Mario’s Women

Mario Biasetti with his Mamma, Rosa Barcella, in Cocullo, Italy following his First Communion in 1934 and three years before they emigrated to the USA.

PART V – MARIO’S WOMEN

Dear Blog Readers, some of you have been asking about the women in Mario’s life.  Indeed, if you have read the past five posts the only woman to make a cameo in that macho world of Network TV News is Jackie Kennedy. Today I will tell you about the two behind-the-scene heroines who made Mario’s career possible, his Mamma and his wife, and about two right-in-the-thick-of-it women leaders he interviewed.

Mario’s Mamma, Rosa Barcella, was born in the Abruzzo region of Italy in 1891.  She lived with her husband and three children in the town of Cocullo.  Her husband emigrated to the US, followed by their first son.  Eventually, beating a deadline on a fascist law that prevented males over 12 years of age from leaving the country, Rosa and Mario took a ship to the US landing in New York on Christmas Eve, 1939.

The arrival to the New World was an extraordinary event for Rosa. The hustle and bustle in New York, the traffic, the skyscrapers, the window displays, the noise. Mario saiys it was so different from anything she had ever seen in Cocullo that it was an inebriating experience for his Mamma.

It didn’t take long for Rosa to adopt to the American way of life. Her new home was in the North Quincy area of Boston, one block away from the beach. Rosa was an excellent cook and Mario says his friends would beg to be invited to eat fabulous meat balls and the spaghetti she made.  “Eat” was Rosa favorite refrain, with Mario… “mangi, mangi”, eat, eat. Always “mangi”.

Mario’s tales of his Mamma in Boston remind me of one of my favorite TV commercials growing up — Anthony and Prince Spaghetti Day. See LINK I can just see little Mario Biasetti running through the streets of Boston to get home for his mother’s Spaghetti with Meatballs.

Mario told me that during World War II it was unusual to see 17-18 year-old boys in the streets. They had either volunteered for the navy or were drafted in the army.  So Mario decided he would go too as soon as he was old enough.  He says he steered away from the navy because he was afraid of the water, but the moment he turned 18 he joined the army.

He said, “I called home and my mother answered, “Where are you, we’re waiting for dinner.”  “Ma, I’m in the army… I’m in Fort Devens.”… My mother didn’t believe me and said, “Your father is furious. Now hurry home. The dinner is getting cold.” And that was the last thing she said to me until four years later.

Rosa got used to not hearing regularly from her globe-trotting son. As Mario explained, “I was almost always on the road, but when I had the chance I’d call home. My mother’s worry was always the same: “Are you eating well… stai attento, ti voglio bene, be careful, I love you.” During foreign assignments it was impossible to call as there were either no phones or there was a war or a revolution going on. During his six months in the Belgian Congo in 1961 he did not even have access to a phone.

Mario says despite her concerns about the danger or what he might be eating, Rosa Barcella never questioned her son’s work.

Mario’s wife, Joan Utman – professionally known as Joan Brooks – was working in Washington as a model doing photo-spreads and television appearances around the time she met Mario.  In an interesting turn of events, Joan Utman was interviewed for a personality column written by an unknown photo-journalist named Jaqueline Bouvier.

Mario's Wife Joan Utman working as a Fashion Model in the 1950s

Joan and Mario met when Joan was visiting her best friend in Cuba.

One day Mario failed to show at an appointment in Cuba and it wasn’t until several days later that the news came out that he’d been thrown out of Cuba by Fidel Castro.

Two years after they met, Mario went to El Salvador to cover an uprising with the expectation of being back in 10 days, but was detoured to Rome and then on to the Belgian Congo to cover a full blown war. He came out six months later and quickly married Joan before he could be sent off again.

