Want to know the best Mario Lanza movies? How about the worst Mario Lanza movies? Curious about Mario Lanza box office grosses or which Mario Lanza movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Mario Lanza movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
Mario Lanza (1921-1959) was a famous American tenor who turned his attention to making movies in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Lanza quickly became a Hollywood film star. His IMDB page shows 10 credits from 1944-1959. This page will rank 8 Mario Lanza movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. His his uncredited role in 1944’s Winged Victory and his television appearance on Shower of Stars (1954) were not included in the rankings.
Drivel part of the page: This Mario Lanza page comes from a request by BERN1960. For those that do not know…BERN1960…..would be my mother. I have not seen a single Mario Lanza movies….but I can recognize his voice. That is because growing up in my house….his records played many many times….as Lanza has be one of my mom’s Top 3 singers of all-time. So here you go BERN1960….a look at Mario Lanza’s short but successful career.
Mario Lanza Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Mario Lanza movies by co-stars of his movies
- Sort Mario Lanza movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Mario Lanza movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Mario Lanza movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Mario Lanza movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Mario Lanza movie won.
- Sort Mario Lanza movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Mario Lanza Table
- Two Mario Lanza movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 25.00% of his movies listed. The Great Caruso (1952) is his biggest box office hit.
- An average Mario Lanza movie grosses $93.60 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Mario Lanza’s career adjusted domestic gross is $748.80 million.
- Mario Lanza’s career adjusted worldwide gross is $1.54 billion.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 5 Mario Lanza movies are rated as good movies…or 62.50% of his movies. The Student Prince (1954) is his highest rated movie while Seven Hills From Rome (1957) is lowest rated movie.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 5 Mario Lanza movies scored higher that average….or 62.50% of his movies. The Great Caruso (1952) got the the highest UMR Score while Seven Hills From Rome (1957) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Mario Lanza
1. Alfred Arnold Cocozza was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1921.
2. He adopted the stage name Mario Lanza, for its similarity to his mother’s maiden name, Maria Lanza
3. Mario Lanza was to a seven year contract with MGM when Louis B. Mayer heared Lanza sing at a concert.
4. MGM had hoped Mario Lanza would become their “singing Clark Gable“.
5. Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, José Carreras, Andrea Bocelli, and Jerry Hadley all credit Mario Lanza as an inspiration to them in pursuing their chosen careers. I guess those are famous singers…lol.
6. The saga of The Student Prince. Mario Lanza and the film’s director (Curtis Bernhardt) did not get along during filming. The end result was that Lanza walked off the set and vowed not to return as long as Bernhardt was the director. The studio took an injunction against Lanza for damages and losses. He could not perform in public, on radio, or in the recording studio for the remaining time of his contract with MGM. A solution was reached in May 1953: the studio would remove the embargo on Lanza if he would allow his voice to be used while another actor played the part of the prince. So the movie ended up with Lanza’s voice going out of Edmund Purdom’s mouth.
7. Mario Lanza was married one time and had 4 children.
8. Mario Lanza died of an apparent pulmonary embolism at the age of 38 in 1959. At the time of his death he was still “the most famous tenor in the world“.
9. Three Mario Lanza movies were nominated for an Academy Award®. 1950’s The Toast of New Orleans and 1952’s Because Your Mine received 1 nomination….while 1951’s The Great Caruso was nominated for 3 Oscars®….winning one time.
10. Check out Mario Lanza’s career compared to current and classic actors. Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
Hi Bob
Thanks for the pointer on Would God I Were the Tender Apple Blossom.
I agree that the Danny Boy lyrics are morbid. But “WGIWTTAB” has the singer wishing he were a daisy in the pathway of the girl who rejected him so she can crush him to death underfoot. Well, as most songs make clear, not only is life the pits, but so is unrequited love.
That line “Sun and shadow your robe of lawn dapple” gave me some problems, but I think it means she is wearing a green dress, but “robe of lawn”?
