Johnny Dorelli has not spoken for many years. I think his last TV appearance was on Fabio Fazio’s show, it was in 2018. It was a very sweet interview, full of images from the time when Johnny lived “at the crossroads of the winds”, overwhelmed by a success without limits: music, TV, radio, theatre. And then a good book, What a Fantastic Life, written with Pier Luigi Vercesi.
Discreet, elegant and measured, Johnny has spent dozens of years in the glittering world of entertainment without losing his core quality: friendliness. Audrey Hepburn, who knew about it, said, “Having attractive lips speaks kind words.” Kindness is an endangered virtue, and it often borders on another commendable attitude: a sense of humor and self-mockery.
I think every Italian who knew him because they saw him in his roaring twenties retained that feeling of Dorelli. Certainly a good singer, a good actor, a good presenter. Above all, a person who has known a smile and given smiles to others. I asked him if he knew how much the Italians love him. A useless question, a non-question. It was just a way of telling him, to remind this 86 year old man who has since retired with discretion, enjoying this period of rest and relaxation with his wonderful wife Gloria Guida and with the family children, who he loves. Reflection.
“I love the Italians too, they gave me a lot, they shaped my life,” he says, and means it seriously. “I was born in Milan but lived in Meda. It was 1937. I was too young and don’t remember the war. But I remember that the Nazis and the partisans fought in Meda, yes. After the liberation, my father, who was a singer, went to America. Like many Italians back then. He was an Italian singer and believed that universal music would be appreciated in the land of promise. And he was on his way.
He did it and we caught up with him. It was a long journey on a ship whose name I still remember, the Sobietski. We stayed at the cottage with mom and time never passed. Until we pulled into New York harbor and I saw it, America. My father was standing on the platform with his shiny hair and reassuring smile. A new life began there, I went to school there, I learned music there, I started singing there. I have entered many singing competitions and won them all.”
Sing in Neapolitan
I ask him what his strength was back then. He laughingly replies that it is “Oje marì”.
In reality, the title of the song was “Maria Marì”, a song written by Edoardo di Capua and Vincenzo Russo just before the end of the 19th century. The following year, at the beginning of the short century, the first 78 rpm record was released in Italy. It was really “Maria Mari”, the song that little Johnny sang, in Neapolitan – he was from Milan – and in the last part in American.
On the other hand, Americans liked this song so much that Dean Martin and Ray Gelato and even Louis Armstrong, unexpectedly together with Claudio Villa, will perform it.
‘When the residence permit expired, we returned to Italy. It was destiny that I was associated with Naples and then with Bideri, a great musician, I organized the Piedigrotta festival. They noticed me, I had a beautiful voice and I was called to Mario Rivas Musichiere. I only made three bets. I was one of the young singers in the program with Nuccia Bongiovanni. But Ladislao Sugar, the label’s founder, told me that I had to do something else that was more important to him: go to the Sanremo Festival. He was right.
The piece I had to perform wasn’t bad, you may have heard of it before: “Volare”. I didn’t immediately understand what this song would mean in music history. When I heard it, my voice was low and it worried me. Modugno was a good colleague and a great writer.
I also won with him the following year with “Piove”. Italian music was changing and we gave it a big push. But the edition I remember better than the others is that of 1967. For two reasons: I sang one of the songs I loved the most: “l’Immensità” written by Don Backy, and then, on the contrary, on the occasion of the death of Luigi Tenco. When he died we didn’t know if he had been killed or if he had committed suicide. I remember that as the hours went by, the doubts grew. I never expected him to take his own life. “He was a pleasant person and had written some beautiful songs.”
“Galbani means trust,” Johnny Dorelli walked into Italian homes for six years, invariably uttering the same phrase.
For my generation that went to bed after Carousel, the advertisements for this program were not “shopping tips”; They were a pure, exhilarating spectacle. Each product, each brand has been identified with characters and stories interpreted by the most famous actors of the time. “The wear and tear of modern life” that would have been solved by an artichoke liqueur – oh yeah! — and a toothpaste left on the teeth of the great Virna Lisi, meaning she and we could say whatever we wanted “with that mouth”.
Dorelli was on top of a wave at the time. At the end of the 1950s, while filming Mario Mattoli’s “Beach Guys” together, he met Lauretta Masiero, an excellent actress who would become very popular as investigator Laura Storm.
“I had a son with her who I love like the others, Gianluca. I believe, if I’ve done the math correctly, it’s the product of one night in which I climbed onto a hotel terrace and broke into Lauretta’s room without being turned away. She was a great woman, very kind.”
Successful parody
As Johnny narrates this episode, I can’t help but imagine that in this scene he was playing one of the most famous and beloved characters in sixties television history: Dorellik.
Comedy version of Diabolik starring Margaret Lee in the role of Eva Kant. The character played by Johnny quickly became a national hit.
‘It was also a Steno film. The character was invented by Castellano and Pipolo, so any parody worked. “Dorellik was brilliant, unhappy, and vain.”
Not unlike Sylvester the Cat or Wil the Coyote, other heroes of a time when it wasn’t politically incorrect to champion the brilliance of fictional villains.
Now there are too many real villains.
I ask Johnny how that famous laugh came about, a grin that was the most common sound in schools back then.
‘I was at the Grand Hotel rehearsing the character at night. I must have done a hundred variations of that satanic laugh. I remember that the night porter called me once because my neighbors were protesting…».
I’ve done theater with the geniuses Garinei and Giovannini, I’ve sung the songs of a musician like Armando Trovajoli, I’ve toured with great directors. The film I’m most proud of is “Be quiet if you can…” by Gigi Magni. I shot Cuore with Comencini and I don’t deny the comedies that were huge at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. They were well written products with quality casts. I have fond memories of Laura Antonelli, a simple person and an excellent actress. One summer he vacationed in Sardinia with Jean Paul Belmondo. We were working and he went fishing with my boat… It was all very nice. Also the radio. “Gran Variety” was an incredible success, the radio was fun.
I really can’t complain about the life I’ve lived. If I had been told when I arrived in New York Harbor in my shorts and with a heavy heart…
Also in private life. I was fortunate to have met Catherine Spaak with whom I spent eleven years and had a son named Gabriele. She was a woman of great intelligence, a character not easy… but important.
An impressive woman
And then came Gloria. We’ve been together since 1979. He’s a great person. He is intelligent, helpful, kind in everything he does, he has a rare grace. “It’s nice to spend every day of your life with her.”
I ask Johnny if he has any hope for the future.
“Let the war in Ukraine end.” It pains me greatly. I don’t understand Putin. I don’t want to understand. Destroy a dam. But how is it done?’
I ask him which of the people he has met would like to spend hours talking to. The answer surprises and calms me: “Fausto Cigliano, he was a great friend of mine.” Once the police stopped us in the car and he got angry. It took me eight hours to get him out of this mess. Now I don’t know what to do…».
Cigliano, guitarist and singer of Money, performed “And if Tomorrow” in Sanremo in 1964.
I have a duty to tell him – it was a question, not a statement – that Cigliano passed away last year…
“I am so sorry. We got along well.”
I ask him to choose a single moment from his spectacular human experience and imagine being able to relive it.
‘When we were in a New York studio at the end of an audition, everyone left. And I stayed alone at the piano. I played for myself, after the emotion. I didn’t know that behind me was the author of the Scandalo al Sole soundtrack. He told me to keep going. I always have. I’ve made forty films, been on stage for twenty years, recorded hundreds of songs and filled many Italian TV evenings. Now, at eighty-six, I rest, look at the world and have no regrets. And if what you’re telling me is true: that the Italians love me… then yes, thank you, I’m really happy.”