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Lanza perked up after Silver arranged to get him out of the MPs and into Special Services as a singer. They became fast buddies and fellow performers. Then came a chance for an audition before Sergeant Peter Lind Hayes, the nightclub and TV comic, who was traveling through to recruit performers for an Army Air Force show, On the Beam. In spite of his rare protective talents as a chowhound and goldbrick, Lanza's throat was so raw with Texas dust that he could not sing. Silver, who was already selected for the show, devised a ruse: he put Lanza's name on a label and pasted it on a homemade recording (taken from a radio broadcast) of the Met's Tenor Frederick Jagel singing a Tosca aria. Impressed, Hayes took Mario on. Later, when Lanza could sing the aria himself, Hayes marveled: "You're even better than you were on the record!" Ever since, not content with this version of the story, Lanza has insisted that the record was really a Caruso.
Eight-Hour Shift. From On the Beam, Private Lanza went into Moss Hart's Winged Victory, but the big success of his Army career actually took place during a furlough in Los Angeles. At a party loaded with Hollywood celebrities, he sang from 11 o'clock at night until 7 the next morning. A growing number of influential admirers were fascinated by Lanza and felt a sense of mission to play some role in bringing his voice to the world. Among them was Frank Sinatra, who invited Mario to stay at his house during the furlough. Hedda Hopper and Walter Pidgeon also boosted him, and an RCA Victor agent signed him to a recording contract with a $3,000 bonus. Soon afterward, in January 1945, Mario got a medical discharge (reason: postnasal drip). He returned briefly to Hollywood to marry pretty Betty Hicks, sister of an Army friend, then headed for New York City.
He got some radio shows and smalltown concert dates, but his voice would not work the way he wanted it to, nor pay the bills he was piling up in high living. Lanza, was broke, hoarse and dispirited, but his luck was just about to click again. One day at a singing coach's studio he met a sunny little realtor named Sam Weiler, a man with plenty of money and a great yearning to be a singer. Realtor Weiler was ready to face up to the fact that he himself was no Caruso, and never would be. He listened to Lanza, then told the tenor: "I am going to have a career through you." Patron-Business Manager Weiler paid off $11,000 of Lanza's debts, canceled his current broadcasts and concert bookings, gave him $90 a week to live on and sent him to study with Enrico Rosati, then 72, who had taught the great Beniamino Gigli. In all, he sank some $90,000 into Lanza before any money began to come back.
"I have waited for you for 34 years—ever since Gigli!" sobbed Maestro Rosati. For 15 months, under Rosati and with help from Teacher Grant Garnell, Lanza buckled down to work. He even learned something he had always shirked: how to read music. Finally, he could sing concerts again without nervousness tightening his throat; his reputation and fees began to rise. One of his first big dates was at Chicago's Grant Park before a summer crowd of 55,000. The next night, after the Chicago Tribune headlined, "LANZA BORN TO SING," on its front page, he drew 76,000 people in spite of rain.