A tragic figure, Lanza’s thrilling, if undisciplined, tenor brought him two million-selling singles, ‘Be My Love’ and ‘The Loveliest Night of the Year’, a million-selling album, 'The Student Prince', and a brief screen career as the incarnation of the voice of opera. The son of Italian immigrants, he taught himself singing from his father’s collection of records by Enrico Caruso before briefly studying with Enrico Rossati and Giacomo Spandoni, former tutors of Caruso and Benjimino Gigli. This resulted in a contract with  Columbia for a  concert tour which was interrupted  by Second World War service.

   On leaving the Air Force he joined MGM, then on the lookout for a romantic lead to star in musicals. In his first film, 'The Midnight Kiss', he starred opposite Kathryn Grayson as a singing truck driver, in the kind of semi- autobiographical role from which he never really escaped. A success, the teaming was repeated by MGM for 'The Toast of New Orleans', which produced Lanza’s first million-seller, the Sammy Cahn and Nicholas Brodszky song, ‘Be My Love’, before he starred as Caruso himself in 'The Great Caruso'. 'Because You’re Mine' , featuring another song from Cahn and Brodszky, with Lanza in the role of an opera star drafted into the air force, was his last major starring role.                       
   Henceforth, oddly anticipating the last years of Elvis Presley, problems with barbiturates, alcohol and obesity overshadowed his career. Thus for MGM’s remake of Sigmund Romberg’s 'Student Prince' Lanza’s role was limited to dubbing the singing for Edmund Purdom. He made a few more movies, including the under-rated 'Serenade' , and continued to record in an increasingly popular vein, his last hit was a version of ‘Ariverderci Roma’, before his death, at the age of thirty-eight, at a clinic in Rome.