Anyway, again thanks. I still think Lanza is in a class by himself as he was at his vocal peak for his recording. McCormack sounded a bit better in the teens before his bout with diphtheria.
1 To my ear McCormack’s voice went through about 5 changes throughout his career as he aged.
2 Some musical scholars argue that what he lost in terms of freshness of voice and vocal range he compensated for with the depth of feeling that can come with age/maturity. If you ever get the chance of listening to his 1927 version of Kathleen Mavourneen or his 1936 recording of South Winds you will perhaps see – or rather hear! – what those scholars mean. In his own times certain critics turned their backs on him because he forsook the opera for the concert platform. His operatic singing all but ended in 1916 though he made one further appearance in opera in 1923. From 1924 onward he was fond of recording and performing in his recitals German leider.
3 He was said to be a very fun-loving guy but at the same time highly temperamental. For example when his popularity was on the decline and he was giving one of his concerts he spotted Richard Tauber’s wife, English actress Diana Napier in the audience and after the show it is reported that he charged up to her and crossly and rudely said “Have you come to count the house?”
Hi Bob
I agree that McCormack’s interpretive skill deepened, or at least endured, with age. His recordings of such as Wolf’s Ganymede or Faure’s Automne or the very moving rendition of Terrence’s Farewell to Kathleen and the one in a million interpretation of the lyrics of I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair are among his peak efforts. The Old House right at the end of his career is very moving.
On the other hand, the sweetness of voice on his early recordings seems lost to my ear after the diphtheria bout in 1921.
*Just a small trivia point on McCormack. He won a Irish national vocal contest in 1904 from one James Joyce who had ambitions as a singer. Joyce turned to writing.
HI JOHN :
1 You are right in that 1921 was the dividing line between the younger and the older McCormack and to me there are almost two different voices at play when the dividing line is applied. On my IPOD I have 150 McCormack songs and the recordings on either side of the line I keep in separate compartments and I look for different things when I go from one side of the line to the other.
2 I would compliment you on identifying key songs that demonstrate well McCormack’s deepening interpretative powers and two others in my view in which he reached the heights of musical emotion are None but the Lonely Heart (1927)** and especially The Bitterness of Love (1930)
** Don’t get too excited BRUCE this song has nothing at all to do with the Grant movie !
3 It is very interesting that you mention Ganymed as here is what one classical historian wrote in an appreciation of McCormack:
“Of all the great singers who inhabited the earlier part of the 20th century he was probably the most versatile. Nobody within living memory has ever brought such superb technical finish to Motzart’s Il Mio Tesoro (1916) or such soaring rapture to Hugo Wolf’s Ganymed (1932). Indeed it was in his interpretations of 5 Wolf songs recorded between 1932 and 1935 that McCormack reached the artistic heights. ”
4 In Henry Fonda’s 1937 Wings of the Morning McCormack appears in a cameo concert performance watched by Fonda. You might wish to go into U Tube and request McCormack singing Believe Me if all Those Endearing Young Charms and Killarney from Wings of the Morning. The cameo will not only give you a flavour of his mastery of the concert platform but will demonstrate that despite his earlier illness and subsequent ageing he was still able to perform in his early fifties numbers that he also excelled in as a young man. Anyway we had better bring movies back into these exchanges or Bruce will be scolding us for using his site to discuss music!
5 Very interesting piece of information about James Joyce. Thanks for sharing it with me. Just as McCormack refused to record ‘Danny Boy’ he also for some reason declined to record any songs by the renowned Irish composer Percy French and there were complaints made about Mc being disrespectful to the works of French.
🙂
Cogerson
Except for his early appearance as a member of the chorus in 1944, all of Mario Lanza’s movies were in color. I think this makes him pretty much unique among 1940’s and 1950’s stars. James Dean is the only other star whose featured performances were all in color that I can think of.
Hey John….thanks for the breakdown of his color pictures. You are right that is pretty impressive…since color movies were still not used that much back then. Makes the fact that I could not easily find many photos of him seem strange. Most of the pictures I found were either blurry, out of focus or just looked bad. James Dean and Lanza have something in common….very intertesting. Thanks for the information.
