April 16, 2025 • 31 mins
On a cold day in 1973, a crowd gathered on a farm for one of history's strangest funerals. It was an elite group, including the Governor of Michigan, bank presidents, and local dignitaries. Even Walter Cronkite sent a correspondent. But they weren’t mourning anyone human. No, this was a pizza-based catastrophe.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Fireheart Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
On a cold day in March nineteen seventy three, a
small group gathered on a farm in the village of Osanique, Michigan.
They were gathered there to mourn, but they weren't mourning
anyone human. No, this was a pizza based catastrophe. The
deceased was delivered by dump truck, all wrapped in cellophane
(00:41):
and emptied into an eighteen foot hole in the ground.
There were floral wreaths and a moving homily delivered by
the governor about quote courage in the face of tragedy.
Even David Colhane, one of Walter Cronkite's correspondents, was there.
It was surely one of the strangest funerals in history.
(01:04):
As for what exactly was being delivered to its final
resting place, tens of thousands of pizzas with various toppings.
As for how they meant such an untimely end, the
answer to that involves an American success story, a deadly toksin,
a few wars, and some very suspect mushrooms. Welcome to
(01:29):
very special episodes and iHeart Original podcast. I'm your host
Dana Sports and this is the Pizza Funeral.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Hello, welcome back to our little program. My name is
Jason English. I'm Dana Schwartz, and you are and I
am Barren Burnette, the third one though correct. Today we
have a love letter to pizza.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
If either of you could order any pizza that you
have ever had where you're ordering from right now?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You know something crazy. There's a pizza place near me
Cult TRIPPLEBMP Pizza that has a potato pizza.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It's so good. It's like oily in the best way.
And it's just a pizza with potato on it. So
it's carbon carb and that that's the pizza I would want.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Is it slices of potato?
Speaker 6 (02:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Look really thin, really thin slices.
Speaker 6 (02:23):
Ah.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
When I was over in Bologna, Italy, I was like
there to go to the Ducati factory and to meet
all the people there and ride about motorcycles, and I
spent all my time eating gelato and pizza when I
wasn't at Dukati. And I got to tell you, they
put French fries on their pizza there, like not. Didn't
like skinny fries. I'm talking like steak fries. I'd never
seen anything like that. I was like, this is too
much potato, But I like your thin slice. I could
(02:45):
totally get behind that.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
I'm going to balance out your very exotic pizzas with
the pizza hut lunch buffet circa nineteen ninety six. I
don't know if your pizza huts had a lunch buffet,
but back in the day, for about five dollars, you
could go in and it's all you can eat, and
they would have all the different, yeah, regular kinds of pizza,
and then they would bring out dessert pizza. My teeth
(03:09):
are hurting just thinking about it. Would be like apple
pie or cherry pie pizza. And I don't know if
they do that anywhere anymore. Probably my body couldn't handle
it anyway, But sixteen year old me loved it.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
Dessert pizza.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I think I have crested the age where that sounds
good to me.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Actually, come back all the way around.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, we didn't have a pizza Hut in my town,
so we had to go to another town, so it
was doubly special.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Like we would just sit there and covet that stuff.
That's a day out.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, yeah, and those red plastic cups. Nothing taste is
good in any other cup. If it's like a soda
or cold water, then those red plastic cups make that
spright hit.
Speaker 5 (03:45):
We will do at some point a book It episode
about the pizza for reta. Oh yeah, but today a
pizza funeral.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
To understand the Great American pizza funeral, you have to
first understand Ilario Mario for Brieni, World War Two survivor,
Italian American immigrant, veteran patriot, and pizza entrepreneur. Fabrini was
born in what was then called Fume, northern Italy, in
(04:17):
nineteen thirty one. This picturesque port on the Adriatic Sea
has changed hands many times over the last few centuries.
Around one hundred years ago it was known as a
melting pot, a place where Hungarians, Italians and Germans all intermingled.
But don't look for Fume on any map now.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
The city that he was born in was called Fiume,
and during World War Two the Italians lost it to
the Communist Party at the time, so they were hoping
that the Allies could get the city back, but it
just didn't happen. So now it's a part of actually Croatia.
(05:01):
That's called Rieca.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
That's Hillary Fabrini, Ilario, Mario's eldest. As for that name, Mario.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
My dad's real name is Alario. It sounds like Mario,
but Scott and I l ahar Oh. People had a
hard time saying Alario, so so me mustn't say.
Speaker 7 (05:23):
I'm just gonna call you Mario.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
That's an Italian name. All Italian serv their name Mario. Ilario.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Mario's family came to the United States originally when his
maternal grandfather emigrated around the turn of the twentieth century.
The family went back and forth between Italy and America
due to his grandmother's health. When World War II broke out,
Ilario's mother, Mary, was a young woman in Italy with
(05:50):
her husband, but most of the rest of her family
was in the US. By the end of the war,
things were not looking good in northern Italy, Ilario's dad
made a decision. He packed up his wife, his son, Alario,
and Ilario's younger brother.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And told them to go leave the city and go
to the south, go for the Allies there. And so
they did, and my dad, they'd never seen or heard
from my grandfather.
Speaker 7 (06:20):
After that, well, we barely made it my mother, myself,
and my brother, and we never heard from him again.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
That's Hilario himself speaking in a Library of Congress Veteran
History Project interview in two thousand and six.
Speaker 8 (06:42):
So we actually heard rumor that he was skilled or
there was a lot of hatred in those and this
happened after the war.
Speaker 7 (06:50):
It's a sad part about it.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Ilario survived only thanks to charity donations and help from
family in the US. Still in the chaos and ruin
after the war, his mother could not afford to support him.
He spent two years in an orphanage before his grandfather
was able to cut through a mountain of red tape
and bring the family to America.
Speaker 8 (07:14):
I went to Naphrodise from the offage. My grandfather finally
brought me to this country.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
On August fifteenth, nineteen forty eight, Ilario stepped off the
plane at Willow Run Airport in Michigan. He was sixteen
years old. Ilaria would never forget his experiences during the war.
