(7 of 9)
Gold in the Hills. Meanwhile, Lanza was making test records for RCA Victor to gauge when his voice would be right for commercial recordings. The records found their way to Ida Koverman, Louis B. Mayer's executive secretary, a power at M-G-M and a board member of the Hollywood Bowl. She played the discs for an impressed Mayer, then persuaded the Bowl to book Lanza. In the late summer of 1947, Lanza interrupted a concert tour to appear at the Bowl; it was his 200th concert. In one of his own favorite phrases, he fractured 'em.
Next day, he auditioned for a sound stage full of M-G-M producers and directors. To them, he sounded like pure gold; they gave him a $10,000 bonus to sign a seven-year contract that ties him to the studio only six months each year. That left him free, before making his first picture, to do 90 more concerts from Nova Scotia to Mexico. In June 1948, he reported to the studio and settled down in Beverly Hills, where he now lives in a two-story white stucco house with his adoring wife, their children, Colleen, 2, and Elissa, 8 months, his still-doting parents, the ancient Victrola of his childhood and a gold 45-r.p.m. record that RCA Victor presented to him for selling so many of its Vinylite cousins.
Before The Great Caruso appeared in a theater, 100,000 albums of the operatic numbers used in the picture had been sold. The sale was doubtless helped by Lanza's technique of plugging his records and films like a disc jockey from the concert stage—an unorthodox practice that pains some traditionalists even more than his habit of acknowledging applause with the overhead handclasp of a prizefighter. Yet no one quite foresaw what a hit the movie would be. Some of MGM's top brass took a gloomy view on the theory that the U.S. public would not buy anything heavier than Victor Herbert in so large a dose. But after the first preview, Studio Boss Dore Schary sent Lanza hampers of fruit, flowers and champagne.
Whispering Campaign? Lanza's paycheck for Caruso was $100,000. For his next picture he will get $150,000 (less 10% to Manager Weiler and another 10% to his agent); for the next record album, he is dickering to improve the deal that now gives him a 10% royalty on sales. But he is none too happy about the new movie script, which he rejected several times and accepted only after what he calls "a vicious whispering campaign" about his temperamental refusals. The whole thing was making him so nervous that he could not sing. To Lanza, nothing seems worthy to follow Caruso, despite the quiet opinion of Mrs. Dorothy Caruso, the famed tenor's widow, that Caruso's story is yet to be told in the movies with a script and star that are up to snuff.