HI JOHN
1 McCormack recorded a few of variations of the Danny Boy tune with completely different words from the familiar version Two of them were made in the mid 1930s when his voice was past its best, one was called Mary Dear and was sung to a slow pace and the other was named The Londonderry Air and had a very quick tempo. These two versions have the same words and begin with “O Mary Dear a cruel fate has parted us.”
2 He also made a fast-paced version in 1923 when his voice was still in its prime which had different words from all other versions and was called Would God I were the Tender Apple Blossom. This last version begins with those words and is a marvel to hear but a McCormack fan will usually enjoy all 3 versions that John sang.
3 The following extract on the British Broadcasting Company’s estimate of the 20 Greatest Tenors of all time may interest you.
BBC Music Magazine has just announced the results of a poll of its “experts” on the 20 greatest tenors “of all time”. I have no idea what criteria they’ve applied, but here are their results: 1. Plácido Domingo (born in 1941), The King of the Singers 2. Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) 3. Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007) 4. Fritz Wunderlich (1930-1966) 5. Jussi Bjorling (1911-1960) 6. Lauritz Melchior (1890) 7. Beniamino Gigli (1890-1957) 8. Jon Vickers (born in 1926) 9. Nicolai Gedda (born in 1925) 10. Peter Pears (1910-1986) 11. Tito Schipa (1880-1965) 12. Carlo Bergonzi (born in 1924) 13. Juan Diego Flórez (born in 1973) 14. Peter Schreier (born in 1935) 15. Franco Corelli (1921-1976) 16. John McCormack (1884-1945) 17. Anthony Rolfe Johnson (born in 1940) 18. Alfredo Kraus (1927-1999) 19. Wolfgang Windgasssen (1914-1974) 20. Sergey Lemeshev (1902-1977).
The lists are from 2007 and 2008, and while ranking artists is odd, I think it’s certainly interesting.
Best Wishes BOB
Hey Bob….thanks for sharing this information on Mr. McCormack, his songs, and the list of great tenors. Granted I know almost nothing of these singers….but it is still a fun list to look at….I will have to share this with my mom….as I am sure she knows many of these singers…:)
Hi Bob
I’ve heard “Mary Dear” but not the 1923 version, which must be a rather rare McCormack recording. The words aren’t as moving as the familiar Danny Boy lyrics in my judgement. The recording I have heard is from the mid-thirties after McCormack’s voice was frayed by age and illness (he almost died from diphtheria in 1921 and lost his bright top notes) and so can’t be compared to Lanza’s performance. By the way, for some reason, the Lanza recording was not released for decades. I’m pleased some one gophered through the archives at RCA and found it.
As for the list of tenors, thank you. It is interesting. It is surprising to me to say the least that Richard Tauber and Giovanni Martinelli failed to make this list. Tauber was the most acclaimed Mozart tenor of his time, and Martinelli was one of the few Italian tenors to not only triumph in Otello, but also in Wagner.
Curiously, what do you think of this tenor list?
*Concerning Martinelli, while everyone remembers Jolson singing on film in 1927, Martinelli actually sang on film in 1926 in one of the shorts preceding the New York premier of Don Juan.
HI JOHN
1 I agree with you that Tauber’s exclusion is a mystery. Other than that all of the tenors who I would have expected to be in a Top 20 were there and I personally could only quibble about the specific rankings with for example my opinion being that Caruso is the greatest of them all but they were/are all so great that as the Duke would say I wouldn’t like to live on the difference between them.
2 McCormack apparently refused to record the words to Danny Boy as we know them and was affronted when asked to do so seeming to believe that the familiar lyrics were sub-standard to those in the Mary Dear and Would God I were the Tender Apple Blossom variations. My personal preference is for Would God I were the Tender Apple Blossom as I agree with you about the effects of age/illness on his voice in the Mary Dear version and I have always found the Danny Boy lyrics a bit morbid. However as I’ve said before it’s a matter of opinion and if EVERYBODY had preferred for example Gable Cooper would have been out of business.
