Dear Readers,
An April assortment of Italian Connections for you: American newspapers and journals paid Mussolini well for articles with his byline. In addition to the Popolo d’Italia there were author’s royalties. Articles he wrote for American journals (or rather which were secretly written on his behalf by an American journalist in collaboration with his brother and Margherita Sarfatti) were at one point earning him $1,500 a week from the Hearst press alone. Royalties were also paid on his speeches which were published as propaganda in several different languages. His second autobiography, written in 1927-8, earned him over a million lire in its first two years and an equal sum was made by another book he “wrote” in 1944.
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Bank of America, formerly Bank of Italy, was founded by A.P. Giannini (1904) in San Francisco, California. However, even back in the middle ages, Italy was the leader in International Finance. As early as 1280, there were 14 Italian banks operating in London and 20 Italian banks doing business in Paris.
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Chineseleader, Chiang Kaishek, who was then at war with Japan, had long been favored by Mussolini. But at the end of 1937, Mussolini signed a tripartite pact with Germany and Japan and unexpectedly changed sides in order to conform with German policy. Various military and financial missions were suddenly withdrawn from China. Mussolini was happy because, alongside Germany and Japan, he felt at the center of the most formidable political and military combination that had ever existed. An order was given that a cargo of Italian arms on its way to China (which had already been paid for) should be deliberately wrecked in the South China Sea so as not to offend his new Japanese friends.
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Domenico da Piacenza, in 1400, wrote the first book on the dances of Europe. It was written, as was then customary, in the Latin language and it was called De Arte Saltandi Et Choreas Ducendi. Incidentally the ballet was not a Russian development. Barzini said, it was the Italians who taught dancing to the Russians.
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Earthis the only planet with Italians… Do your part to help preserve it. Although Italy’s population is approximately 56 million, millions more claiming Italian lineage are living all around the world. The nicest people have a “Root in the Boot” and the top ten countries to have their population thus enriched are: Brazil with approximately 25 millions, Argentinawith 20 millions and the United States with approximately 18 millions. France (5), Canada (2) and Uruguay, Venezuela, Australia, Chile and Germany about a mil- lion each.
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Festival di Sanremo’s winning songs and singers may not be “music to your ears” these days but via Internet you can enjoy some of the “grandi successi del passato” as the history of the musical Festival di Sanremo goes back some sixty years. Visit SanremoWebRadio.it for a musical walk down memo- ry lane like Adesso tu, Eros Ramazzotti (1986) and Nel blu dipinto di blu, Domenico Modugno (1958).
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Giovanni Palmawas the first Italian musician to perform for an American audience. George Washington’s journals men- tioned two concerts by Palma in 1757, one in January and one in March. Italian music came to Colonial America by way of the English. Popular in those days were Italian overtures, cantatas and dance music.
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Hitlerwith his mistress Eva Braun by his side killed himself in a bunker in Berlin on April 30, 1945, two days after Mussolini with his mistress Claretta Petacci by his side was killed by partisans near Milano, Italy.
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Irredentists, despite the spelling, have nothing to do with “denti” or dental school. Before Benito Mussolini embraced Fascism he became an ardent Irredentist when he went to Austria, after being expelled from Switzerland for his propa- gandist activities. An Irredentist, according to my dictionary is… 1. A member of an Italian association that became promi- nent in 1878, advocating the redemption, or the incorporation into Italy, of certain neighboring regions (Italia irredenta) having a primarily Italian population. 2. A member of a party in any country advocating the acquisi- tion of some region included in another country by reason of cultural, historical, ethnic, racial, or other ties. Even today, there is much fighting and unrest throughout the world because a region under the political jurisdiction of one nation is related to another by reason of cultural, historical and ethnic ties.
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Joseph Jachetta, an old-time San Franciscan whose beauty salons near Washington Square were a fixture in North Beach for 56 years, left us last month at age 85 and my mind did a rewind back to the fifties when most of Galileo High School’s gal graduates were Gina Lollobrigida “wannabe” who flocked to Jachetta’s beauty salons to start the transformation with a “Gina” cut that allowed your curls to fall into place with a simple comb of the fingers or could be sprayed into a budge- proof back bouffant upon request.
As an aside, let me mention that in the mid 1940’s actress Faye Emerson became the third wife of F.D.R.’s middle son Elliott Roosevelt and shortly after her television debut in 1949, she shed her chignon and via her short locks introduced the “poodle cut”. However, in San Francisco the “Gina cut” vs. the “poodle cut” was no contest among the Italo-American ladies of North Beach or for that matter, all of North America.
Mr. Jachetta’s Parkview Salon - which over time occupied three different locations within a block or two - was both an institution and a social center for the neighborhood. The salon always had a small-town, friendly atmosphere and was a gathering place to catch up on the neighborhood news. With the passage of time and upgrades in their financial fortunes many of Mr. Jachetta’s young customers moved across the bay to Marin County or South down the peninsula, but for those who stayed in North Beach and raised their families “The shop was a fun place, one of the last vestiges of the old Italian North Beach that everyone likes to remember”, said Linda Gribble, one of Mr. Jachetta’s daughters. “Dad’s customers were unfailingly loyal. They were all young together and they grew old together.”
Mr. Jachetta started his first Parkview Salon in 1948 on Powell Street, next to the old Palace Theater and across the street from Washington Square. He later moved to Union and Powell streets and then to Union, near Stockton Street, where the salon remains to this day. When Mr. Jachetta retired in 2004, instead of selling the business he gave it to his employees. In the 1940’s, most customers wanted to look like Gina Lollobrigida, who wore her hair in a short bouffant with spit curls.
Later, even as styles changed, the customers stayed the same. They came in to get ready for church, hoping every strand would stay in place until their next hair appointment. Joseph Jachetta was born on Telegraph Hill in 1924. His grandfather Giacomino Gallo came to San Francisco from Italy in 1886 and worked as a waiter at the famous old Fior d’Italia restaurant. Both Mr. Jachetta’s parents were born in the city; the family later ran a North Beach restaurant and boardinghouse.
Mr. Jachetta attended Galileo High School and City College of San Francisco. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in World War II, and served in Europe in an infantry unit that liberated the Dachau concentration camp. After the war, he came back to San Francisco to marry Lucy Accurso, his hometown sweet- heart. He had carried her picture in his Army rucksack throughout the war. They were married for 62 years and had six children, Linda, Laura, Stephanie, Rossana and two sons, John Jachetta of Zanesville, Ind., and Jim Jachetta of Trabuco Canyon (Orange County).
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