caruso' on the life of his idle which is sort of rare." "After Radio City ?" "in New York City" "'The Great Caruso' played to over a million-and-a-half people in Tanglewoods." "The longest run in its history up to that time." "The album was the first operatic appeal to sell over a million copies." "Doris Day and Mario Lanza were the photoplay magazine gold medal winners." "And 'Be My Love' became the biggest-selling RCA red seal record of all time." "In just two years, the whole world had Lanza fever." "With 'The Great Caruso'," "Mario Lanza became a star in every corner of the world, but if his movie career was at the peak, so was his sense of conflict." "He wondered if he had betrayed the voice by not singing opera, but his voice brought the people so much pleasure and him on imagine fame and popularity, how could he be wrong?" "As his fame grew, Mario Lanza's lifelong dream of performing on the operatic stage seemed more and more impossible to attain." "The demands of Hollywood to start on were constant time consuming, but he was young, strong, and stubborn." "And the voice was better than ever." "This is where Mario Lanza was born." "636 Christian Street, in Philadelphia." "In a third floor bedroom, above his grandfather's home and their small grocery store." "Mario Lanza dreamed of a singing career in this home." "Listening to his father's opera records and his mother's beautiful voice." "My own singing career started when I was a boy working in my parents zarzuela company." "That's our own music tradition." "I had you might say one of those nice high voices you hear in young voice." "Then it started to change and I wondered if I'd come out the other side with that real voice." "Mario Lanza almost have gone through the same painful period." "My moment of truth came when I was pushed out onto the stage to sing a solo and out came a big sound." "My father's face fell like this." "Mario Lanza too surprised his parents." "They took him to the home of a well-known baritone coach." "His parents heard a voice coming from the music room and they thought it was the maestro finishing with another student." "The voice of course was their son's." "From that day, his mother was determined that he would have the singing career she was denied by her strict father." "Why she worked long hours to pay for the lessons the young man dream of a stardom." "This is his high school notebook." "His real name was" "Alfred Arnold Cocozza." "Al Cocozza." "But see here how he was looking for a stage name." "Alfred Cocozza." "Fred Lanza." "Tony Cocozza." "Anthony Cocozza." "He took the masculine form of his mother's maiden name." "Maria" "And practiced writing it." "Maria." "Maria." "Maria." "Finally," "Mario Lanza." "Born in South Philadelphia, in 1921, of Italian immigrant parents he was the only child of Tony Cocozza, a disabled veteran and Maria Lanza Cocozza, who was just 16 years old when their son was born." "They believed that that curly hair mischievous child could do no wrong." "His mother spoiled him and overloked his faults and Mario lived out her fantasies and his own." "He adored his mother and his mother adored him." "The only child and a son and, you know, mothers and sons and sons and mothers is always that relationship and" "Mario was the apple of his mother's eye." "Mario loved his parents so much." "And he'd love to put his mother in these films so that one day when his kids would grow up they would be able to see their grandparents on the film." "And 'Because You're Mine' at the railroad station when he gets off the train is inducted into the army there are his parents standing there." "In fact his mother had some words to say." "Oh, Mr. Rosano." "I heard you sing Pagliacci." "May I have your autograph?" "Go right ahead Mr. Rosano, please, give a lady your autograph." "Oh, would someone give him a paper and a pencil?" "They are." "We have a good gentleman." "I'm feeling impressed having a real live celebrity in." "I always felt that there was an Oedipus complex relationship between Mario and his mother." "It even spilled over into the relationship that that Mario had with his wife." "Because there seemed to be a rivalry between mother and wife." "I think that Mario loved his mother so much, he was so devoted to her that many times he made mistakes." "He would play up more mom mom her beauty when he introduced her to the press or to actors out here that he met when we had big parties and he'd leave Betty on the side." "Betty became the mother and the children." "And mom became his great love." "Look at my mother, look how great she looks like, look how young she is and I think Betty felt this." "I think the two women were pulling him apart with this rivalry and jealousy that existed." "I think it affected them rather deeply." "We'd get out of the car and he'd say" ""what the hell is going on?" "You know, why