They instilled a lifelong love of his newfound country, which
embraced him and gave him freedom. But after he landed,
(07:42):
he had two big priorities. Learning the language of his
new home and finding a job. Night school helped with
the first issue, and the Detroit Leland Hotel helped with
the second. Soon Ilario was working as a busboy there,
but before long he had to exchange one uniform for another.
(08:04):
June twenty fifth, nineteen fifty, started out like any other day,
but as Alario was getting ready for work at the hotel,
he heard a radio bulletin announcing that North Korea had
just invaded South Korea. He knew what he had to do.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I mean, I'll tell you this. My father was a
very patriotic person. I don't know if anybody got to
be more patriotic than my father. He really loved this country.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Unfortunately, signing up for the military proved to be a
bit of an ordeal for Ilario. He was rejected repeatedly
because he didn't know enough English to pass the entry test.
That is until one day when he ran into a
sergeant who was also Italian American.
Speaker 8 (08:50):
One day in Dearborn, Michagan, I see army recruiting and
I look at the sign and decides to come to me,
and he say, you.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
Really want to get it?
Speaker 8 (08:59):
Yes, I told my sawy.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
You know, maybe a little probably English and his beautiful side.
Speaker 8 (09:04):
He said to me, hey, Bizan, you really don't want
to get in? Yes, And he's five extra minutes for
the test for take twenty twenty five as a transfer
from Italian to English.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
Well, I don't know.
Speaker 8 (09:14):
If you give me five minutes, if you give me
ten minutes, or if you use the M one rifle,
then I was in.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
After completing basic training and serving nine months with the
second Infantry Division in Korea, Ilario got out of the
army and got into pizza. Like a lot of Italian
immigrants in post World War II America, he wanted to
start up his own business, and pizza seemed as good
an idea as any. It was a beloved food and
(09:43):
pretty cheap to get started with. But this wasn't quite
the pizza of his home country, or at least not
any kind of pizza Alario had tried back in Italy.
As Ilario told one reporter, quote, the pizza for my country,
no one here would eat. It's made with parmesan cheese,
grated cheese, olives and anchovies. You must adapt for the
(10:05):
American market, and adapt he did. Alario created a delicious,
thin crust pizza using a low moisture mozzarella. Around nineteen
fifty three, he started up one of the first carry
out and delivery pizza shops in Detroit, just when pizza
was first really getting popular in the US. Before long,
(10:28):
business was booming, and soon Ilario also started making the
thicker crust rectangular pizza Detroit is known for today. But
even though he'd adapted, Alario hadn't forgotten his roots.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
So pizza has always been a highly mobile food.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
That's Carol Helstowski.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
I'm a professor of history at the University of Denver.
I'm also the author of Pizza, a Global History.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
According to Carol, the origins of pizza depend on how
you define it. If it's just a yeasted flatbread with toppings,
that probably goes back to ancient Rome or farther. But
pizza as we know it today gets its start in
the port city of Naples, where it was a working
class street food of the eighteenth century.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
It's believed that it comes from the word pizzicare in Italian,
which means to pinch, sort of, to pinch out the crust,
and people were noticing sailors and soldiers and other members
of the working class. We're eating this dish back in
the seventeen hundreds, so people would put pizzas in a
lightweight box and carry it on their heads, right in
(11:39):
an insulated box, and go sell it to the sailors
down on the docks.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Pizza was also sold out of pizzerias, bakeries and other locations,
but not everyone thought it was so delicious. Samuel Morse,
inventor of the Telegraph, visited Naples in eighteen thirty one
and described pizza as quote a species of most nauseating
looking cake, covered over with slices of pomadoro or tomatoes,
(12:06):
and sprinkled with little fish and black pepper, and I
know not what other ingredients. It all together looks like
a piece of bread that had been taken reeking out
of the sewer. Even other Italians didn't necessarily love this
early pizza, although there might have been a bit of
classism at play. Carlo Lorenzini, author of the beloved book
(12:29):
The Adventures of Pinocchio, wrote in eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 9 (12:33):
That the blackened aspect of the toasted crust, the whitish
sheen of garlic and anchov, the greenish yellow tint of
the oil and fried herbs and the bits of red
give pizza the appearance of complicated filth that matches the
dirt of the vendor.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
But after World War Two, pizza's popularity exploded in America.
Partly it was because they started to get rid of
the anchovies, and partly it was technological improvements, but it
was also the number of Italian immigrants and others who
are looking for a way to start their own food business.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
I think pizzerias are really inviting as immigrant businesses because
it's very low overhead.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Right.
Speaker 6 (13:23):
All you basically need is a storefront, You need a
couple of ovens. You don't need to open up a
whole fancy restaurant where people need to sit down or
bring their families. You just need to sell it cheaply,
right and quickly. And that's very appealing to a lot
of people who are trying to get their feet in business.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Ilario was one of those people, and his business in
Detroit was thriving. Customers loved the convenience of carry out
and delivery pizza, which was a relatively new concept at
the time. But then Ilario's patriotic duty called once again,
or at least he thought it did. In nineteen sixty one,
(14:05):
the crisis that led to the creation of the Berlin
Wall broke out. Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev had demanded that
Western Powers leave the parts of Berlin they had been
guarding since World War II, but President John F. Kennedy
refused to abandon West Berlin without a fight. An alert
went out to Ilario's army reserves unit. He expected to
(14:29):
be called to active duty at any moment, and so
this entrepreneur sold his bustling pizza shops, three of them
by then, but the call to active duty never came.
Alario was left unemployed, and by then he had a
young family to provide for. He decided to restart his
(14:49):
life in northern Michigan, where he managed a couple of
inns for a while, but by the nineteen sixties he
was back in pizza with a shop in Alpina, Michigan.
Ever the innovator, he began experimenting with frozen pizzas in
the back of the shop when were slow. People loved it,
(15:10):
especially when he started delivering the frozen pizzas to local
bars alongside a small portable cooker so the bar could
sell it by the slice to patrons pizza, the perfect
mobile food and the perfect drunk food. Before long, Ilario
had opened a frozen pizza factory in nearby Asenique to
(15:31):
keep up with the demand. As the nineteen sixties hummed along,
things were looking bright for Alario's business, Papa Fabrini Pizza. Unfortunately,
his fortunes were about to change, and it was all
thanks to a bad day at the canning factory. It's
(15:52):
January nineteen seventy three and things at the United Canning
Company of East Palestine, Ohio are moving along. That is
until one of the workers notices something amiss. Some of
the number ten cans of mushrooms look a little swollen, and,
as everyone knows, swollen cans are never a good sign.
