This is an excerpt from the collection of stories about the deaths of such notables as John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pope John XXIII, Jeanette MacDonald, James Dean. From a "Special Collector's Issue" of Photoplay magazine, November 1967.
Mario Lanza
There are tragic individuals who die long before their hearts actually stop beating. Passionate, widly gifted Mario Lanza was one of them. He was one of the great personalities of all time, one of the greatest voices. It was success that killed him.
His heart stopped beating on October 7, 1959, but he had died within himself long before that. He died in Rome, Italy, where he had gone hoping for a comeback. A mere seven years before, he had been the biggest name in showbusiness. In the two years between 1952 and 1954, he literally made millions. But in Rome, he was nearly broke, making the only little film he could get - "For the First Time."
He had entered a hospital simply to get a rest, and his end came so unexpectedly that merely two days before, he had called his parents in Philadelphia and sung to them via that very long distance for two hours. Such a loving, foolishly extravagant gesture was typical of Mario. He was forever the charming, spoiled child who never grew up. Until that afternoon when he closed his eyes forever, he never knew the meaning of the word discipline. Born Alfredo Arnold Cocozza in South Philadelphia, he was spoiled in turn by his grandparents, his parents and then his Irish wife, Betty.
He never did a lick of work until he went into the Army Air Force in 1942, and even there, he did what came naturally to him - he was cast in "On the Beam" and "Winged Victory," which toured our country. With his voice, his choir boy face in contrast to his powerful body, he was signed by Rca Victor Records in 1945 - the year he left the Service. Eventually, he was signed by the then greatest of movie companies, MGM. Virtually the day he signed, MGM headed him toward stardom - and his own destruction.
His first film in 1949 was "That Midnight Kiss" which he stole from its star, Kathryn Grayson. His "The Great Caruso" in 1951 was one of the great successes of all time, and is still playing on TV. In 1952, merely one record of his, "Be My Love," earned him more than a million and a quarter dollars. Another ecord, "The Loveliest Night of the Year," made him another fortune. Whole albums of Christmas songs or love songs sold prodigiously. His name was magic. He had everything - except self-discipline.
While MGM concelaed it from the public, he behaved monstrously. He ate unbelievably. He drank unbelievably. Sometimes he ate and drank so much he'd put on fifty pounds in a week. He pursued women unbelievably. That his adoring wife whom he married on April 13, 1945, would bear him four children in less than eight years and close her eyes to his romances seemed to him quite natural. When she once left him, he went after her, kissed her and brought her back. that first year of his smash success, when the United States government demanded about half his earnings to taxes, he didn't bother to pay them.
MGm began getting "The Student Prince" ready for him. When he came in for the prerecording of its lovely songs, they told him he was too fat to be photographed. He must reduce. He didn't until we went to try on the costumes, made to his "Great Caruso" measurements and couldn't get into them. Then he did reduce. He starved off thirty-five pounds, then balked and went back to stuffing, chasing, drinking. "The Student Prince" was delayed again and again, to get him thinner. Starve and stuff. That became his pattern. After too many delays, MGM dropped him.
He could hardly believe it. The T-Men dropped his tax bill on him at about that time. It was pay up or jail. He paid. He wasn't too afraid. He took a Las Vegas engagement at $40,000 a week. Only he didn't show the opening night, while mobs waited to see him.
That made him through in Vegas. He laughed, took a TV special. Only too many viewers became aware that it was his voice on records, concealed back stage that was doing the singing, while he, on camera, merely moved his lips. He later did a show on which he sang, but the onus of the first sham was not completely removed.
That finished him in American show business. He went to Italy, lived lavishly on no income, with Betty and his children, tried to diet, couldn't stick to it. By then his voice was going, too.
When the news broke that he, too, was gone, crowds the world around, all weeping, began to clog the streets. In Rome, three thousand came out for his requiem mass, another five thousand attended his funeral services.
On October 20, his body arrived in Philadelphia and lay in state at the St. Mary Magdalena de Pazzi Church where he had been baptized, served as an altar boy and sung in the choir. Mourners filed by his bier all day and most of the night. After his final mass there, his body was flown to Hollywood and interred in Forest Lawn cemetery. It was a pathetic ending for the thirty-eight-year-old genius.
