Motion Picture (Aug 1937-Jan 1938)

Hollywood "Humanizes" a Tenor [Continued from page 51] slow emphasis. It serves to emphasize the basic difference between an Italian tenor and a New England baritone. If the boys had asked Latin Mr. Martini the same question he might have given them cause for embarrassment. But Eddy doesn't function that way. MR. MARTINI has been coming to Hollywood for eight years. On his first visit to America he also trekked out to its Gold Coast and sang for short subjects that were variously titled Saluto di Hollywood, Night in Venice, Moonlight Romance, Caucion del Fado, plus one other. He wasn't very important, then, to American audiences. Jesse Lasky heard him sing in Paris and imported him. Nobody paid much attention to the slim little fellow. Nobody but Mr. Lasky and a Southern gentleman by name of Jack Salter. Mr. Salter is an artists' manager, now vice-president (with his partner, Lawrence Evans) of the Columbia Concert Corporation of New York. On his contract list are Yehudi Menuhin, Helen Jepson, Amelita Galli-Curci, Lawrence Tibbett, and other musical sparklers. It was Salter, listening to a small-time radio program, who heard this obscure young Italian tenor, and decided to manage him. He had heard him on the continent and knew that Martini had startled European concert and operatic audiences by singing "F" above high "C" in full voice, which is quite a trick. "But you're not going to add his name to your list, are you?" his panicked colleagues asked. "Would you put the unknown name of Martini down beside Tibbett's, and the great Galli Curci's ?" "I would," answered Salter. And he did. The answer, as you know, is Martini's American success. And Salter's personal gratification that he had again proved that he knew genuine talent when he heard it. Young Martini made his American operatic debut as the Duke in Rigoletto, singing at the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company auditorium. That was the year after his arrival in this country. But Mr. Martini was no novice at singing the classics. The Zenatellos, who first recognized his fine voice when they gave him an audition in his 'teens, had trained him for opera's most exacting arias. At twenty-one young Nino made his debut in Milan singing in its original key an opera that had been shelved for fifty years, since the days of Giovanni Rubini, because no modern voice could scale its high notes. Mr. Martini's could. The opera was / Puritani. After that he swam in engagements. People in Ostend, Paris, Marseilles, Nice, Toulouse, Monte Carlo, London, wanted to hear him. Toscanini, the great, auditioned him for continued appearances at Milan's La Scala Opera House, but he could not reach an agreement with this artistic fellow countryman. Too many others wanted to hear him reach "F" above high "C." It was hard to find time to return, even, to his birthplace at Verona, where, until his father's death in Nino's 'teens, the elder Martini had been a municipal official and honorary custodian of the tomb where Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet are presumed to be buried. His family lived in Verona — his mother and three sisters, Rosita, Wanda (he pronounces it "Vahn-dah") and Yolanda. Now only three sisters remain. Signora Martini died during the filming of her son's first full length starring film Here's to Romance, made for Fox in 1935. The shock of his mother's death was intense. Jack Salter, in Hollywood at the moment, saw it and was distressed. There was nothing he could do to relieve it. Most artists, as he knew them, give way to grief. They weep and moan. Not Martini. There were no hysterics. He couldn't cry. And neither could he sing. All his emotions, usually so fluent, were tied up within. Those around Martini were frankly worried. Not only for the agony the boy was suffering but for the fact that hundreds of extras had been called and were waiting for the star to sing the film's most important aria, in a set that duplicated a great European opera house. Try as he might, Martini could not sing a note. His throat was tight, twisted with unexpressed grief. He wanted to fly to New York; board a boat for Italy. There was only one thing to do. See his mother before she was buried. Salter sat down beside him and said : "You can't do that, Nino. Think of the production here ! How much money it would cost the producers ! How you would violate your contract. It would take a week or ten days, anyway, to get to Verona." Like a father, Salter put his hand on the tenor's slender shoulder. With that simple gesture the tension broke, and Martini sobbed out his grief. Then he got tip, bathed his face, and went out to sing in crystal-clear tones. MERCURIAL though his Latin temperament may be, Martini has yet to get peeved at the hazing his Hollywood boy and girl friends have given him. And their clowning reached a high in his previous film The Gay Desperado. In this cinema, Martini, as a harmless Mexican singer turned bandit by a super-bandit's whim, was given a piece of dialogue which commenced "I have an idea—" Prank-loving Director Rouben Mamoulian arranged beforehand that when Tenor Martini strode out to say his piece, everyone — cameraman, sound man, _ grip, prop, cast, extra, carpenter, electrician — was to topple over on his back. A tenor with an idea — ! Ha, preposterous ! This is a sample of Hollywood hazing. Martini took it with a grin. His current film finds Mr. Martini prepared for the Hollywood onslaught. He winks, clowns about the sets, pats Leading Lady Joan Fontaine on the posterior with the palm of his hand (a true sign of social equality in movie town) and takes to slang with the ease of an eel. "Scram" becomes a two-syllabled word ("Sc-ram") pronounced with the clarity of his famed rendition of Celeste Aida. "Monkey business — " "Ah, 'monkey beez-ness' — we have that too in Italy," he says with a wink. So adept is Regular Fellow Martini at declaiming slang that the writers have had to change his dialogue to conform with his increased understanding of our idioms. "Big shoots" is what they originally wrote for Mr. Martini to say. But a fellow, highpriced canary or no, who masters "Sc-ram" in one lesson, can take "big shot" in stride. So the dialogue writers are kept busy keepup with Mr. Martini. Romance rumors, of course, fly about Nino's dark head. And this because he is tantalizingly unmarried. Two seasons ago it was his leading lady of Here's to Romance, Miss Anita Louise, actress and harpist. Last [Continued on page 105] CORNS Stops Pain INSTANTLY! The feet are easily infected, so take no chances. Use Dr. Scholl's Zino-pads, the medically safe, sure treatment. 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