(16:15):
The United Canning Company had recently changed their techniques for
packing cans. Where they once used humans, they were now
using a machine that stuffed items into the cans more tightly.
That technique required a longer sterilization process to destroy any
nasty bacteria. Unfortunately, that longer sterilization process wasn't used, which
(16:40):
is why these cans were bulging in all the wrong places.
Soon tests by the FDA determined that the bacteria that
causes bachelism. Poisoning was present in some of the cans,
and that's how Fabrini's nightmare began. At nine am on
February nineteenth, Tilana Pizza Products in Chicago gave Ilario Fabrini
(17:04):
a ring. Talona purchased their mushrooms from United Canning, and
Fabrini in turn purchased his mushrooms from Tolona. Needless to say,
it was a call Ilario would remember forever. When he
got the news, everything went dark. All he could think was,
oh my God, not me. What if somebody gets sick
(17:26):
or dies from this? After all, botchulism isn't something to
mess around with. It's rare to be exposed to the
toxin in amounts high enough to cause trouble, but when
that happens, it's one of the most lethal toxins around.
It attacks the body's nerves and can cause difficulty breathing,
muscle paralysis, even death. As a precaution, some of the
(17:51):
Fabrini mushroom pizza was fed to two mice. Sadly, that
was the last meal they ever ate, and that was
enough for Ilario. He immediately stopped all his shipments and
rounded up his pizzas from grocery stores and bars. One
newspaper reported it was the largest pizza recall in history.
(18:13):
By the third day of this trying period, Ilario later wrote,
I really began to think my first name was Bochelism.
It wasn't until March fifth that all the pizzas had
been gathered from around the state destined for the dump trucks.
At about one pm, the funeral began, tens of thousands
(18:34):
of pizzas sliding from the trucks into the mass graen.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
It was really heartbreaking, especially for my mom to see
all that food you all go in the hole. I
mean she remembers, you know, she was a little girl too,
and when World War Two was a neighbor running. When
they were in Germany, a lot of times they didn't
know where their next meal was come from.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
The other mourners at the funeral included twenty two employees
of the pizza plant, local bank presidents, Chamber of Commerce,
and even the governor, who traveled over one hundred miles
for the funeral. After all the pizzas were in the whole,
Ilario threw in the flower garlands too. Red Gladioli for
the sauce, white carnations for the cheese. Then freshly cooked
(19:24):
pizza slices were offered to everyone assembled. When one reporter
said no to a slice, he was told the governor
eight apiece and he's still alive.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
The governor of Michigan at the time was William Milliken,
and he was a businessman himself. I believe he had
a department stores up in northern Michigan too, so he
was concerned. He was a fellow businessman, and he contacted
my father, you know, and said, you know, I support
you in any way I can, and you know what
can I do.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Millican said he was proud of how Fabrini was quote
fighting back in the best American tradition. He sets an
example for all of us. Millican said. In fact, many
members of the community allied around the Fabrinis. While seventeen
people claimed, apparently falsely, that they had gotten sick from
the mushrooms, far more offered their support. A few sent
(20:19):
small amounts of money one dollar five dollars. One local
man told Fabrini that while he didn't have any money,
he had some stock and would put it up for
collateral if necessary. Some said their congregations or priests were
praying for the company. Fabrini told one newspaper, it sort
of makes you goose pimples about America. Despite all the
(20:42):
moral support, the Papa Fabrini business took a hit. By
some accounts, the buried pizzas had an estimated retail value
of sixty thousand dollars. That's a little under half a
million dollars today.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
It was tough for a while, I do know afterwards
things were tough.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
But Ilario decided, with all these people behind him, the
only way to move forward was to refinance everything and
start again. That said, he did engage in the other
great American pursuit, a lawsuit. Ilario filed a one million
dollar suit against United Canning Company and Tolana Pizza Products,
(21:23):
hoping to recoup his losses and put the business on
a steady path forward. After all, Fabrini himself hadn't done
anything wrong, and as it turned out, his mushrooms just
might have been innocent too. Remember those lab mice who
(21:45):
died in the line of duty after being fed a
test slice of Fabrini's pizza. Well, it turned out bachelism
wasn't actually to blame. Subsequent testing showed the mice died
from an unrelated abdominal issue. It's not clear exactly what
caused it, although Fabrini had his own idea about what happened.
(22:05):
He told one report, I think it was indigestion. Maybe
they didn't like my pizza. The mice test result had
come back before the burial, but after all the pizzas
had been rounded up, and because bachelism had been present
in some of the cans of mushrooms, Ilario really had
(22:26):
no choice. He had to act out of an abundance
of caution to throw all of the pizzas away. As
a result, his business suffered.
Speaker 8 (22:35):
The chance of invading the mark, not invading, but to
occupy the market with my product, the frozen pizza Al Mario,
Papa Fabrini.
Speaker 7 (22:43):
It was gone.
Speaker 8 (22:46):
When you have to recall forty four thousand pizza and
replace that, it can really it really hurt you.
Speaker 7 (22:53):
I got to be thanks to the people. They tried
to help me. But bachelism is kind of scary.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
Things, and I can't put a little mark on your name.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
As for that million dollar court case, well, Fabrini one,
but he didn't win a million dollars. He was ultimately
awarded two hundred and eleven thousand dollars after his legal
bills that didn't amount to much. His profits also dropped
in the years after the recall, in part because mushroom
(23:24):
Pizzas continued to prove a hard sell. A couple of
retailers testified during the court case that they could no
longer sell Fabrini mushroom pizzas at all.
