Caruso photographed by Bettini

This is the fourth time since 1977 that I’ve written an article on the Caruso- Bettini link, as new information continues to turn up. The latest discovery involves sequential photographs of Caruso that are being reproduced with this article, for they were made by the lieutenant on the evening of November 25 1917, at the massive Hero Land bazaar.

Hero Land ran from November 24th through December 15, 1917 (it was originally scheduled to end on December 12th), and raised millions of dollars for the Allied war effort. It was held at New York City’s Grand Central Palace, at Park Avenue and 48th Street, and Gianni Bettini had a booth there, where he exhibited his combination motion picture projector-camera invention. Designed for home use, it was inexpensive to operate, used glass plates instead of celluloid film, and was also capable of producing individual photographs. However, the Caruso-Bettini connection consists of much more than these pictures.

Although Enrico Caruso’s name is conspicuously absent from the Bettini catalogues, I had often wondered if the famed tenor ever recorded for him. Lieutenant Bettini had close friendships with many stars of the Metropolitan Opera House, and this was particularly so of those who, like himself, were born in Italy. Gina Ciaparelli, Mario Ancona, Lina Cavalieri, Dante del Papa, Ernesto Nicolini, and Antonio Scotti are among those who come immediately to mind. I knew that by 1903 Caruso had signed an exclusive recording contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company, and his images and testimonials frequently appeared in its advertisements. But the thought remained in my mind that Bettini may have recorded his voice before the contract became effective, or that perhaps Caruso cut non-commercial recordings for the lieutenant’s personal collection.

My question was answered around 1977, when the late William R. Moran kindly provided me with a photocopy of a letter he had received from the inventor’s son, Victor Robert Bettini. Written on December 17, 1965, the slightly edited extract from it, which follows, confirmed that Caruso did indeed record for Gianni Bettini: "Caruso, who was a lifelong friend of his, often came to his office and sang through his machine, and yet there is no evidence of such recordings. I used to have them in the unfortunately destroyed material stored in France."

What Victor Robert Bettini referred to was the sad fact that his family had stored some of Lieutenant Bettini’s documents, phonographs, and recordings within a warehouse that was destroyed by a wartime bombing raid, but whether the loss was in World War I or World War II remains a matter of dispute. It is of interest to note, at this point, that another large cache of Bettini’s personal effects, possibly containing evidence of the Caruso-Bettini link, was incinerated after Bettini’s death on February 27, 1938, by the janitor of 67 West 44th Street, the Manhattan building that was the lieutenant’s last business address. And according to Bettini’s daughter, Madame Consuelo Rolo, the Nazis stole additional Bettini memorabilia, possibly including Caruso recordings, from a Paris hotel suite, during their occupation of France.

Caruso drew this cartoon of himself recording for Victor. Note the Nipper trademark in the upper right.

A note Madame Rolo wrote me on November 5, 1980, confirmed that her father and Caruso were close friends. And in March of 1982 (Madame Rolo died the next month), she sent me a letter which contained several photographs, including a negative of the cartoon that appears here. The drawing, which was rendered in New York City, has the year 1917 imprinted on it, and shows both Caruso and Bettini facing each other. Above the profiles appears the capitalized inscription: "GLI ETERNI GIOVANI," which translated into English means: "THE ETERNAL YOUTHS." The artist, whose signature appears beneath his self-portrait, was none other than Caruso. The great tenor was an accomplished caricaturist, and at least one book of his comical portraits has been published (Caricatures by Enrico Caruso, La Follia di New York, 1922).

In his fascinating memoir, Enrico Caruso: My Father and My Family, (Amadeus Press, 1997), Enrico Caruso, Jr. quoted from the same Victor Robert Bettini correspondence with William R. Moran, but expressed serious doubt about the lieutenant having recorded his illustrious sire: "It has been claimed that he made some cylinder recordings for Gianni Bettini, the recording entrepreneur active in turn-of-the century New York. But by the time Caruso was established in New York, Bettini had moved to Paris; if he ever recorded father’s voice, it had to be there. In light of his exclusive contract, however, any recordings made by Bettini must not have been musical recordings suitable for release...It must be borne in mind that when Victor Bettini wrote this, he was past eighty and the cache of his father’s cylinders had been destroyed two and a half decades earlier."

