Death
In April 1959, Lanza suffered a minor heart attack followed in August by double pneumonia. He died in Rome in October at only 38 from a pulmonary embolism after undergoing a controversial weight loss program colloquially known as "the twilight sleep treatment," which required its patients to be kept immobile and sedated for prolonged periods. At his funeral were singers Maria Caniglia and Lidia Nerozzi and actors Franco Fabrizi and Enzo Fiermonte. American crooner Frank Sinatra sent his condolences by telegram.
Betty, his widow, returned to Hollywood with their four children but died five months later at the age of 37. Cesari cited the apparent cause of her death, according to the coroner, as "asphyxiation resulting from a respiratory ailment for which she had been receiving medication." In 1991, Marc, their youngest child, died of a heart attack at 37; six years later, Colleen, their elder daughter, was killed at 48 after being struck by two passing vehicles on a highway. Damon, the couple's oldest child and elder son, died in August 2008 of a heart attack at 55.
Read more about this topic: Mario Lanza
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“Will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them
be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)