Speaker 7 (23:35):
He needed to say, my company had no chance, no more.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Fabrini battled for several more years to try to save
the company, but by the early nineteen eighties he decided
to sell it. Nine years after the Mushroom Ordeal, as
he once called it, he was done. He eventually began
a new life in sunny San Diego, a town he
had fallen in love with during his military service back
(24:02):
in the nineteen fifties. He'd always vowed to return, and
return he did, working in catering for the film and
TV business. In his spare time, he loved to cook
for his family, including pizzas. His favorite toppings were anchovies, pepperoni,
green peppers, and surprisingly, mushrooms. Ilario Mario Fabrini passed away
(24:26):
in twenty twenty three, but the story of the Great
American Pizza Funeral lives on. It still pops up in headlines,
reddit threads, and YouTube videos from time to time. Why
do we still love talking about this quirky story some
fifty years after it happened.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Well, because it's pizza.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, we Americans love pizza, Okay, So I think that's
the biggest thing right there.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Of course, the Great Pizza Funeral was a bit of
a publicity stunt away for Ilario to show he was
doing the right thing and get some good press in
the process, but it also showed off a creative streak.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
My dad is like very artistic, I guess you could say.
So he does have that mine where he'll do that,
I mean, and then a VFW. You know, they have
a poppy contest, poppy display contest, and one year I
think he finished second in the nation, so stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
To win the poppy display contest, Ilario created a model
of a graveyard covered in poppies. Hillary Fabrini also remembers
that every Christmas, back when the family was running those
pizza parlors in Detroit, Ilario would create a special treat
for his customers.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
There was always like a big window by the street,
off the sidewalk, and every Christmas he would build this
massive Nativity scene with people moving, ducks in ponds, swimming,
you know, and it was just magnets underneath, and he
glued magnets to the butt. I mean, he's very clever,
a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
It's easy to imagine how on a cold, snowy night
in Detroit around Christmas time, the lights and colors of
the Nativity display would have drawn customers in almost as
much as the pungent smells of the pizza baking in
the ovens. According to pizza historian Carol Helstovsky, that kind
of creativity is a big part of what's made pizza
(26:27):
so beloved.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Many people love pizza because really, throughout its history, people
bring incredible amounts of creativity to creating and consuming pizzas.
It's not unusual, right to have pizzas with pineapple on them.
I know that's a controversial point, or pizzas with a
lot of meat on them. And many of the pizzas
(26:52):
that people consume in the United States don't resemble at all, right,
what original pizzas used to look like in Italy. So
you can put all kinds of ingredients, right, the only
thing that sort of constricts pizza is your imagination counts
for I think a great amount of pizza's popularity today.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
You can get banana curry pizza in Sweden, EMU or
kangaroo pizza in Australia, pizza with hagis in Scotland, and
pizza with reindeer meat in Finland.
Speaker 6 (27:23):
If there's anything I've learned is that people really do
bring a lot of creative energy and excitement to making pizza.
It's almost someone once likened it to kind of like
a blank canvas or something like that, where you can
kind of do your own thing, and I think that's
one of the great things about pizza.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Carol also told us that while she was researching her book,
she learned that in Japan, at one point you could
get a stuffed animal delivered alongside your pizza. That's an
innovation that Alario, with his penchant for expanding the business model,
might have appreciated. Alaria spent his golden years in San
Diego with his wife, Olga, enjoying life and volunteering with
(28:06):
the vf DO. When he died, there was plenty of
food at his own funeral, including well, you guessed it.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
We decided to have pizza, and there was a guy
that came and he had a portable gas fired pizza,
and so there was pizza and amongst other things too,
So we did have pizza at his funeral.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
So I really enjoyed that they actually ate pizza at
Alario Mario's funeral.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
That felt right to me. Oh good, Jaren.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
If we're doing a movie version of the pizza funeral,
who are you casting?
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Well, I thought about this, and I thought about Alario
Mario aka Mario Fabrini throughout the edges of his life, right,
because we have like an arc of this man's life.
So I started with young Alario and I thought Jacob
Alordi from Euphoria and Salburn plays him as a young man.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
Right, is he Italian?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Is it LORDI? An Italian name?
Speaker 1 (29:03):
I want to say yes, because an ins and eye,
But maybe I could be wrong. I didn't look it up,
so I could totally be wrong about that, but I
want to believe you convinced.
Speaker 7 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
And then the young middle aged I think in Ralph Macchio,
because that man does not age, so you have him
played with the young middle age and for older middle
age you go with Stanley Tucci or Roberto Benini, depending
on how Italian you want to get. And then lastly,
for older Alario Mario, right before the funeral, you trot
out Tony Danza in an Oscar worthy role nobody saw coming.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
Yeah, very special characters. I'm going to just give it
to those poor mice. They come on, They're dealing with
an undiagnosed abdominal issue already, they're getting fed probably poisonous pizza,
and they dropped dead. That is a very very tough
way to go.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
I know, at home science experiments for my heartbreaking. Wouldn't
it be crazy if I was craving mushroom pizza after
listening to this episode.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Yeah, this did not put me off mushroom pizza at all.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
I was going to say, ironically that the place that
has the potato pizza also has a really good mushroom pizza.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
I would just say this, it's so sad that pizza
could kill you because pizza is my favorite food. So
the idea that there could be pizza that can kill
you with botulism nearly broke my heart. But I was
glad to hear that that all got sorted out so Yes,
back to pizza. I can think of it as a
health food forever now.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Today's episode was written by Bess Lovejoy. Best is amazing.
Like I mentioned last time, We've worked together at various
places for over a decade. She wrote our epic three
kea Cheese episode last year wrote a book called rest
in Pieces about famous corpses. That's always good to work
(30:38):
with her. This show is hosted by Danis Schwartz, Zaren Burnett,
and Jason English.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Our producer is Josh Fisher.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington and Josh Fisher.
Additional editing by Mary Doo, mixing and mastering by Peheed Frasier.
Original music by Elise McCoy. Research in fact checking by
Best Lovejoy and Austin Thompson. Show logo by Lucy Kintania.
Our executive producer is Jason English. If you'd like to
(31:08):
email the show, you can reach us at Very Special
Episodes at gmail dot com. Very Special Episodes is a
production of iHeart Podcasts.
