5

SING FOR OUR SUPPER

From La Scala to the Catskills

PAUL: When my mother was a teenager, she played the piano at a silent movie house. She was such a brilliant musician that she was offered a scholarship to Juilliard. Her parents were old-school wealthy Italians and would not let her accept the offer. It was heartless. By the time I was born, she was a music teacher. Her students practiced and took lessons in our house. The first sound I distinctly remember is piano music.

I had a cousin, much older than I, who had a beautiful tenor voice and sung at La Scala, the great opera house in Milan. At a very young age, I knew I wanted to be like him, to go on stage as he did. I developed a singing voice at the age of seven and haven’t stopped singing since. I didn’t take up the piano until much later.

I loved Mario Lanza, Enrico Caruso, and Frank Sinatra. At thirteen, I won an Italian speaking contest at Columbia University. My prize was literature by Dante and a recording of Puccini’s La Bohème. I listened to those beautiful Puccini arias every day after school. I also loved the albums of the great Broadway musicals of the time—Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza in South Pacific, Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr in the The King and I, Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, Carol Lawrence and Chita Rivera in West Side Story. It was the golden age of musical theater.

When I was sixteen, I went to work as a singer in a resort hotel named Perella’s Maple Leaf in the Italian section of the Catskills known as the “minestrone belt.” I was paid twenty-five dollars a week plus room and board. The following year I worked as a social director “tummler” at a Jewish resort in the Borscht Belt called the Alamac. I performed all day into the night usually eighteen hours. Not even the Army was as grueling, but I was in heaven. It was a job I was born for.

DEE DEE: During Oscar week one year, we ran into Alec Baldwin outside Montage Beverly Hills. Paul broke into song, as he often does. Several months later Alec invited Paul to introduce the New York philharmonic and be special guest the night they played The Godfather score. New Yorkers love their big Paulie and Alec Baldwin was brilliant to call on Paul.

Paul’s music is as important to him as his acting. He plays the piano and sings every day, to my immense pleasure. He had his own special on PBS and sang at a gala at the Metropolitan Opera and on the recordings of three Broadway shows. He had the leading role in Most Happy Fella, which was staged by the New York City Opera.

When we plan a menu, we try to emulate the harmony and flow of great music. If it all works together—color, texture, flavor, aroma—the enjoyment factor increases exponentially and makes a lasting impression.

We dedicated the special cocktail for this feast, Marietta’s Song, to Paul’s beautiful and accomplished mother.