Joan accompanied Mario when he was sent with Charles Kuralt to set up a bureau in Rio De Janiero.  She moved again with him was he assigned to the Rome bureau.  Over the years as he traveled around the world, and as Mario says she was both mother and father to their two children. When both children went to college in Boston, Joan resumed her career. She had small roles, in French, Italian and American films. She still does many TV advertisements  and continues to act-out photo stories for the magazine GRAND HOTEL.

Joan Utman-Biasetti in a recent modelling photo for an Italian magazine.

What’s it like to be married to somebody like Mario?  “Well” Joan says, “It’s never a good feeling knowing the risks he takes. Several times watching the news on TV I saw him roughed up, beaten by thugs, even thrown into a car in Cairo during the Six-Day War. Joan took it all in stride making sure everything was covered on the home front.

SOME WOMEN MARIO HAS COVERED:

Mario Biasetti described to me in great detail filming, interviewing and covering men all over the globe.  I had to cut out his tales about Sadat, Gadhafi, Ceausescu, Yasser Arafat, and Ben Gurion, but I did ask him if he could tell me about some of the women he interviewed.  He sent me the below notes.

Indian leader Indira Gandhi in a photo by Mario Biasetti

“The first time I went to India was in 1966 to cover the funeral of India’s great Prime Ministrer, Lal Bahadur Shastri… Along the banks of the Ganges river a huge funeral pyre had been erected and thousands of people waited silently for the body of the Prime Minister to be placed on top of the wooden logs and set on fire. It was the biggest bonfire I’d ever seen. But what followed was the dawn of the first woman ever elected to lead a democracy.”

“Indira Gandhi, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, known as the iron lady of India, ruled from 1966-77, and it was during this period that I got the assignment to do a special piece on her, a  sort of  “A Day in the Life of…”

“The day would start in the morning, in her office, but before I had the chance to announce myself to the staff I had to cope with four fierce dogs (mad dogs I called them) that always came at me. Mrs. Gandhi seemed to pay no attention, and when I’d beg her  to call them off, “Please, Mrs. Gandhi…”   “Pay no attention” she’d say.  Easier said than done.

I was not allowed to start filming until she had given the ok. She didn’t hide the fact that, she wanted to appear in perfect order on camera. ”

“Once when I was setting up for an interview with Prime Minister Gandhi seated on a couch, I went through my usual routine, check lights, sound mixer OK, cables out of the way, everything all set. “Luigi, microphone the Prime Minister” I said. Luigi, a sound man from the Rome bureau, approached Mrs. Gandhi and leaned over to pin the microphone on Mrs. Gandi’s blouse. Mrs. Gandhi put both her arms forward and softly said, “I’ll do it.”  Luigi didn’t understand English and didn’t know what she’d meant, so he again leaned over to pin the mirophone on her. “I said I’ll do it!!!” she yelled.”

“Mrs.  Prime Minister, Luigi doesn’t understand English.”  I blurted out.  “Then you tell him, damn it,” she snapped.

“Just about every day the Prime Minister held court in the garden with scores of people that came to her asking favors and advice to solve their personal problems. She’d talk to them, give them assurances that things would be all right, and they’d leave with a “namaste” greeting.”

I was not able to find the CBS interview with Indira Gandhi, so I have pulled out a quote that I found to give an idea of the kind of woman Mario was dealing with.

Indira Gandhi: “My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.”

From India to Israel, Mario covered the most powerful women of his time.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1973.

Mario and his soundman also had some technical problems when they were setting up for an interview with Golda Meir.

Here is what he told me:

“Golda Meir became the first woman Prime Minister of Israel in 1969.  She had been a schoolteacher in a kibbutz but she was destined for important affairs of state.  Ben Gurion, Israel’s 1st Prime Minister referred to her as “the best man in the government.”

A little note here.  One of the best Italian journalist of all time, Oriana Fallaci, did a long interview with Golda Meir in 1972 for Ms. Magazine and here is what Golda Meir had to say about that Ben Gurion quote:

Golda Meir: That’s one of the legends that have grown up around me. It’s also a legend I’ve always found irritating, though men use it as a great compliment. Is it? I wouldn’t say so. Because what does it really mean? That it’s better to be a man than a woman, a principle on which I don’t agree at all.

