The Toronto Star from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 131

1 Leon Major assesses his season page H3 Singer Patti Smith rocks page H5 Stacey and Engel reviewed page H7 Rock rolls with an Italian accent in Metro By PETER GODDARD Star staff writer IT was at the Alitalia airlines of ice that he knew it was all worth while The girls there recognized him immediately of course He was after all Robert Lee He had albums and singles out and had starred in every big rock club in the city Robert Lee the girls thought blond and good look ing but just another WASP Cana dian tourist heading for Italy This was the part he liked best No sooner were the girls comfort able and certain with their impres sion of him than he started talking In Italian He liked watching their surprise for His was no Italian but the real thing Best of all he liked feeling Italian again liked using his real name ranco Quer ci the name his parents gave him in Italy 29 years ago Still coming to that moment in the Alitalia office had not been easy for him I arrived in Toronto in 1964 1 knew' I wanted to he says what I want ed to do My music But to really make it everywhere to make it outside the Italian com munity you had to be English Cana dian At least you had to have an English More practical So through the heady ranco Querci zapped audiences as Robert Lee Then last year something started to bother him It just being sentimental about his Italian heritage: It was something more practical was talking to Gina Lollabrigi manager and he told me I was missing a huge market the 453000 Italians or Italian Canadians who live says Querci of course I was They were my people Six months ago he released anoth er rock album but this time all in Italian And these nights at the Mad Mechanic where still appear ing officially as Robert Lee but very obviously being ranco Quer ci he plugs his appearances on estival Italiano the two hour Ital ian variety show that starts at noon each Sunday on Global TV i 1 Reminder of home Perhaps the regulars at the Mad Mechanic know how to handle it 'yet but Querci knows exactly what doing Italian community produced or imported its own entertainers even before the mass immigration to the area sur rounding College St after World War II But these performers gener ally were there for one purpose with their sweetly sad ballads they reminded their listeners of their homeland that's not necessary explains Johnny Lombardi presi dent of CHIN radio and the hub around which much of Ital ian community revolves home for most of these people We have our own artists singing in and about Lombardi enthusiastic about most things grows positively starry mi himii ii ii jw a yap IB I i JmEeMI MMMaMaMaBgoaaaLl 'Jk 4dMMMBIBBHBMHiHBHBBi IsiW lr IIMMEHKWHE Bjb v' JbBMh BfcigjBBI BnjBL HI kIIIv Hr iBw BBk 'Ml BBEMBBhMfoMWWMBBBMMBBMMi KiMMroKaMSi photo by Reg Innelt ENTERTAINMENT STARS in Italian community (from left) Pino Ubaldo ranco Marrello Mimnio Lary Rocco Severino Jolanda Veltri ranco Querci and Luigi Sabatini will perform tomorrow at the estival De Primavera at Maple Leaf Gardens Johnny Lombardi the president of CHIN radio producing the show is sure Metro will produce a Tony Bennett rank Sinatra Vic Damone or Jerry Vale eyed when he starts talking about the subject He sees Metro produc ing another Tony Bennett rank Sinatra Vic Damone or Jerry Vale They all started small singing at Italian weddings and at the occasion al party where most of this singers are getting their start too And there are the records Lom own label Bravo is the big gest but there are six other record companies as well They are mostly home made affairs like Enrico label Records which features none other than Enrico arina Local hits In the past five years these little companies have had an impact An Italian made hit may sell up to 8003 copies in Toronto the Metro pro duced records are cutting into the market with local hits selling as many as 3000 copies although at CHIN we broad cast 14 hours a week of Italian Lombardi says have no worries about 39 per cent Cana dian content Listen if I wanted to I could broadcast 130 per Now having a record doesn't mean the same thing to a struggling Italian singer in Toronto as it does to a star in Italy such as Sandro Giacobbe 'or Luciano Tajoli both of whom will be appearing tomor row as part of the estival Di Primavera at Maple Leaf Gardens starting at 230 pm To the Italian star it means more than money' or the singer in Metro such as Mimmo Lary' proof as well that he really is a performer Lary 35 has been in Canada 15 years and to support his family has a beauty salon in the Centennial Mall in Brampton He has also recorded 10 singles and estimates sold a total of 20000 copies I can support my family as a hairdresser and still do concerts and TV he says suppose I could have steady work in taverns and be a fully professional singer But people in taverns listen I'd rather do something else and sing when best for 1 Still the little taverns night clubs ballrooms and community centres that provide the most steady work When pianist accordi anist Pino Ubaldo arrived in Toron to 20 years ago as part of one of the imported Italian shows Lombar di was just beginning to bring in he believe all the snow on the ground So he locked himself in his hotel room slept for three days and missed the return trip At home Yet he survived playing wed dings local community shows and eventually ending up at the now de funct Walker House for seven years And Luigi Sabatini 33 a big voiced balladeer of the old Italian school who arrived in Toronto in 1974 and is now completely at home in the San Marco Restaurant on St Clair Ave see there are still older peo ple here who want to hear the old romantic Sabatini says English people They want to hear singing with lots of heart and no one has more heart than an Ital ian But after singers like me are gone it will all be finished The young Italian singers do rock the big beat Soon my tradition will be Exactly The parents and grand parents still like to watch little Roc co Severino dance He calls himself Rocco del Sud Rocco of the south and he reminds them of the good old days and ways of the Calabria re gion in Italy But the younger gener ation kids born in Toronto want music that reflects their lives not their Some of the younger singers such as 28 year old Jolanda Veltri are nostalgic about the old ways Married at 15 and now the mother of three boys the oldest 11 Jolanda or Melissa to use her stage name loves But the sentiment stops with the songs know Italian mothers are supposed to stay she says around me tell me that all the time