Released two months before his demise, For The First Time proved to be Mario Lanza's last film. While it's not the young Lanza in his prime, booming out Be My Love, it's still a good film to go out on. It's a Cinderella type fairy tale of a concert singer/Prince Charming who meets and falls for a deaf girl and spends his time looking to cure her affliction.
One thing For The First Time has going for it are those European locations, especially the fabulous Isle of Capri. Capri is one of those places in the world where you cannot film anything that won't be beautiful. Ranks right up there with the Grecian Isles and Hawaii in that regard. Paramount would also use Capri around the same time for the Clark Gable-Sophia Loren film, It Started In Naples also with gratifying results.
The deaf girl who Lanza falls for precisely because she can't hear him and isn't groupie material is played by German actress Johanna Von Koczian who's had a distinguished career in German cinema to this day. She's billed as 'introducing Johanna Von Koczian' but she's only being introduced here to American audiences. Walter Rilla as the hearing specialist who operates and cures her and Hans Bohnker as Von Koczian's uncle, are also from the German film industry. Most of the rest of the cast is Italian. Of course with the exceptions of Kurt Kaszner as Lanza's manager and Zsa Zsa Gabor as Zsa Zsa under any name.
Mario too is Mario under any name. He always was himself because the audiences came to hear him sing, they didn't expect Hamlet from him. For The First Time has a good mix of classical and popular songs. Highlights are Come Prima which Lanza introduced and which sold a few records for him on RCA Victor Red Seal label and O Sole Mio which he sings at Sandra Giglio's wedding.
Lanza was in training at the time of his death on October 7, 1959 to finally go into grand opera. A hint of what he could have done is in the arias he does from Otello and the triumphal march from Aida which is a great piece of DeMille like spectacle in opera. He's just fabulous in both.
Back in the days of The Odd Couple I remember an episode where Felix says to Oscar he wants the triumphal march from Aida played at his funeral as his casket is paraded seven times around the cemetery before the planting. As an opera lover, I'm sure Felix must have seen For The First Time and was influenced.
If he heard Mario Lanza sing it, it sounds like a plan.