Here is another quote from that Fallaci interview that gives a good idea of Golda Meir’s character:

Golda Meir: It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? . . . Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

An extraordinary lady indeed.

“She was Prime Minister when the Yom Kippur/Ramadan war broke out in 1973, a war Israel nearly lost. I remember setting up a 4-camera CBS interview in her office, a very small room with little space in which to work. The walls were of wood paneling and her desk was huge and very close to the wall. Outside the door were two security men, keeping tabs on the half dozen CBS photographers and technicians. There wasn’t enough space to put the back light behind the desk, so I asked my colleagues to move the desk forward. As they started to lift it, the security men screamed NOOOO! and two of them who looked like football tacklers landed on the desk. “Don’t touch anything here, understand,” they yelled.  When their fury passed they explained that the desk was electronically wired and the slightest movement would have set off alarm bells all over the place.

Golda Meir walked in, said “good morning” and sat behind her desk. She was a no-nonsense type, and for the next hour she made it clear. However, the failure of her government to anticipate an Arab attack during the Yom Kippur war led her to resign six months later.”

POST-SCRIPT ON MARIO
In 1998,  Mario changed his modus operandi from the thrills, the grime and the grit of the road,  and the adrenaline high from the danger in war zones.  He began to dedicate his time to stories in the eternal city of la dolce vita, Roma, Italia.  Fox News made him their producer to cover any and all news events from the election of Pope Benedict XVI to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his bunga bunga parties, and more recently Captain Schettino and the sinking Costa Concordia Cruise Liner.  Whatever story he is on, one can find Mario usually surrounded by journalist fans like me eager to hear one more of his tales of derring-do in the good ol’ days of TV News.

14 thoughts on “Mario’s Women”

  1. Anastasia Bard

    I have had the pleasure to work with Mario for 10 years. It is amazing how muich there is to learn about his impressive carreer. I hope Mario does write that book so that we can all find out even more!

    What impresses me the most is his never ending ability to learn and adapt.. throught decades and decades of technological changes. I hope young journalists will take note of experience that comes before them and learn.. how things should really be done.

    I also want to get some of those leaves that “helped” Mario to stop smoking.. maybe they will work on my own husband.

    Thank you for the wonderful series.

    Anastasia

    1. Trisha Thomas

      Anastasia — I am so happy to hear from someone who worked with Mario!! Do you have any stories about him to share? You are correct in pointing out that he has learned to change with the rapidly changing technology. This is a big concern of mine with Associated Press Television News. The company now hires Video-journalists and not journalists who can’t shoot (like me) or cameramen that cannot write (like two cameraman I work with). I really need to learn how to use a camera or I may be out of a job soon enough.

  2. fascinating! So, perhaps there is an Italian-American mozzarella mamma-ing type? And/or perhaps those mozzarella baby boys exist along a spectrum? What does Mario think of the Mozzarella Mamma concept?

    1. Trisha Thomas

      Elspeth — thank you for all your comments on this Mario series. You always manage to notice important elements. My opinion is that both Mario and his Mamma managed to escape the Mozzarella-Mamma//Mammoni trap by emigrating to the US. Let me explain. In Italy, Italian men stay near their homes. Look at me, I live with my husband just a few blocks from his Mamma, and we aren’t going anywhere. Being near their mammas tends to promote a vicious circle of spoiling– Mammas buying the underwear and socks, Mammas taking care of the cooking etc. Often Italian men live with their Mammas until they are in their thirties. I am guessing that Mario’s Mamma began to see people dealing with relationships in a different way in Boston. Kids left home earlier. In the US there is the mentality that children must take off and make it on their own, whereas in Italy there is the mentality that the parents have to “sistemare” their kids, find a solution for them, a contact to get them a good job, buy them a house etc. (I need to do a separate post on the “sistemare” concept). It was also a time when so many men went off to war, Mario –like all the other young men his age, he noted– signed up as soon as they turned 18. As I pointed out in the first post, I think it was his experience in the war, far from home and Mamma, that launched him into his spectacularly successful and lengthy journalism career — and helped break the umbilical cord that sometimes never seems to get cut in Italy.

