Al Martino's final days were full

Word this week that Al Martino died at 82 in his hometown of South Philadelphia may have led to the assumption that he'd been infirm or had returned home for his final days. So it was a surprise to read in his New York Times obituary that he was active and working and stepping out and recording until the very end:

"Mr. Martino, whose career spanned five decades, fell backstage on Oct. 3 while acting as M.C. of a concert on Staten Island... He had canceled a performance for a television broadcast of the Columbus Day parade in New York. But on Monday he was in a studio recording songs for an album...

"After leaving the studio Monday evening, Mr. Martino and his wife headed back to Philadelphia and had dinner at an Italian restaurant with Jerry Blavat, a Philadelphia radio and television personality.

“'He was in tip-top shape,' Mr. Blavat said on Tuesday. 'I got the call and I said, "That’s impossible, I had dinner with him last night.”'"

"...The last song Mr. Martino recorded on Monday... was Garth Brooks's 'If Tomorrow Never Comes.'"

From the prescient final song the sudden passing to Garth Brooks... can't help but think of Danny Gans.

The secret story Al Martino left behind

When longtime Beverly Hills resident Al Martino died in his hometown of South Philadelphia this week, he left a rich legacy that included more than fifty years of entertainment, memorable songs like Spanish Eyes and Here In My Heart and a crucial role in one of the of the greatest motion pictures of all time.

Al Martino’s life story was far richer than even that, as revealed in a screenplay that survives him.

The film was written in 1991. Famed television reporter Rafael Abramovitz and Burt Kearns of Tabloid Baby and Frozen Pictures acclaim met Martino on a shoot for Hard Copy, and later spent weeks with the star going over every detail of his contentious life. They came away with the material that would become a biopic screenplay named for one of his greatest hits, Here In My Heart.

The script tells the story of Martino’s life from his childhood in his South Philly and his idol Mario Lanza through all many dramatic and harrowing events that led to his triumph as Johnny Fontane in The Godfather. It's a story as compelling as the Godfather saga itself, full of great depth and conflict, full of violence, mobsters, war, show business, celebrity, addiction, abortion, love, redemption-- and music. The story also shows that Martino may very well have been right when he claimed his own life—not Frank Sinatra’s-- was the inspiration for the character. He had to fight for the role- and Marlon Brando, with the aid of some whiskey, helped him inhabit it.

Al Martino would certainly have been a bigger star had he not “crossed the Mob” early in his career and was forced to flee the USA to England, where he made history, scoring the UK’s first #1 single (when the song Here in My Heart topped the very first NME chart in 1952). But Here In My Heart reveals that his years in England, before he returned to Atlantic City, received a commutation and blessing from a real "Godfather” and resumed his career in the States, were not easy.

When Here In My Heart was first shopped, many of the characters depicted were still alive, and though some names had been changed to protect the guilty, the property was deemed "too hot" to handle. Close to twenty years later, it is a real tribute to a man who triumphed in the end, and what may be its most poignant chapter, died in the place where it all began.