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
Anthony Caruso (actor) Anthony Caruso (actor) Anthony Caruso (April 7, 1916 – April 4, 2003) was an American character actor in more than one hundred American films, usually playing villains, including the first season of Walt Disney's "Zorro" as Captain Juan Ortega. Born in Frankfort, Indiana, the son of Italian immigrants Anthony Bagarelli Caruso and Augustina Taormina Caruso; his father was a fruit vendor. When he was ten years old, Anthony and his family moved to Long Beach, California, where he grew up. He made his film debut in "Johnny Apollo" (1940). In some of his television roles, Caruso played sympathetic characters, like