I'm making everybody happy, I'm making all the money, look at the way we're living: servants, big house in Bel Air", but yet there was all this conflict, surrounding him." "He had people around him that's go to a tiger." "dual as plays, I know someone that, people around him, and they pro not out for Mario because they were the first to leave him when things were going wrong." "Now Mario's domestic trouble started to show up on the set and unfortunately in the press." "There was no question that he lacked self-discipline." "He was over reading and he was drinking too much." "And his overnight movie fame kept them from realizing the big trouble he was headed for." "The Studio Press didn't like it one bit." "He was more popular with the people working on the set than he was with the bosses upstairs." "But they would come up to Mario, these young kids working depended on this kind of living, and they'd say, "you know, Mario, with you goof this last scene now will keep us here" "tonight will get time and a half." "Well", he said OK, "it's very simple to do."" "and he'd make a little boob and then the director would say 'cut' and of course, the studio money and it wouldn't put him a good favor with the studio, but it helped the poor kids working on the set." "And they liked to do that." "I first met Mario when doing a picture called the" "'Toast of New Orleans'." "and Kathryn Grayson, and I've worked for Associated Press at that time and I went out to" "MGM lot with Jack Keller who was Mario press agent and he wanted me to meet Mario." "And just as we got there, Mario wearing nothing but a jockstrap, was chasing Kathryn Grayson on the lot, and Jack Keller said "Mario, I want you to meet Jim Bacon."" "So, fine, Mario stopped and came over then we went in the dressing room, and talked." "So that was the first time I remember, that's Mario for you." "No one would chase me." "Because I wouldn't allow it." "So simple as that." "That includes the man who said that." "Mario Lanza was a great, great humanizer." "And amazingly, he talked about it right in front of his wife." "I've been up there his house many times and they'd be talking about some girl or what you've done to or why you've gone do this and Betty be there, you know, kind of pride, you know." "Good evening, welcome to the Mario Lanza show." "With the musical .... orchestra transcribing our special guest the delightful international artist Mrs. L Mackenzie When I first ?" "I was going to be working a lot with Mario." "I was only a bit you know, I felt a little funny because I had heard that he was a very salty talker." "He could put many a sailor to shame and as far as I was concerned Mario was a total gentleman to me." "And in fact when he was around me he spoke like a priest, so I didn't see the salty sailor type in him." "In my recent concert tour across the United States," "I was deeply gratified at everyone's warm response to good music to the better composers and that is just what we are going to try to bring to you not only the popular songs but selections from the concert stage" "and from time to time one of the great arias." "The first summer was kind of exciting." "And it was fun, was a brand new show." "And everybody was all excited and everybody was, it was really happy." "A happy time for Mario, and especially happy for me." "As one of his guest until he was on the cover of Time Magazine." "The Time Magazine article flagged Mario by putting him on the cover." "We only had three pictures finished at this time and he was a big major star." "However, what they published on the inside pages tore him apart." "To me, it was a money article, because after you read the article, had you never seen Mario Lanza in a movie, you would want to see him, because it made him very, very corlorful," "which he was." "They didn't pick on his voice." "And they said he glorified himself as he walked around in the Caruso image which was a lot of bull, when we did the picture on Caruso's life he wanted to be Enrico." "That's how he portrayed him, so why not put on a hat like a man walking around like?" "He had a picture coming up called 'Because You're Mine'." "He literally weighed about 250 pounds when it came time to shoot the picture And then one of the strangest things that I ever saw take place in his life." "A card." "He began to lose weight." "In the course of that picture he went from 240 pounds to 160." "No, to 159 pounds on the final day of shooting and I know this for a fact because I weighed him." "During the weeks the movie was being shot his weight fluctuated 80 pounds." "The producers would be sights and sounds." "I remember one scene where Mario playing the soldier walks into the army chapel to sing 'the Lord's Prayer'." "He weighed a 160 pounds." "He looks great in his uniform." "Well, he comes to the chapel door, that's another scene, shot at another