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
Rick Caruso his wife Tina donated a further $25 million to USC, to endow and name the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. He sits on the board of the National Institute of Transplantation and is on the Board of Saint John’s Hospital and The California Medical Center Foundation. In 1995, Caruso was named Alumnus of the Year by Pepperdine School of Law. Caruso was named by the Los Angeles Business Journal as "Developer of the Year" and its 2012 Ernst & Young LLP Master Entrepreneur of the Year. He is married to Tina Caruso;