But in hinting that Victor Robert Bettini might be suffering from a memory lapse, in part caused by advanced years, Enrico Caruso, Jr. erred with regard to his age when he wrote to Moran. Born in 1900, Bettini’s son was not at all past eighty, but was instead sixty-five. Indeed, he lived only to the age of sixty-eight, passing away after a long illness on October 13, 1968. Moreover, when he was writing the book, Enrico Caruso, Jr. probably knew nothing about the corroborating words of Madame Rolo, the photo montage, nor of his father’s sketch showing that pose with the lieutenant in 1917. It is entirely possible too, that Gianni Bettini made private and nonmarketed records of Enrico Caruso in that year. Perhaps Caruso drew the picture and recorded for Bettini on the same evening the lieutenant photographed him!

Caruso’s 1917 sketch of himself and Bettini, which he entitled "GLI ETERNI GIOVANI" ("THE ETERNAL YOUTHS")

The January 1918 issue of Vanity Fair described the photography session: "Lieutenant G. Bettini...has perfected an invention in motion pictures which was first shown to the public in the Hero Land bazaar. We shall not attempt to describe it, or to give it half the praise which is its due, but we may be permitted to explain that on the second night of the bazaar, Enrico Caruso...ambled into Signor Bettini’s booth, sat down (for two minutes) before the movie machine, got up, walked around the bazaar, came back in an hour, paid Bettini two dollars, received a five by eight inch glass negative on which he saw seven hundred views of himself in action, was handed an eight by ten enlargement of one of the microscopic pictures, sat down again and this time saw the pictures of himself, which only an hour ago been poised, flash the screen."

The matter of the two dollar payment can be dismissed. Even had they not been friends, the lieutenant would never have charged Caruso for the pictures. The thought of doing so would not have even occurred to him. Bettini apparently used the author of this write-up as a vehicle to let people know the price he was charging at Hero Land and the costs involved in processing the glass plate film.

As for Caruso’s original sketch, it is, to my knowledge, still owned by Bettini’s grandson, Ronald Rolo. Still too, while we now know that Caruso and Bettini captured each other’s respective images in different ways, the original photos and negatives made by the lieutenant on the night of November 25, 1917, in all probability no longer exist. At least Vanity Fair’s archives do not have them.

And of the two friends, it was Lieutenant Bettini who attempted to do more to make the other eternal. Not only did he preserve Caruso’s face, but he also recorded his voice. It is to be hoped that some Caruso Bettini recordings will yet be found.

Every collector knows that collecting is a passion which, sometimes, is close to madness. I used to say that in my case, with more that 250 cylinder machines, it is just a soft madness as I have never yet bitten anybody. Maybe one day.... Nevertheless, each collector is hooked to his collection like others are hooked onto drugs, the only difference being that instead of being damaging to both your health and your purse, in most cases it is only damaging to your purse.

Collectors have a tendency to react as follows: "I don’t have it, so I want it". Sometimes, however, they already have it and they do not know it.

This was the case with this rarely seen German Lyre Puck cylinder machine, a scarce one that can play Standard and intermediate size cylinders, a machine for which I have been looking for a very long time.

I saw the first one two years ago, when I came to the phonograph show of Rudesheim in Germany while visiting a German collector. Up until then, I had seen them only in the Carette catolog of 1911.

It is only when I got back to Quebec and I started to correspond with this collector, that I asked him to measure the space between the mandrel axis and the top of the baseplate, in order to make comparisons with all the ones that I had in my museum and in the pile of wrecked lyres that I have in my basement. It was then that I realized that I had not one, but two naked Lyre Puck bases with an extralong mandrel shaft-to-baseplate post. Both of them have the same base design (see the NOTE below), different from all the other ones that I have in the collection, even if I have found one in the pile with exactly the same design, but for playing only the Standard size cylinders. In fact, the hole to receive the mandrel axis is at 58 mm above the base for the combination model, when it is at 48 mm for the average one with the same base design.

(NOTE: regarding base design. Not all the Lyres have the same drawing design. Not taking into account the special bases, like the Mermaid, the Nymphe, the Harpist, the Lion facing or the Lion profile, the average lyre shaped bases have different leaves arrangements)

With this in mind, I measured the same distance for all the different Pucks in my collection and was very surprised to realize that, even if they were never advertised as being able to do so, the two different Lion Pucks are able to play intermediate size cylinders with their mandrel to base plate distance of 57 mm. In fact, for the other different models, there are no two with the same measured value, ranging from 42 to 52 mm. In fact, any Puck with a distance measuring above 48 mm (like the Mermaid, at 49 mm) is able to play intermediate size cylinders. More precisely, it is able to accommodate an intermediate size cylinder, but we cannot determine if the spring would be strong enough to drive it during the two minutes of the cylinder’s playing time (the larger the cylinder, the stronger the spring has to be).