Fireheart Originals.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is an iHeart original.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
On a cold day in March nineteen seventy three, a
small group gathered on a farm in the village of Osanique, Michigan.
They were gathered there to mourn, but they weren't mourning
anyone human. No, this was a pizza based catastrophe. The
deceased was delivered by dump truck, all wrapped in cellophane
(00:41):
and emptied into an eighteen foot hole in the ground.
There were floral wreaths and a moving homily delivered by
the governor about quote courage in the face of tragedy.
Even David Colhane, one of Walter Cronkite's correspondents, was there.
It was surely one of the strangest funerals in history.
(01:04):
As for what exactly was being delivered to its final
resting place, tens of thousands of pizzas with various toppings.
As for how they meant such an untimely end, the
answer to that involves an American success story, a deadly toksin,
a few wars, and some very suspect mushrooms. Welcome to
(01:29):
very special episodes and iHeart Original podcast. I'm your host
Dana Sports and this is the Pizza Funeral.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
Hello, welcome back to our little program. My name is
Jason English. I'm Dana Schwartz, and you are and I
am Barren Burnette, the third one though correct. Today we
have a love letter to pizza.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
If either of you could order any pizza that you
have ever had where you're ordering from right now?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You know something crazy. There's a pizza place near me
Cult TRIPPLEBMP Pizza that has a potato pizza.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
It's so good. It's like oily in the best way.
And it's just a pizza with potato on it. So
it's carbon carb and that that's the pizza I would want.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
Is it slices of potato?
Speaker 6 (02:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Look really thin, really thin slices.
Speaker 6 (02:23):
Ah.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
When I was over in Bologna, Italy, I was like
there to go to the Ducati factory and to meet
all the people there and ride about motorcycles, and I
spent all my time eating gelato and pizza when I
wasn't at Dukati. And I got to tell you, they
put French fries on their pizza there, like not. Didn't
like skinny fries. I'm talking like steak fries. I'd never
seen anything like that. I was like, this is too
much potato, But I like your thin slice. I could
(02:45):
totally get behind that.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 5 (02:47):
I'm going to balance out your very exotic pizzas with
the pizza hut lunch buffet circa nineteen ninety six. I
don't know if your pizza huts had a lunch buffet,
but back in the day, for about five dollars, you
could go in and it's all you can eat, and
they would have all the different, yeah, regular kinds of pizza,
and then they would bring out dessert pizza. My teeth
(03:09):
are hurting just thinking about it. Would be like apple
pie or cherry pie pizza. And I don't know if
they do that anywhere anymore. Probably my body couldn't handle
it anyway, But sixteen year old me loved it.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
Dessert pizza.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
I think I have crested the age where that sounds
good to me.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Actually, come back all the way around.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, we didn't have a pizza Hut in my town,
so we had to go to another town, so it
was doubly special.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Like we would just sit there and covet that stuff.
That's a day out.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, yeah, and those red plastic cups. Nothing taste is
good in any other cup. If it's like a soda
or cold water, then those red plastic cups make that
spright hit.
Speaker 5 (03:45):
We will do at some point a book It episode
about the pizza for reta. Oh yeah, but today a
pizza funeral.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
To understand the Great American pizza funeral, you have to
first understand Ilario Mario for Brieni, World War Two survivor,
Italian American immigrant, veteran patriot, and pizza entrepreneur. Fabrini was
born in what was then called Fume, northern Italy, in
(04:17):
nineteen thirty one. This picturesque port on the Adriatic Sea
has changed hands many times over the last few centuries.
Around one hundred years ago it was known as a
melting pot, a place where Hungarians, Italians and Germans all intermingled.
But don't look for Fume on any map now.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
The city that he was born in was called Fiume,
and during World War Two the Italians lost it to
the Communist Party at the time, so they were hoping
that the Allies could get the city back, but it
just didn't happen. So now it's a part of actually Croatia.
(05:01):
That's called Rieca.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
That's Hillary Fabrini, Ilario, Mario's eldest. As for that name, Mario.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
My dad's real name is Alario. It sounds like Mario,
but Scott and I l ahar Oh. People had a
hard time saying Alario, so so me mustn't say.
Speaker 7 (05:23):
I'm just gonna call you Mario.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
That's an Italian name. All Italian serv their name Mario. Ilario.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Mario's family came to the United States originally when his
maternal grandfather emigrated around the turn of the twentieth century.
The family went back and forth between Italy and America
due to his grandmother's health. When World War II broke out,
Ilario's mother, Mary, was a young woman in Italy with
(05:50):
her husband, but most of the rest of her family
was in the US. By the end of the war,
things were not looking good in northern Italy, Ilario's dad
made a decision. He packed up his wife, his son, Alario,
and Ilario's younger brother.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
And told them to go leave the city and go
to the south, go for the Allies there. And so
they did, and my dad, they'd never seen or heard
from my grandfather.
Speaker 7 (06:20):
After that, well, we barely made it my mother, myself,
and my brother, and we never heard from him again.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
That's Hilario himself speaking in a Library of Congress Veteran
History Project interview in two thousand and six.
Speaker 8 (06:42):
So we actually heard rumor that he was skilled or
there was a lot of hatred in those and this
happened after the war.
Speaker 7 (06:50):
It's a sad part about it.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Ilario survived only thanks to charity donations and help from
family in the US. Still in the chaos and ruin
after the war, his mother could not afford to support him.
He spent two years in an orphanage before his grandfather
was able to cut through a mountain of red tape
and bring the family to America.
Speaker 8 (07:14):
I went to Naphrodise from the offage. My grandfather finally
brought me to this country.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
On August fifteenth, nineteen forty eight, Ilario stepped off the
plane at Willow Run Airport in Michigan. He was sixteen
years old. Ilaria would never forget his experiences during the war.
They instilled a lifelong love of his newfound country, which
embraced him and gave him freedom. But after he landed,
(07:42):
he had two big priorities. Learning the language of his
new home and finding a job. Night school helped with
the first issue, and the Detroit Leland Hotel helped with
the second. Soon Ilario was working as a busboy there,
but before long he had to exchange one uniform for another.