time, and bingo he's enormous." "His jacket looks like a tent." "And Joe Pasternak was preparing a picture called 'the Student Prince'." "Mario was enthralled, loved it" "We went into a recording session of all the songs from 'the Student Prince' and I tell you that he was magnificent." "One take right down the line, every shot one take." "I don't think there was any kind of going back to anything on any of the songs that he recorded." "When it came time to shoot the film, he didn't like the director of the film." "They had an argument and he wanted him out of the film." "And Joe Pasternack, the producer, said:" ""Oh, no."" ""We've signed him to a contract, he's gonna do it." And when Mario had a vengeance against the studio, he would get heavy." "I said, look, let's give for the late talk to me." "I'm sure he's going to lose weight." "It'd cost a lot of money, but they agreed with me so therefore they say they came back he was enormous it said their customs and everything but again find this is actually getting picked up 40 pounds, he couldn't get in to the" "uniform." "Mario Lanza was suspended by MGM." "He was having trouble with the studio." "I guess he was some, kind of insisting on a lot of things and they didn't want it." "You know, if he wouldn't show up, and he didn't show up, or something like that, I don't know what the details were, but they found enough to suspend him, and that meant that he couldn't work in any way, he couldn't give a concert," "he couldn't sing on radio, he could make records, couldn't do a thing." "His hands were tied." "Well, Mario was going through a breakdown." "The house was falling apart that he was going through a breakdown." "He was sued by the studio." "After close to 15 million dollars, the government was after him for back taxes, I mean, the boys whole beautiful career was now being smashed." "So" "Ginger Rogers had a ranch up in" "Medford, Oregon, on the Rogue River and he loved the outdoors and he loved horses." "So he and Betty drove up upon the people that worked at the house without the children, without Terry, without managers, they went up by themselves and had the greatest two weeks of their lives." "The only real vacation they have had together." "Lanza gave the studio his voice, the records, and that ended the loss." "We never did the picture and they used another actor, named Edmund Purdom, whom out the Lanza's voice." "Culica!" "Tell them I'm busy." "You don't understand, I just got an idea for the opening number for Lanza." "Lanza?" "Where have you been all the afternoon?" "I fired Lanza hours ago!" "You fired Lanza?" "I look I happen a little bit about human nature anybody who pro attack, terribly script Bari director for me said majorie filling but I like that it can give us a little trouble." "I was with Mario on his first Showers Stars the great debut with this new program, writing program and on those days all sing tell live no syncing the voices." "Try want to the show on their live performance a all the Sun night Mario's sitting down which is very unusual and start singing and his lips syncing and I recognize I don't think any anyone else who knows the they were playing" "Mario Lanza's records." "I'd got on the phone and detail the story so sure Presswire all over the world matter seconds and when the performance was over, all the other reporters there had been queried by their offices and the AP has" "a story that Mario Lanza is not singing live and so they started questioning about, but Mario would say "I was singing live" and the people from CBS the singing live in and the president of CBS and New York issued a statement he was singing live" "and so forth and so on big controversy, about 2 or 3 days." "3 days later, on a Friday the president of CBS apologized." "Mario Lanza was indeed lip-syncing and so then all approved that Mario could still sing" "CBS arranged the impromptu concert at Mario's house and Mario sang, you know, we all knew we could sing." "be very ?" "I to this day I can't understand why caused all that controversy because the movies have been lip-syncing for years before that but television, I guess they thought their credibility would destroy and for that reason they made a big Hassall offering." "The new frontier hotel was opening in Las Vegas and they offered Mario a staggering sum for a two-week appearance." "Exhausted by dieting, sick with the fear that his voice would fail" "Mario Lanza was unable to appear for the opening night audience and that included hundreds of reporters." "The hotel canceled his contract." "The press was brutal." "His excuse to the press, about throat." "In just a few months, there were more offers from other Las Vegas hotels, but no amount of money could tempt Mario Lanza to try it again." "Who knows how he felt about the Las Vegas incident." "It was like one of those melodramatic moments in