With this new discovery in my collection, I have now 12 different Pucks and 8 different Kastenpucks (Puck mounted on a base). Recently on eBay-Germany, I bought a repro base for an original Lorelei, being 99,99% sure that I will never be able to buy a real one. Its transformation into a complete classic-looking machine might be the topic of a future paper.

Jean-Paul Agnard
Recherche - Want List: http://www3.sympatico.ca/jean-paul.agnard/collection3/wantlist.htm
Collection: http://www3.sympatico.ca/jeanpaul.agnard/phonograph/collection.htm
Musée: http://www.phono.org/beaupre.html
Museum: http://www.phono.org/beaupre-en.html
Reproductions, livres et réimpressions - Repro Parts, Books & Reprints: http://www3.sympatico.ca/jean-paul.agnard/phonograph/reproduction.htm
Bibliographie - Bibliography: http://www3.sympatico.ca/jean-paul.agnard/collection3/bibliography.htm

This review is long overdue, for which I apologize. Peter Muldavin’s book is also long overdue, since the field of children’s records is a fertile one, but one that was totally overlooked by discographers and publishers of price guides. If your knowledge of kids records extends only to those ubiquitous "Little Golden Records" and a few scratchy Peter Pan 7-inchers, you’ll be amazed at the extent of material listed in these 430 pages. And Peter has confined himself to listing only 78 RPMs! He has over 11,000 in his collection.

What is often referred to as the "Golden Age of Kiddie 78 RPM Records" was the period from 1946 to 1956, but children’s fare was on disc (and cylinder) at the beginning of the last century, and 78RPM was still in use and favoured by parents and educators in the late 60s. The first section of the book (104 pages) is an overview of the record industry and the children’s segment, as well as background on each of the labels producing children’s discs. The remainder consists of a listing, label by label, of all known kids' records and discs of possible interest to children. This can encompass a pretty broad spectrum, so you’ll find Vesella’s Italian Band playing Suppe’s "Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna" listed, along with De Wolf Hopper (unfortunately mis-named William De Wolf) doing "Casey At The Bat", both under Victor. All divisions of a given label are listed under the parent name, so Bluebird is also found in the Victor section.

The author points out that this is not a detailed listing of recording sessions but a catalogue and price guide, designed for the beginning and serious collector, the casual listener in search of information and people curious about the value of those multicoloured discs up in the attic. He lists two price ranges for each title: average (G/VG) and better (EX/NM). The average price is generally half of the near mint price. Garden variety kiddie records won’t be worth more than a couple of dollars, Paul Wing’s “Little Black Sambo” stories on Bluebird can fetch up to $90, and the twelve-inch Vogue “Trip to Slumberland” that I saw change hands at a CAPS meeting for $60 some years ago could now be worth between one and two thousand dollars (a copy on eBay sold for $1200 as this review was being written).

As noted, the odd error can creep in: some typos, some discs that don’t qualify even as peripheral (Les Benson's "Borsht Belt Blues" somehow got included along with Lew Lehr’s stories listed under Manor). These are insignificant problems in a book lavishly illustrated in full colour on every page and printed on top quality paper (HEAVY paper!), and priced at a reasonable US$25. The one thing I wish could have been included is a performer index....if you want to look up Gloria Swanson’s "Joey The Jeep", you need to know the label (Willida..and yes, it’s there, and it’s worth $15 to $30). Labels that issued only one or two kiddie records will be found in the miscellaneous section at the back. Records made in the 1920s and 30s to accompany film strips are listed, as are oddball records made for home disc recorders and records that you cut out of cereal boxes. By the way, an uncut Wheaties record is worth up to $150, by the way. He doesn’t specify whether the cereal has to be present.

Unleash your inner kid, and while you’re at it, visit Peter’s website: http://www. kiddierekordking.com And when you do, tell 'em Groucho sent you. ("The Funniest Song In The World", Young People's Records #719, $15-$30 according to the book).

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO VINTAGE CHILDREN’S RECORDS
IDENTIFICATION & VALUE GUIDE
PETER MULDAVIN, "THE KIDDIE REKORD KING"
Collector Books, Paducah, Kentucky, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-57432-509-6