  3. Palmiro Portone

    Spesso, durante le fugaci pause di lavoro alla Stampa Estera (sono un collaboratore addetto alla portineria) ho avuto il privilegio d’intrattenermi a colloquio con Mario Biasetti e, in questi fugaci incontri, dove si parlava di tutto e di più, ho scoperto il mondo fantastico, reale, di un grande giornalista che ha partecipato alla liberazione dell’europa dal nazi-fascismo.
    Inviato corrispondente, in tanti teatri di guerra, i suoi racconti, oggi, possono sembrare inverosimili. Niente di più errato. Ha conosciuto tutti i protagonisti del suo tempo e ciò che racconta sono fatti veri, ripeto incredibili ma veri.
    Sarà per me un vero piacere leggere il suo libro. Conoscere nel dettaglio la sua vita avventurosa e piena di pericoli.

    1. Trisha Thomas

      Palmiro — Che piacere leggere suo commento. Ha ragione — e’ stato un privilegio per noi che abbiamo conosciuto Mario Biasetti in questi anni di stargli vicino e ascoltare i suoi incredibile racconti di una vita meraviglioso. Ogni volta che sto con lui imparo cose nuove. Infatti per mio blog ho scritto solo fino agli anni sessanta. Mario mi deve raccontare il resto, e si, speriamo che lui si spriga scrivere la sua auto-biografia.

  4. I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting Mario Biasetti twice, but both of those meetings have left an indelible mark on my experience as an aspiring journalist and on my time in Rome. It boggles my mind that the stories told in these blogs and in our meetings are only scratching the surface of a long and prosperous career in journalism. Mario has so much wisdom to share, and I am grateful to have heard even the smallest portion of it. Thank you for sharing his stories (and yours as well)!

    1. Trisha Thomas

      Thank you for your comment. Mario’s enthusiam, energy and passion for journalism are both contagious and inspiring. To be honest, I’ve told Mario I want to hear more of his tales. I don’t know how much I will be able to add to this blog, but I would like to push him to write his auto-biography.

  5. Matteo Nardini

    To read about Mario’s life is so amazing, he’s had so many incredible adventures that all turned out to be amazing breathtaking stories to tell. I have had the privilege of hearing them directly from him since I work as an assistant in the Fox News office here in Rome, and as you probably have noticed he has a talent on how to tell a story (after all he is a journalist) and the pictures of his life are just incredible.

    I have the feeling Mario has had the luck to do in his life exactly the job he was made for, that is why he is one of the best and still very passionate about it.

    I consider myself very lucky to have met Mario because he is a great combination of knowledge, charm, and plain good sense and his experiences\adventures have given him an accurate prospective on how the world works.

    Thank you for sharing his stories on your blog!

  6. A wonderful series on Mario’s wondrous adventures. His tales ring true, too, unlike those of some of his fabulist contemporaries. If he is not writing his own story, you should be his biographer… or help with what would surely be a fabulous autobiography.

    1. Thank you Tom! Mario has been working on an auto-biography and after I did those posts on him was very eager to have me get involved– but I have too much on my plate. I hope he gets it done, because it would be a great read. He represents a whole generation of TV journalism that does not exist anymore.

  7. Thank you for the Mario stories – they are fantastic.

    Please make them their own topic on the website so that it’s easier to follow all the links.

    Thank you.

    1. Thank you Jose. I am so glad you liked them. I am not much at organizing my blog website, but I will ask the woman who designed the site for me if she can put those posts into a category of their own.

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