(08:04):
June twenty fifth, nineteen fifty, started out like any other day,
but as Alario was getting ready for work at the hotel,
he heard a radio bulletin announcing that North Korea had
just invaded South Korea. He knew what he had to do.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
I mean, I'll tell you this. My father was a
very patriotic person. I don't know if anybody got to
be more patriotic than my father. He really loved this country.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
Unfortunately, signing up for the military proved to be a
bit of an ordeal for Ilario. He was rejected repeatedly
because he didn't know enough English to pass the entry test.
That is until one day when he ran into a
sergeant who was also Italian American.
Speaker 8 (08:50):
One day in Dearborn, Michagan, I see army recruiting and
I look at the sign and decides to come to me,
and he say, you.
Speaker 6 (08:58):
Really want to get it?
Speaker 8 (08:59):
Yes, I told my sawy.
Speaker 7 (09:00):
You know, maybe a little probably English and his beautiful side.
Speaker 8 (09:04):
He said to me, hey, Bizan, you really don't want
to get in? Yes, And he's five extra minutes for
the test for take twenty twenty five as a transfer
from Italian to English.
Speaker 7 (09:14):
Well, I don't know.
Speaker 8 (09:14):
If you give me five minutes, if you give me
ten minutes, or if you use the M one rifle,
then I was in.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
After completing basic training and serving nine months with the
second Infantry Division in Korea, Ilario got out of the
army and got into pizza. Like a lot of Italian
immigrants in post World War II America, he wanted to
start up his own business, and pizza seemed as good
an idea as any. It was a beloved food and
(09:43):
pretty cheap to get started with. But this wasn't quite
the pizza of his home country, or at least not
any kind of pizza Alario had tried back in Italy.
As Ilario told one reporter, quote, the pizza for my country,
no one here would eat. It's made with parmesan cheese,
grated cheese, olives and anchovies. You must adapt for the
(10:05):
American market, and adapt he did. Alario created a delicious,
thin crust pizza using a low moisture mozzarella. Around nineteen
fifty three, he started up one of the first carry
out and delivery pizza shops in Detroit, just when pizza
was first really getting popular in the US. Before long,
(10:28):
business was booming, and soon Ilario also started making the
thicker crust rectangular pizza Detroit is known for today. But
even though he'd adapted, Alario hadn't forgotten his roots.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
So pizza has always been a highly mobile food.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
That's Carol Helstowski.
Speaker 6 (10:49):
I'm a professor of history at the University of Denver.
I'm also the author of Pizza, a Global History.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
According to Carol, the origins of pizza depend on how
you define it. If it's just a yeasted flatbread with toppings,
that probably goes back to ancient Rome or farther. But
pizza as we know it today gets its start in
the port city of Naples, where it was a working
class street food of the eighteenth century.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
It's believed that it comes from the word pizzicare in Italian,
which means to pinch, sort of, to pinch out the crust,
and people were noticing sailors and soldiers and other members
of the working class. We're eating this dish back in
the seventeen hundreds, so people would put pizzas in a
lightweight box and carry it on their heads, right in
(11:39):
an insulated box, and go sell it to the sailors
down on the docks.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Pizza was also sold out of pizzerias, bakeries and other locations,
but not everyone thought it was so delicious. Samuel Morse,
inventor of the Telegraph, visited Naples in eighteen thirty one
and described pizza as quote a species of most nauseating
looking cake, covered over with slices of pomadoro or tomatoes,
(12:06):
and sprinkled with little fish and black pepper, and I
know not what other ingredients. It all together looks like
a piece of bread that had been taken reeking out
of the sewer. Even other Italians didn't necessarily love this
early pizza, although there might have been a bit of
classism at play. Carlo Lorenzini, author of the beloved book
(12:29):
The Adventures of Pinocchio, wrote in eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 9 (12:33):
That the blackened aspect of the toasted crust, the whitish
sheen of garlic and anchov, the greenish yellow tint of
the oil and fried herbs and the bits of red
give pizza the appearance of complicated filth that matches the
dirt of the vendor.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
But after World War Two, pizza's popularity exploded in America.
Partly it was because they started to get rid of
the anchovies, and partly it was technological improvements, but it
was also the number of Italian immigrants and others who
are looking for a way to start their own food business.
Speaker 6 (13:13):
I think pizzerias are really inviting as immigrant businesses because
it's very low overhead.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Right.
Speaker 6 (13:23):
All you basically need is a storefront, You need a
couple of ovens. You don't need to open up a
whole fancy restaurant where people need to sit down or
bring their families. You just need to sell it cheaply,
right and quickly. And that's very appealing to a lot
of people who are trying to get their feet in business.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Ilario was one of those people, and his business in
Detroit was thriving. Customers loved the convenience of carry out
and delivery pizza, which was a relatively new concept at
the time. But then Ilario's patriotic duty called once again,
or at least he thought it did. In nineteen sixty one,
(14:05):
the crisis that led to the creation of the Berlin
Wall broke out. Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev had demanded that
Western Powers leave the parts of Berlin they had been
guarding since World War II, but President John F. Kennedy
refused to abandon West Berlin without a fight. An alert
went out to Ilario's army reserves unit. He expected to
(14:29):
be called to active duty at any moment, and so
this entrepreneur sold his bustling pizza shops, three of them
by then, but the call to active duty never came.
Alario was left unemployed, and by then he had a
young family to provide for. He decided to restart his
(14:49):
life in northern Michigan, where he managed a couple of
inns for a while, but by the nineteen sixties he
was back in pizza with a shop in Alpina, Michigan.
Ever the innovator, he began experimenting with frozen pizzas in
the back of the shop when were slow. People loved it,
(15:10):
especially when he started delivering the frozen pizzas to local
bars alongside a small portable cooker so the bar could
sell it by the slice to patrons pizza, the perfect
mobile food and the perfect drunk food. Before long, Ilario
had opened a frozen pizza factory in nearby Asenique to
(15:31):
keep up with the demand. As the nineteen sixties hummed along,
things were looking bright for Alario's business, Papa Fabrini Pizza. Unfortunately,
his fortunes were about to change, and it was all
thanks to a bad day at the canning factory. It's
(15:52):
January nineteen seventy three and things at the United Canning
Company of East Palestine, Ohio are moving along. That is
until one of the workers notices something amiss. Some of
the number ten cans of mushrooms look a little swollen, and,
as everyone knows, swollen cans are never a good sign.
