Eddie Mannix, MGM vice president, was a target for Mario’s fury. “I told him I’d kill him. He said: ‘You wouldn’t hit an old man.’ I said: ‘I’ll tie my hands behind my back and fight you with my head.’”
In the middle of the battle Mario took a look into the books of Marsam Enterprises which agent Sam Weiler had set up with his wife, Selma, as partner to handle Lanza’s business affairs. The ledgers showed he had little left. Weiler promptly quit, and Mario subsequently filed suit against him. His memory was kept green in Mario’s private gymnasium, a boxing ring under a tent in his garden. Painted on the punching bag was a portrait of Weiler. “I can keep in trim the rest of my life,” Mario boasted, “because every time I work out I can beat the daylights out of the sonofagun.”
The studio had allotted twelve weeks to cut the recordings for The Student Prince. Mario finished the job in two. When he played them over for me, he sat a million miles away, saturated in the music, until the last notes had died. “A critic wrote about me once: ‘He sings every note as though it’s his last on earth.’” Mario said softly: “It’s true. I do. I can’t help myself.”
The sound track was all he made of The Student Prince. He refused to work on the picture after that. He was suspended, then sued for the potential profit on that and future pictures. The figures mentioned in the legal documents were a gargantuan jest to him. “They asked $13,500,000 plus $855,066.73. Now what I want to know is, what’s the seventy-three cents for? I guess Eddie Mannix had his drawers laundered.”
He could joke about it in daylight, but darkness brought about a Jekyll and Hyde change. He kept to his house during the day; at night, with his chauffeur-trainer for company, he roved through the streets of Beverly Hills seeking out his enemies. He drove to Joe Pasternak’s house to smash the entrance gates off their hinges. Another night he used the Cadillac to batter down Joe’s mailbox. And some mornings the men on Mario’s black list found he had ridden up to their doorsteps and defecated there.
The rocket had exploded, and the charred stick was tumbling down. A letter from Eddie Mannix, on behalf of Loew’s Incorporated, came to Mario: “For good and sufficient reasons your employment under the contract between us is hereby terminated. We shall hold you fully accountable for all damage and loss suffered by us as a result of your actions and conduct; and we expressly reserve all rights of every kind and character acquired by us under said contract.” Mario promptly had a banner made to hang in his house: “The Lion is Dead,” it proclaimed, “Long Live The Tiger.”
I was one of the friends who begged Mario to commit himself to the Menninger Clinic. Once again he tried to strike a bargain with Jack Keller, another friend: if Jack would go with him, Mario would take treatment. But he made the mistake of letting Betty know too soon.
“He’s no crazier than you are,” she raged at Jack.
“But it’s for your happiness as much as his.” It was known by now that the Lanzas were on drink and drugs together. Their domestic battles often stopped short of murder only by a hair’s breadth. But Betty set her foot down; no trip to Topeka for her husband.
In theory he could still make records, but he was in no shape for singing. He tried and failed repeatedly, his throat shut tight by tension. The Lanzas owed money to everybody, from Goldblatt’s delicatessen to Uncle Sam. A psychiatrist familiar with his case had an explanation: “Lanza has lost all touch with reality. He no longer knows who he really is or the personality he wants to be.”