Modern Screen (Dec 1949 - Nov 1950)

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the number one choice ON THE NEWSSTANDS! ON THE AIR! Women everywhere are talking about — MODERN ROMANCES — the magazine with trueto-life stories about people like you yourself might know. — the radio program with thrilling dramatizations based on these same stories. Enjoy Modern Romances doubly The program Broadcast daily over the ABC Network. See your newspaper for local time. The magazine On sale at all newsstands 15c GET YOUR COPY AND TUNE IN TODAY! living to pay for some classical music tuit'v.;., so he moved pianos for a few hard dollars a day. One day the route sheet on the truck read "Academy of Music." Just another day, another dollar, and another piano. Mario and his fellow workers moved the massive grand onto the stage while the musicians puttered about the auditorium. A small group of them, however, were in one corner of the stage running through an operatic aria. Mario couldn't help it. He cut loose with something special from the vocal zone, and he hit the right note and held it. From the back of the auditorium, a loud bellow was heard. "Quiet!" it ordered. Then, "Who did that? Who sang that note?" the discovery . . . Fifty fingers and a dozen violin bows pointed at the piano mover. William Huff, director of the Philadelphia Forum, strode down the aisle and onto the stage. He looked at Mario open-mouthed, then he took him by the arm and into the office. In a week, Mario was doing the same thing for Serge Koussevitsky, conductor of the Boston Symphony — and a piano mover was on his way to operatic fame. A hackneyed motion picture title card of 1920 fits in here— Then Came The War! Private Mario Lanza was a pretty good soldier. He forgot everything but the war. He appeared in the Air Forces show, This is The Army, but only in a minor capacity. War and careers didn't mix well with him. But when he got out, he looked up his new musical friends and started in singing again. He signed a contract with Victor, he got a big time radio program, but he was not getting where he should vocally and he knew it was his lack of professional training that was responsible. He was at his lowest ebb, mentally, when he met Sam Weiler. Sam Weiler was a real estate man who had made a lot of money and who was a patron of the arts. He heard Mario singing in Carnegie Hall and came back and introduced himself. He had an offer to make. He wasn't interested in making money, and he knew enough about music to know that he had heard a great voice that needed training. He offered to stake Mario to all the tuition he needed if he would stop singing publicly until he was ready. Mario leaped at the chance. For the next fifteen months, Mario Lanza learned about music and voice. He was married now, but all of his expenses were taken care of by Sam Weiler. Mario had nothing else to worry about. Then one day Sam Weiler said he was ready, and he booked Mario into the famed Hollywood Bowl for a concert. At the conclusion of that evening, the Bowl audience gave Mario the greatest ovation any artist appearing there ever got. They stood on their feet in the Hollywood Bowl that night and cheered for fifteen minutes for the kid from South Philadelphia who got goose pimples at the sound of music. Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM studios, saw it from a box down front and sans agent, sans talent scouts, Mario Lanza got a contract. The studio engaged Maestro Spadoni, Caruso's coach, to work with him — and he was on his way at last. Two pictures at MGM have resulted in the belief that Lanza is the screen's most exciting personality today. There are, of course, two schools of thought on that, but then that's inevitable. One thing is sure, the charm of the lad's personality is as contagious as laughter. At home, Mario Lanza is part peasant and part Lord of the Manor. I went to his home to meet his wife and parents. As I had anticipated, it was a huge, sprawling semi-castle in Beverly Hills looking as though the furniture had been looted. instead of purchased, piece by piece. Mario howled a greeting to everyone and commanded his wife to present herself. Before he shut the door he had turned on the phonograph. His mother and father, who live with him, sat quietly and listened to him talk. His wife, a pretty, charming girl, shut her eyes and listened to him sing on the records, almost as though she had never heard them before. "These are the things a man loves," Mario told me later. "A home for Mama and Papa. My wife whom I love. My baby, Coleen. A swimming pool. A fine car. And to sing without fear. But none of these things would be mine without the patronage of a man like him." He pointed to Sam Weiler who had joined us and who sat happily in a corner gazing softly at the wonders he had helped create. "There could be no artists without these patrons. There could be no music without music stores that played music for nothing, so that kids could learn to love it. There are so many things to be grateful for." "But I am no sissy," he bellowed, his fists raised in fury. "I can still lick any kid on my street — and any of those fancy Italian opera singers with the high noses. The next one I see, I'll punch right in the nose!" The family paid no attention to the outburst. Sam Weiler still gazed as softly, and Mrs. Lanza's eyes were still closed. "But I love everyone," Mario said calmly, "and everyone loves me." This man is indeed a lunatic, I thought. A wonderful lunatic. The most exciting personality in years, and without a doubt the greatest voice since, well, anybody. And that's the way it is. He's yours to figure out. There's always the topper, though. The final story. It took place one day when Mario had been at MGM a year. He was called into the front office of the studio on that day and was seated before a very distinguished group. Among the top brass of the studio, sat Jesse Lasky, a pioneer film-maker. song in his heart . . . "Mr. Lanza," said a studio executive, "We have just concluded a deal with Mr. Lasky for him to make a picture with this company. He owns the rights to a story we want, and he has searched the world for five years to find a player capable of doing the role. He has come to us saying you are the only man who can do it. Would you agree to sing and play the life of Enrico Caruso?" Mario Lanza just sat and nodded his head. Soon, he got to his feet and stumbled from the room. Down a long corridor he walked, and he couldn't see — because he was crying. Joyful and bitter tears. Tears that came from childhood and standing in a dingy hall silently learning to sing. Tears that came from singing alone in a darkened room while his mother and father were away at the movies. Tears that came from gratitude because he could steal a jacket that had been made for Van Johnson, and get away with it. Mario Lanza, big, barrel-chested, vigorous American of Italian descent who is twentyeight years old, married and has an Italian-Irish daughter of two named Coleen. That's him. The End Paid Notice Have YOU ever been Jilted? (SEE PAGE 86)