But times have changed My husband understands I have to suffer when I w'ant my own The times have indeed changed Jolanda a very non stereotyped Ital i a mother 'listens to Tammy Wynette for inspiration and Giulio Volpe a prolific song writer writes lyric after iyricabout arriv ing in and living in Canada And in the evening along College St and in Weston along St Clair Ave and in Mississauga you can hear the throb of bands Eke the Cardinals the Originals the Satel lites and any of 100 others playing rock and singing in Italian Old style ballads Singers like Rosie Leone and Gui lio Paonessa find they can do soar ing old style ballads like Quando Quando Quando and rock as well and not lose their audiences But for the die hard rockers this compromise is just one of many only do you have to do some of the older tunes says ranco Marrello the 28 year old lead guitarist and singer even for a young Italian audi ence you have to play English rock tunes Italian kids will dance to slow Italian tunes because the best for that The fast stuff must be But Lina Chiodo sees nothing wrong with that The 15 ear old singer a student at Central Com merce was for her first four singles type cast as a cute little all Itaiian girl now I only think of myself as Canadian as a Cana dian she says friends are just like other Canadian kids Except we speak Italian there is a difference a certain classiness about Italians a certain style You can hear it in the i i And what pleases ranco Querci most All these years as all his fans have been listening to Rob ert Lee he has been hitting them with the Italian style And they did not know it It was almost as good i as walking into the Alitalia office looking ever so typical ever so WASP you understand and speak ing Italian before they knew what was happening Presidents Men honestly depicts work of Nixons nemeses Robert Redford plays Bob Wood ward a handsome WASP from Yale reserved and conservative ultra cautious at jumping to conclu sions DUSTIN HOffaLAN as Carl Bernstein confers with Robert Redford playing Bob Woodward stein a shaggy Jew flamboyant and intuitive The extreme contrast between their personalities is one of the most interesting elements in this 133 minute $85 million production Yet the dissimilarities are not artificially built up for the sake of injecting phony drama On the contrary their very differ ences are clearly what help to make the two of them such a formidable team They balance each other tak ing turns being advocate while pursuing their investigations with single minded tenacity Screenwriter William script based on the book by Wood ward and Bernstein had to be re vised many times No filming was done until the scenario satisfied not only the Post people but director Pakula a sober craftsman deter mined to avoid the silly errors of the past The script also had to convince Robert Redford in his off camera function as executive producer The 'blond superstar is much more than a matinee idoL Wisely the unfathomable Nixon and his top aides are shown only' through television news footage in in AU the Men the movie version of probing that forced Nixon to resign not seen But Jason Robards is thoroughly in character as the tough cool profane executive edi tor Ben Bradlee Jack Warden Martin Balsam and John McMartin never strain creduli ty as three high ranking colleagues They plausibly participate in editori al conferences attesting to the fact that a good metropolitan newspaper in the 1970s is virtually a daily mag azine though still geared for dazz ling speed when speed is needed Among the non press types in the large and excellent cast Hal Hol brook is quietly memorable as Woodward's secret weapon This is a shadowy and never named govern ment official and top level inform a cynically nicknamed Deep Throat by the sceptical editors On the screen as in real life their whispered conversations take place at furtive rendezvous late at night in underground parking ga rages Jane Alexander too stays in the mind as an edgy bookkeeper with information that could damage die powers that be She is terribly afraid to help Bernstein with his investigations and terribly afraid to remain silent You almost stop breathing while she gropes for her agonizing decision More Elaster movies page H3 stead of being portrayed by lock alike actors Such nightclub imper sonations would have seriously weakened the almost documentary realism of the chronicle Close to $500000 of the pic total cost went into the con struction in California of an exact inch by inch duplicate of the vast garishly lit newsroom of the Wash ington Post Even the reference books on the shelves were the real McCoy So was the trash in the waste baskets flown in big crates across the continent An authentic set alone of course is not enough to lend conviction to a movie ortunately this one has a lot more than that Pakula and his associates have put it together with a winning combination of showman ship and integrity Watching it you may find your self wishing as I did that the two reporters just once had run into a menacing flesh and blood antagonist embodying the powerful forces of secrecy arrayed against them But no matter even unseen except on TV their enemies are frightening enough And the jigsaw of the sleuthing is a spellbinder from the opening shots of the 1972 Watergate ta eak in Beginning with Redford and Hoff man in the roles the actors are consistently persuasive Publisher Katharine Graham is By CLYDE GILMOUR Star movie critic EORE Watergate Bob Woodward and Carl Bern stein were obscure reporters handling routine assignments for the Dustin Hoffman plays Carl Bern Washington Post Then they gradu ally became the young giant killers of modern journalism Today they are rich and famous the Pulitzer Prize winning newsmen whose dog ged probing set in motion a chain of events that shook a government to its foundations and forced Richard Nixon out of the White House All the Men (at the new Plaza and other theatres) brings the Woodward Bernstein true story to the screen A fascinating movie from Warner Bros it vividly but scrupulously dramatizes the al most mythological exploits of the men who uncovered the Big Cover Up And it does this while portray ing the often distorted world of a big city newspaper with an honesty and fidelity seldom if ever ap proached in previous films about the press Two popular Hollywood stars de pict the real life heroes of the tale But neither they nor their director Alan Pakula can be accused of exaggerating or cornballing their materiaL Not once in this movie does anyone bellow the or even rewrite? Prepare for a banner IKfT JI l' A Ji' i HER a.