(16:15):
The United Canning Company had recently changed their techniques for
packing cans. Where they once used humans, they were now
using a machine that stuffed items into the cans more tightly.
That technique required a longer sterilization process to destroy any
nasty bacteria. Unfortunately, that longer sterilization process wasn't used, which
(16:40):
is why these cans were bulging in all the wrong places.
Soon tests by the FDA determined that the bacteria that
causes bachelism. Poisoning was present in some of the cans,
and that's how Fabrini's nightmare began. At nine am on
February nineteenth, Tilana Pizza Products in Chicago gave Ilario Fabrini
(17:04):
a ring. Talona purchased their mushrooms from United Canning, and
Fabrini in turn purchased his mushrooms from Tolona. Needless to say,
it was a call Ilario would remember forever. When he
got the news, everything went dark. All he could think was,
oh my God, not me. What if somebody gets sick
(17:26):
or dies from this? After all, botchulism isn't something to
mess around with. It's rare to be exposed to the
toxin in amounts high enough to cause trouble, but when
that happens, it's one of the most lethal toxins around.
It attacks the body's nerves and can cause difficulty breathing,
muscle paralysis, even death. As a precaution, some of the
(17:51):
Fabrini mushroom pizza was fed to two mice. Sadly, that
was the last meal they ever ate, and that was
enough for Ilario. He immediately stopped all his shipments and
rounded up his pizzas from grocery stores and bars. One
newspaper reported it was the largest pizza recall in history.
(18:13):
By the third day of this trying period, Ilario later wrote,
I really began to think my first name was Bochelism.
It wasn't until March fifth that all the pizzas had
been gathered from around the state destined for the dump trucks.
At about one pm, the funeral began, tens of thousands
(18:34):
of pizzas sliding from the trucks into the mass graen.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
It was really heartbreaking, especially for my mom to see
all that food you all go in the hole. I
mean she remembers, you know, she was a little girl too,
and when World War Two was a neighbor running. When
they were in Germany, a lot of times they didn't
know where their next meal was come from.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
The other mourners at the funeral included twenty two employees
of the pizza plant, local bank presidents, Chamber of Commerce,
and even the governor, who traveled over one hundred miles
for the funeral. After all the pizzas were in the whole,
Ilario threw in the flower garlands too. Red Gladioli for
the sauce, white carnations for the cheese. Then freshly cooked
(19:24):
pizza slices were offered to everyone assembled. When one reporter
said no to a slice, he was told the governor
eight apiece and he's still alive.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
The governor of Michigan at the time was William Milliken,
and he was a businessman himself. I believe he had
a department stores up in northern Michigan too, so he
was concerned. He was a fellow businessman, and he contacted
my father, you know, and said, you know, I support
you in any way I can, and you know what
can I do.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
Millican said he was proud of how Fabrini was quote
fighting back in the best American tradition. He sets an
example for all of us. Millican said. In fact, many
members of the community allied around the Fabrinis. While seventeen
people claimed, apparently falsely, that they had gotten sick from
the mushrooms, far more offered their support. A few sent
(20:19):
small amounts of money one dollar five dollars. One local
man told Fabrini that while he didn't have any money,
he had some stock and would put it up for
collateral if necessary. Some said their congregations or priests were
praying for the company. Fabrini told one newspaper, it sort
of makes you goose pimples about America. Despite all the
(20:42):
moral support, the Papa Fabrini business took a hit. By
some accounts, the buried pizzas had an estimated retail value
of sixty thousand dollars. That's a little under half a
million dollars today.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
It was tough for a while, I do know afterwards
things were tough.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
But Ilario decided, with all these people behind him, the
only way to move forward was to refinance everything and
start again. That said, he did engage in the other
great American pursuit, a lawsuit. Ilario filed a one million
dollar suit against United Canning Company and Tolana Pizza Products,
(21:23):
hoping to recoup his losses and put the business on
a steady path forward. After all, Fabrini himself hadn't done
anything wrong, and as it turned out, his mushrooms just
might have been innocent too. Remember those lab mice who
(21:45):
died in the line of duty after being fed a
test slice of Fabrini's pizza. Well, it turned out bachelism
wasn't actually to blame. Subsequent testing showed the mice died
from an unrelated abdominal issue. It's not clear exactly what
caused it, although Fabrini had his own idea about what happened.
(22:05):
He told one report, I think it was indigestion. Maybe
they didn't like my pizza. The mice test result had
come back before the burial, but after all the pizzas
had been rounded up, and because bachelism had been present
in some of the cans of mushrooms, Ilario really had
(22:26):
no choice. He had to act out of an abundance
of caution to throw all of the pizzas away. As
a result, his business suffered.
Speaker 8 (22:35):
The chance of invading the mark, not invading, but to
occupy the market with my product, the frozen pizza Al Mario,
Papa Fabrini.
Speaker 7 (22:43):
It was gone.
Speaker 8 (22:46):
When you have to recall forty four thousand pizza and
replace that, it can really it really hurt you.
Speaker 7 (22:53):
I got to be thanks to the people. They tried
to help me. But bachelism is kind of scary.
Speaker 8 (22:59):
Things, and I can't put a little mark on your name.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
As for that million dollar court case, well, Fabrini one,
but he didn't win a million dollars. He was ultimately
awarded two hundred and eleven thousand dollars after his legal
bills that didn't amount to much. His profits also dropped
in the years after the recall, in part because mushroom
(23:24):
Pizzas continued to prove a hard sell. A couple of
retailers testified during the court case that they could no
longer sell Fabrini mushroom pizzas at all.