opera, when the tenor confronts his passions with principles and the hand that reality had doubted him." "The tenor rolls in opera are usually the romantic leads." "Strong, big heroes." "Sometimes less than admirable, but always replaceable." "Some say that offstage tenor is the same colourful rascal exciting, temperamental, living on the edge of his high notes." "Who am I to say?" "Mario Lanza, as generations of tenors before him, was an exuberant volatile character." "And was covered graphically in the press for someone who had always been loved and forgiven, no matter what he did, being fired from a picture, condemned by his studio and bitterly criticized by the press." "Well, it was devastating." "He hid." "No one could see him and then one day he announced he was moving with his whole family to Italy to start over." "He left America and within weeks was starring in an italian-made film, 'The Seven Hills of Rome'." "The movie is about, you guess it, an American who moves to Italy." "Hey, Jack." "Are you americano?" "Yes, and that's a real good beach you got there." "You ?" "it is our Carol?" "I ?" "it the most." "Crasy." "Hey, you know Bárbara Singer?" "Bárbara Singer." "Bárbara is Seville." "No, Perry Como!" "Perry Como?" "Sure I know Perry Como." "He is an Italian boy." "Sim, Italiano!" "You know Louis Armstrong?" "Louis Armstrong?" "Good ?" "He's one of my favorites!" "But he's not italiano!" "Honney, he doesn't have to be." "This was one of Mario Lanza's favorite Napolitan song." "'A Vucchella' and one of Caruso's bestselling recordings probably played over and over by the young boy growing up in the Italian quarter of South Philadelphia." "Althrough his childhood," "Mario had heard wonderful stories about the serenity and warmth of Italy, and its people." "So when America seemed to turn its back, the land of Caruso ?" "come to him and his family." "Lanza brought to Italy a real desire to begin again." "To work, to relax, to get his life in order." "You know, Mario Lanza returned the movies and a MGM released calls 'Seven Hills of Rome'." "So I went over around to see Mario, I haven't seen him for a long time and he sang a song what you're going to hear right now." "In early days of my meetings with Lanza" "I know that that he was in fine shape for the film and I said "how do you keep so slim?"" "and he said "I have new doctor who gives me injections and that's what does the trick." I said "Injections of what?" and his wife Betty giggle said "the urine of pregnant women"" "and I laughed, I thought it was a gag, but no he meant that is a fact and less the wealth he says yes that and the two bodyguards" "I gave him not to protect them from anybody but to keep food away from." "After the completion of 'The Seven Hills of Rome'" "Mario was offered another picture and in order to get financing for it, the producers had to bring his weight down and somebody told them about a sanitarium at Welcome Stay." "As I understand that they put you in twilight sleep and they keep you wanna stay they've suspended animation the 20 days and feed you intravenously." "Mario did the treatment, lost the weight, passed his physical, the insurance company, and did the movie." "Are you a little bit surprised to see me here?" "I expected you days ago." "That's why did come sooner." "And the boys still waiting outside?" "Well, the boys." "I forgot them in Viena." "Tony, what's the matter of is you?" "You didn't expect me to go to the opera I have said some S cards besides 3 men together, nothing." "Before I met him I heard so many terrible things about him, that he is rude, that he is uses faul language and everything, and I ?" "about six months with him and his family, in Rome in Capri, and then Berlin, in Germany and I say he was the nicest kindest man I ever met." "This is about 15 months of shooting and in Rome, and in Rome Opera House." "And I'm ready in my beautiful beauty parlor room" "I'm standing backstage of the theater." "And the German press is interviewing me and there was a steep staircase going up on the top there was Mario stressing the man that he wasn't ready yet, german press asked if this is true, if it is true that he's so rude and that uses" "foul language, that is really demonize not enough for five months but never used a dirty word before me." "Is that on the Q, the door opens his agent is just tumbling down the steep stairs and he screams up him the most dirty language I ever saw." "So the Demos newspaperman said "Thank you, Miss, come on" "I've always said to tell the truth and it's true he never met said one dirty word, but this moment he was cursing the hell out there that poor guy." "I thought his sang beautifully and I said didn't think he was a handsome as man alive I didn't like his looks at all francally, but his voice was beautiful and he was a sweet darling kind man." "And if they would have