The Great Caruso Crowther says, "All of the silliest, sappiest clichés of musical biography have been written by Sonya Levien and William Ludwig into the script. And Richard Thorpe has directed in a comparably mawkish, bathetic style." Nearly 40 years after its release, Caruso's son, Enrico, Jr., reminisced that, "Vocally and musically "The Great Caruso" ...has helped many young people discover opera, and even become singers themselves."He added that, "I can think of no other tenor, before or since Mario Lanza, who could have risen with comparable success to the challenge of playing Caruso in a screen biography." The film has also been
Mario Lanza: The American Caruso JoAnn Young. The documentary film was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in 1983 as Outstanding Informational Special. Co-Executive Producers were John Musilli, Stephen Chodorov; and JoAnn Young, Producer. Mario Lanza: The American Caruso Mario Lanza: The American Caruso is a 90-minute 1983 PBS documentary, narrated and hosted by Plácido Domingo. It explores the life of tenor Mario Lanza, and includes clips from six of the tenor's eight films, together with interviews with such Lanza associates and contemporaries as Anna Moffo, Kathryn Grayson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Joe Pasternak, and Dorothy Kirsten, Frances Yeend, and the conductor Peter Herman Adler. The film