Speaker 7 (23:35):
He needed to say, my company had no chance, no more.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
Fabrini battled for several more years to try to save
the company, but by the early nineteen eighties he decided
to sell it. Nine years after the Mushroom Ordeal, as
he once called it, he was done. He eventually began
a new life in sunny San Diego, a town he
had fallen in love with during his military service back
(24:02):
in the nineteen fifties. He'd always vowed to return, and
return he did, working in catering for the film and
TV business. In his spare time, he loved to cook
for his family, including pizzas. His favorite toppings were anchovies, pepperoni,
green peppers, and surprisingly, mushrooms. Ilario Mario Fabrini passed away
(24:26):
in twenty twenty three, but the story of the Great
American Pizza Funeral lives on. It still pops up in headlines,
reddit threads, and YouTube videos from time to time. Why
do we still love talking about this quirky story some
fifty years after it happened.
Speaker 4 (24:43):
Well, because it's pizza.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, we Americans love pizza, Okay, So I think that's
the biggest thing right there.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
Of course, the Great Pizza Funeral was a bit of
a publicity stunt away for Ilario to show he was
doing the right thing and get some good press in
the process, but it also showed off a creative streak.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
My dad is like very artistic, I guess you could say.
So he does have that mine where he'll do that,
I mean, and then a VFW. You know, they have
a poppy contest, poppy display contest, and one year I
think he finished second in the nation, so stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
To win the poppy display contest, Ilario created a model
of a graveyard covered in poppies. Hillary Fabrini also remembers
that every Christmas, back when the family was running those
pizza parlors in Detroit, Ilario would create a special treat
for his customers.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
There was always like a big window by the street,
off the sidewalk, and every Christmas he would build this
massive Nativity scene with people moving, ducks in ponds, swimming,
you know, and it was just magnets underneath, and he
glued magnets to the butt. I mean, he's very clever,
a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
It's easy to imagine how on a cold, snowy night
in Detroit around Christmas time, the lights and colors of
the Nativity display would have drawn customers in almost as
much as the pungent smells of the pizza baking in
the ovens. According to pizza historian Carol Helstovsky, that kind
of creativity is a big part of what's made pizza
(26:27):
so beloved.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
Many people love pizza because really, throughout its history, people
bring incredible amounts of creativity to creating and consuming pizzas.
It's not unusual, right to have pizzas with pineapple on them.
I know that's a controversial point, or pizzas with a
lot of meat on them. And many of the pizzas
(26:52):
that people consume in the United States don't resemble at all, right,
what original pizzas used to look like in Italy. So
you can put all kinds of ingredients, right, the only
thing that sort of constricts pizza is your imagination counts
for I think a great amount of pizza's popularity today.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
You can get banana curry pizza in Sweden, EMU or
kangaroo pizza in Australia, pizza with hagis in Scotland, and
pizza with reindeer meat in Finland.
Speaker 6 (27:23):
If there's anything I've learned is that people really do
bring a lot of creative energy and excitement to making pizza.
It's almost someone once likened it to kind of like
a blank canvas or something like that, where you can
kind of do your own thing, and I think that's
one of the great things about pizza.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Carol also told us that while she was researching her book,
she learned that in Japan, at one point you could
get a stuffed animal delivered alongside your pizza. That's an
innovation that Alario, with his penchant for expanding the business model,
might have appreciated. Alaria spent his golden years in San
Diego with his wife, Olga, enjoying life and volunteering with
(28:06):
the vf DO. When he died, there was plenty of
food at his own funeral, including well, you guessed it.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
We decided to have pizza, and there was a guy
that came and he had a portable gas fired pizza,
and so there was pizza and amongst other things too,
So we did have pizza at his funeral.
Speaker 5 (28:32):
So I really enjoyed that they actually ate pizza at
Alario Mario's funeral.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
That felt right to me. Oh good, Jaren.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
If we're doing a movie version of the pizza funeral,
who are you casting?
Speaker 4 (28:44):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Well, I thought about this, and I thought about Alario
Mario aka Mario Fabrini throughout the edges of his life, right,
because we have like an arc of this man's life.
So I started with young Alario and I thought Jacob
Alordi from Euphoria and Salburn plays him as a young man.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
Right, is he Italian?
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Is it LORDI? An Italian name?
Speaker 1 (29:03):
I want to say yes, because an ins and eye,
But maybe I could be wrong. I didn't look it up,
so I could totally be wrong about that, but I
want to believe you convinced.
Speaker 7 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
And then the young middle aged I think in Ralph Macchio,
because that man does not age, so you have him
played with the young middle age and for older middle
age you go with Stanley Tucci or Roberto Benini, depending
on how Italian you want to get. And then lastly,
for older Alario Mario, right before the funeral, you trot
out Tony Danza in an Oscar worthy role nobody saw coming.
Speaker 5 (29:30):
Yeah, very special characters. I'm going to just give it
to those poor mice. They come on, They're dealing with
an undiagnosed abdominal issue already, they're getting fed probably poisonous pizza,
and they dropped dead. That is a very very tough
way to go.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
I know, at home science experiments for my heartbreaking. Wouldn't
it be crazy if I was craving mushroom pizza after
listening to this episode.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
Yeah, this did not put me off mushroom pizza at all.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
I was going to say, ironically that the place that
has the potato pizza also has a really good mushroom pizza.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
I would just say this, it's so sad that pizza
could kill you because pizza is my favorite food. So
the idea that there could be pizza that can kill
you with botulism nearly broke my heart. But I was
glad to hear that that all got sorted out so Yes,
back to pizza. I can think of it as a
health food forever now.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Today's episode was written by Bess Lovejoy. Best is amazing.
Like I mentioned last time, We've worked together at various
places for over a decade. She wrote our epic three
kea Cheese episode last year wrote a book called rest
in Pieces about famous corpses. That's always good to work
(30:38):
with her. This show is hosted by Danis Schwartz, Zaren Burnett,
and Jason English.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Our producer is Josh Fisher.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington and Josh Fisher.
Additional editing by Mary Doo, mixing and mastering by Peheed Frasier.
Original music by Elise McCoy. Research in fact checking by
Best Lovejoy and Austin Thompson. Show logo by Lucy Kintania.
Our executive producer is Jason English. If you'd like to
(31:08):
email the show, you can reach us at Very Special
Episodes at gmail dot com. Very Special Episodes is a
production of iHeart Podcasts.
Host
Jamie Loftus
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