3 Anyway nice chatting to you about music. Thanks for your interest in my list. By the way if you go into U Tube and request Would God I were the Tender Apple Blossom by McCormack you could listen to it now.
Interesting…you two are very knowledgeable on this subject….while I am a newborn ….lol.
Cogerson
Hi. Bad penny returns. My computer was in the hospital with a hard drive attack and just got a transplant completed and so back in good health.
My Mom’s favorite singer was John McCormack. Your Mom’s was Mario Lanza. Moms love certain types of singers, don’t they?
One thing really struck me about Lanza. Here are your domestic and worldwide gross figures for the top three Judy Garland movies.
A Star is Born—–314.20 (459.40)
The Wizard of Oz—–294.80 (410.80)
Meet Me in St Louis—–426.30 (558.30)
versus Mario Lanza
The Great Caruso—–218.30 (457.30)
The Student Prince—–132.40 (280.80)
Because You’re Mine—–96.50 (194.50)
So the foreign grosses
A Star is Born—–145.20
The Wizard of Oz—–116.00
Meet Me in St Louis—–132.00
The Great Caruso—–239.00
The Student Prince—–148.00
Because You’re Mine—–98.00
One wonder if any other star has the big tilt toward international popularity which Lanza has. He was clearly an international star, like McCormack and Caruso earlier. Still, I don’t think he was the most famous international singer when he died. Jussi Bjoerling was.
Whatever, Lanza was a great singer. I’ve only seen The Great Caruso (& The Student Prince) among his movies, but do have some CD’s of his recordings. I think his rendition of “Danny Boy” is the best I have heard. It is available on you tube.
Hey John…..sorry about your computer….but glad to see it is back….and even gladder to see a “John” comment.
Yep…mom’s have a certain type of singer for sure…..I always find it amazing that my mom still listens to the same music all these years later. I am not a music man at all….but I really liked/like Hall & Oates….actually seen them in concert many times from a large venue to a free concert in a park. That being said….I rarely make an effort to put their music….heck….I basically only her their music when it shows up in a movie (which happens pretty often)…yet a random visit to mom will find her listen to one of her old records on her brand new record player.
I like the break down of Lanza and Garland. I think Lanza international % of grosses is among the highest in my database….meaning he was way more popular over there than over her. One day I will get that list posted….thinking Lanza and Greta Garbo would be in the Top 5. Thanks for the tally count…..which puts you in third place…which means a bronze medal for you….if it holds…lol. Thanks for the visit and the comment.
BERN1960….4 Mario movies watched or 50%
Flora …..4 Mario movies watched or 50%
John….2 Mario movies watched or 25%
Steve….0….Mario movies
Cogerson 0…Mario movies
My father was a huge Mario Lanza Fan…strangely I can’t remember him having a single record, but each time a Lanza movie was shown on TV, this was the thing that had to be watched…no chance for little Lupino to watch the adventures of Flipper or Lassie or whatever was on on other channels (no VCR’s around back then).
Anyway, I quite liked the guy myself, and thus I found the time to rewatch some of his movies as an adult. His last movie was shown frequently on TV here, with the supporting players well known actors in my country (Berlin born Miss von Koczian was a minor movie and major TV Star, she even had a chart hit although no singing voice at all). I like his Caruso and The toast of New Orleans, with his Joan Fontaine co- starrer a special mention due to that Ladies presence.
Great information on Student Prince!
Hey Lupino…..well your father and my mother were both huge Mario fans. My mom had enough of his records for both of them. Sorry Mario kept you away from Lassie and Flipper…lol. Thanks for sharing the information of his co-stars….gotta admit that I am not too aware of Miss von Koczian….it always amazes me that an unknown was a big star in Germany. The Great Caruso is the one that I want to check out the most…..and I actually thing it is in one of my local libraries…so I should be able to get my tally off the goose egg…I currently have now. Thanks for the comment and visit….both are greatly appreciated.