Mario Lanza was an American tenor and actor. He was a Hollywood film star popular in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Lanza began studying to be a professional singer at the age of 16. After appearing at the Hollywood Bowl in 1947, Lanza signed a seven-year film contract with Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who saw his performance and was impressed by his singing. Prior to that, the adult Lanza sang only two performances of an opera. The following year (1948) he sang the role of Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly in New Orleans.
MGM still of Mario Lanza, circa 1950
Mario Lanza's birthplace, 636 Christian Street, Philadelphia - June 8, 2016, demolished July 2018
Lanza as Giuseppe Verdi's Otello
Tenor Richard Tucker (left) speaking with Lanza in 1958 at Tucker's Covent Garden debut
Louis Burt Mayer was a Canadian-American film producer and co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM) in 1924. Under Mayer's management, MGM became the film industry's most prestigious movie studio, accumulating the largest concentration of leading writers, directors, and stars in Hollywood.
Mayer in 1953
Lionel Barrymore's 61st birthday in 1939, standing: Mickey Rooney, Robert Montgomery, Clark Gable, Louis B. Mayer, William Powell, Robert Taylor, seated: Norma Shearer, Lionel Barrymore, and Rosalind Russell
Mayer with Joan Crawford at the premiere of Torch Song, 1953. "To me," she once stated, "L.B. Mayer was my father, my father confessor, the best friend I ever had."
Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Love Finds Andy Hardy, 1938
