Whenever the actress Donatella Lampo was in Chicago, usually on a stopover between New York and Los Angeles, she made sure to visit Rudy at his place of business, Lake Shore Liquors and Pharmacy on the corner of Rush Street and Chicago Avenue in the heart of the city’s nightclub district. Donatella disliked the monotony of travelling straight through the 3,000 miles between coasts by train—she refused to fly—and was always relieved to break up the trip by staying two or three days in America’s second city, as it was popularly called in the 1940s and ’50s.
Donatella Lampo, who had been born in a small village in Calabria, Italy, emigrated with her parents to the United States when she was four years old. The family settled on the lower East side of Manhattan, in New York City, and Donatella grew up there. Her two brothers, Pietro and Francesco, were born in New York, where they were called Peter and Frank. Donatella resisted the anglicization of her name to Donna, insisting always that she be addressed by her given Christian name. By the age of six she was acting in plays in local theater productions, and at eight was attending drama school on scholarship at the prestigious Ellen Beaumont Children’s Acting Academy in midtown. Before she was twelve, Donatella was in Los Angeles, where she lived with her mother, Florentina, under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Her father, Carlo, a butcher, and her brothers remained in New York.
Donatella first gained international fame in the movies portraying the daughter of Vanoosh, the Vanishing Wild Man of the Tasmanian jungle, and his mate, Tanooka. Donatella’s character’s name in the five Vanoosh films in which she appeared was Wupa, the Wild Child, who was most often accompanied during her meanderings through the forests by a small pack of Tasmanian dwarf tigers. Even after Donatella matured and acted in adult dramas and comedies, many of her fans referred to her as Wupa, which she never minded.
“Donatella Lampo may have gone her own way,” she liked to say, “but Wupa will never be forgotten.”
In Chicago, the actress usually stayed at the Moorish-styled Edgewater Beach Hotel, overlooking Lake Michigan, where she was ensconced in the personalized Wupa Rooftop Suite. One of her first stops in the city was at Lake Shore Liquors and Pharmacy, where Rudy supplied her with cosmetics and champagne, along with whatever narcotics she favored at the moment. Rudy advised her how to use the drugs in modest doses so as not to endanger her well-being, to take only enough to keep her “gliding,” as Donatella described her preferred plane of consciousness.
When he was a boy, Rudy’s son, Roy, had a crush on Donatella, and Rudy made sure to bring him to the store to see her. The actress always fussed over Roy and sat with him at Big Louise’s lunch counter, where they sipped chocolate sodas and exchanged stories. She enjoyed hearing about Roy’s baseball games and Donatella entertained him with tales of her Hollywood adventures.
“You know, Rudy,” she told Roy’s father, “your son is an unusual person. He’s a child but he already possesses an understanding of human behavior that astounds me. If you and your wife Eva ever want to get rid of him, send him to me.”
When Roy learned of the actress’s untimely and shocking demise in a car wreck, he was deeply saddened. Rudy repeated to Roy Donatella’s offer to have him live with her.
“How did it happen, Dad?”
“She was driving her Cadillac convertible on a hill above Malibu, lost control taking a curve too fast and went over a cliff.”
He showed Roy a headline in the newspaper that read, “Wupa Perishes in Suicide Smash-Up!”
“She did it on purpose?”
“It says in the paper that Donatella left a note saying she was ‘going to vanish like Vanoosh.’ ”
“She never got married, did she, Dad?”
“Not that I know of.”
“The last time I saw Donatella she said she was going to wait for me to grow up.”