had left him be the peasant and a simple" "American boy he was." "And just having a fantastic voice he would be still alive, but they wanted to make a" "Clark Gable out of a man you can't make a Clark Gable of." "He was a fat body, but an American man with a blessed voice and that what he was." "I adored so did I adored his wife Betty and her four children" "Being in our big deal in Rome and my father and my mother would set up two chairs in the middle of this great hall that we had all ?" "and I remember I used to write ball tricycles around them and that was a lot of fun with our time together." "My favorite memory of my father is of him singing to us at that time when we were very small he always had a a song to sing and then he would tell these wonderful bedtime stories and" "I think for those moments those special moments those were my favorite." "I remember as Lisa said, he used to take us as a bag holding us, in his arms, Lisa and myself and sing to us." "Used to throwing me about 5 feet in the air and then catch me." "You know, and that was a memory." "And his powerful voice and his voice was so beautiful." "Now when I do want to see my father" "I get 'The Great Caruso' or 'Serenade'." "I'll put it on my video and but" "I never get to see my mother that much." "In this was a chance to see my mother on film and happy and laughing with my father having a good time." "Now, I mean, because you have the visionary, you have then a partner and bringing this gift to Mario Lanza's this voice to the world, you've done something." "Thank you, father." "More or less I can consider myself more a support." "I think that for every wife should be." "You've been more for Mario." "Well, I'm more a support," "I laugh when I'm suposed to." "Wich is very often, may I add." "Very often." "We go through all the troubles and tribulations wouldn't mile and with support children great quote with them and we do everything together." "For my mother it was very difficult for her." "Also to be put in the limelight and to have to share my father with too many people." "And to have to go through all the hurt and the pain with him." "And very many times she simply couldn't take it." "And it was extremely hard for her to, as glamorous as it it seemed." "It wasn't." "One of the crosses that Mario Lanza had to bear in his life was his wife's physical condition." "And when I say he with a pill to swallow, they weren't just painkillers." "They weren't just narcotics." "They were anything that was in the form of a pill, including when Mario locked up every pill he could find in the top of the dolium." "And one day we climbed up the ladder and he opened this great case loaded with pills." "All her pills." "He grabbed and would lock away." "He even swallowed his" "?" "pills, because there weren't any other pills in the house." "Mario Lanza faced many problems and the only way he could cope with the problems would by eating." "That was his opium." "When he was disturbed, he ate like a glock." "Yet he feared he was in definitely fear of growing fat." "Mario always had one habit that was very bad, when he drank he would sign his name to things and say he do things." "And when he was sober he'd say "Well, I can't do that.", but he had sign for it." "The only time" "I ever asked Mario to do me a favor was when I was running a charity show from a donations down in Naples." "The important man was Lucky Luciano and he had promised Lucky Luciano after they had bothered him for many months that he would do this big benefit Netley." "The last minute he called me and said "Mike, I can't do it, because I'm going into this new picture and the insurance doctor is coming in to see me in one week" "I'm going into the Valley Julia." "La clinica Valley Julia." "I said "Mario, you're going two days later, and I've never asked you for it." "In the evening, Betty called me." "His doctor called me." "The producer called me and I said "tell Mario, I will never talk to him again if he doesn't show up." "Betty called back and said "Mike, he's already in the hospital, they started the treatment." "And they kept the boy, they kept him under this hypnosis therapy." "Where they fed him intravenously." "He never came out of that clinic." "He died in that clinic." "We've got a phone call here 7 o'clock in the morning and I got up to answer the phone call." "So they said they wanted to speak to Terry, so I told myself, "You realize, it's 7 o'clock, and he's asleep, why don't you call later?", so they said no, we want to speak to, we have" "something important to tell him." "I heard when Terry said "No, it's impossible." "It's not true." "You've got the whole thing mixed up."" "Then Terry hung up and went back to his room putting the radio on in this room." "Well, he didn't realize how loud that radio was when the phone call rang again and he went to enter the call the phone again, because people already had heard and I didn't know." "And when I heard Mario sing" "'Be My Love' and I to my husband, you know." "I said to him" ""Listen to Mario." "I said they got him on the radio early in the morning singing 'Be My Love' and the wholy sound stopped." "And the man said, the announcer said, "This is the voice of the great tenor Mario Lanza which was still by a heart attack."" "I just don't know what happened after that." "Believe or not" "I heard about Mario Lanza's death from one of his good friends" "Rocky Marciano who was a heavyweight champion of the world." "He says, I just got word, "Mario died."" "had a heart attack and Rocky told me then he says something very very strange." "As Mario has as strong as hard than anyone I've ever known could." "Rocky used to work out with him all the time." "And then Rocky told me an amazing story." "As Lanza was coming up, he was backed by the Mafia." "And he never paid them back." "And Lucky Luciano" "Luciano was over Naples at the time and" "Rocky, I don't know what sources were, but he said that Lucky Luciano adored the hit on Mario and I guess there's a way you can insert air in the, in your veins and make it look like a heart attack, but that was Rocky Marciano's" "story." "So here they are." "In the conversations that I had with Mario before he went in with Betty, with the doctor, with the producer." "I understood that he was going to get the same treatment that he got in that" "Wellcome Stay sanitarium in Munich, which was a twilight sleep treatment." "I've been asked what killed Mario Lanza?" "And I can only say I was not there when he died, but draw your own conclusions." "I can only go by what his mother and his wife told me." "That he died very mysteriously, they never found the chauffeur that informed." "He's disappeared and the nurse who was attending him disappeared, they never to this they seen or heard from her again either." "So they don't know how" "Mario Lanza died." "The funeral in Rome was spectacular if that's what you want to call it." "There were so many people, so many of his fans, so many of his friends." "It was incredible the drive down to St. Peter's Square." "They gave him the funeral of a president or King and it was in it was, you know, the regular black carriage with the drawn horses." "The only thing I remember was a holding on to my mother's coat and people showing me and seeing him in a casket, just holding on to her, that's all I have left." "That's what I do remember." "Kathryn Grayson is my very best friend." "She called and told me" "Mario died and they flanked me to meet him in California and if I want to go to see Betty to the funeral." "It was so sad his coffin was wrapped in an American flag and there was the 4 children and there was his wonderful ?" "Betty was trembling, and just stopped twice." "?" "Betty came inside of the car, Kate and I to get us some quiet down pills and then six months later Betty died." "And there, two boys and two girls without mother and father." "It was very sad." "She had no motivation ever to live anymore." "?" "I mean we were the creation of their happiness but they were the initial to the ?" "and some she had none disheartening ?" "Mario Lanza chose a film career, but in his heart, it was not a clear-cold decision." "He always intended to pursue the path no taking." "The Opera." "Mario, I know that La Scala Opera wanted to get you to open their season at at the first American star now do you agree?" "Yes, actually I was asked in 1949 to open, well, to be the first American to open the La Scala season, but movie commitments and one thing or another just prevented me from doing this." "Now this year I'll be able to fulfill this well, this suppressed desire." "Could Mario Lanza have become a great opera singer?" "Well, he was a man born to sing opera from a stage like this, but he only did that once in April 1948 a young unkown Mario sang two performances as Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly at the New Orleans opera." "The next morning the local reviewer to his credit refered to this superbly romantically linving tenor with his good looks and exceptionally beautiful voice." "Suppose for a moment that after Madama Butterfly Mario Lanza had continued on the stage and turned aside the offers from Hollywood he might have become a true star of Grand Opera avoiding the stress and pressures of" "Hollywood and perhaps be alive today." "But could Lanza's temperament have survived spot and self discipline and study and a high-powered international competition of the Opera?" "The successes and tragedies of his life will be forgotten, but his glorious golden voice will not be." "The legacy of Mario Lanza passes onto its third generation of listeners and to young tenors everywhere." "Scare you since in Pagliacci, in Vesti La Giuba, the show must go on."