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Fabio Lanzoni

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File:FabioComanche.gif
Comanche, a romance novel written by Fabio, featuring a centrefold

Fabio Lanzoni (born March 15 1959 in Milan, Italy), widely known simply as Fabio is a male fashion model, having appeared on the cover of hundreds of romance novels throughout the 1980s and 90s.

Early Life

Raised in Milan, Italy, Fabio admittedly had disciplinary problems as a child. At age seventeen, he was somewhat scrawny, and more interested in motorcycles and sleeping than his schoolwork. Modeling part time for teenage clothing ads, Fabio graduated from high school in 1979 and joined the Italian Army. During his 18 month tenure, Fabio was AWOL for three weeks and subsequently court-martialed. Finishing his military career on schedule, Fabio moved to the United States, hoping to pursue his modeling.

Early Modeling

He became famous as a model for kitschy romance novel covers, the first of which was Hearts Aflame in 1987. After retiring in 1991 as a Ford runway and catalog model, whose anonymous image on the cover of hundreds of romance novels increased their sales significantly, Lanzoni left modeling in New York for the lure of the big screen where he hoped to follow in the tradition of Stallone and Schwarzenegger as a new action adventure actor.

An unemployed Lanzoni moved in with a friend, Richard Franklin, the son of an English investment mogul, in West Hollywood, where he spent a year unsuccessfully obtaining an agent and a career as an actor. Franklin approached a friend, Hollywood manager and entrepreneur Peter F. Paul, to help Lanzoni in Hollywood. Paul determined that based on Lanzoni's lack of acting skills, he should consider exploiting the audience of 28 million romance novel readers, mostly female, who responded in an unprecedented way to Lanzoni's anonymous image. Paul offered that if Lanzoni would identify himslef by his first name, and become a spokesman for women's issues, he would become his manager. Fabio accepted.

Author and Icon

In 1992 Paul embarked on turning the unknown Fabio Lanzoni into Fabio, a pop icon of romance, speaking on behalf of women and their own publishing genre. Paul enlisted his William Morris agent, the discoverer of Tom Clancey, wunderkind Robert Gottlieb, to become Fabio's agent as the first male romance writer to author romance novels under his own name. Gottlieb shared Paul's vision of the potential for Fabio to step off the covers of millions of romance books to become the spokesman for women's issues, and negotiated the largest ever advance to be paid to a first time romance author. Avon books, which had been accustomed to paying Lanzoni $300 for an image that increased sales of its books 20-40%, now was forced to contract with Fabio, the author, with a $100,000 advance on Fabio's first three novels.

Paul arranged a ghostwriter for Pirate, Rogue, and Commanche, which collectively sold more than 2 million copies. Paul used this contract to generate an unprecedented media blitz for Fabio, the unknown model-turned romance author. Beginning with the Wall Street Journal and Forbes Magazine, the tabloids created a media frenzy in 1992 that catapulted Fabio into the public consciousness with more appearances on Entertainment Tonight and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous than any other celebrity. Paul arranged for Fabio to star in the syndicated TV series Acapulco HEAT, record a Barry White-style romance record Fabio After dark, feature in calendars, lead a fragrance campaign, and finally land a commercial role in I Can't Believe its Not Butter! margarine spray. Just fourteen months after being unemployed and unknown in West Hollywood, Fabio was on the cover of People Magazine.

Fabio appeared in the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful a number of times, as a close friend of the character Sally Spectra (Fabio and Sally's portrayer, Darlene Conley, are close friends in real life.)

In 1993, Fabio recorded a compact disc titled Fabio After Dark of him reading his musings, presumably scripted, on various aspects of romance, accompanied by soft, rhythmic music. The disc also featured songs by other artists. While the album was fairly well-received by fans[citation needed], Fabio has since referred to the album as an embarrassment[citation needed].

Falling Out and Current Activities

In 1995, Paul sold his management agreement back to Fabio after a dispute over Fabio's mysogeny and mistreatment of women. After the National Enquirer disclosed an affair between Fabio and the underage Shoshana Lowenstein, aged fifteen, and after Paul confronted Fabio on the Howard Stern show in a shouting match that disclosed Fabio's mistreatment of women, a feud began between the two which concluded with Fabio using the Washington Post to expose Paul's felony convictions for anti-Castro activities in the 1970s.

Fabio is a frequent guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, where he consistently garners laughs with his campy quality. He has also starred in commercials for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, where he was featured in a series of television spots throughout the 1990s, and returned to the role in 2006 to help promote the "new and improved" spread. On June 7, 2006, Fabio helped crown Greg Vaughan as the new I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spokesman, though Fabio has hinted that he will not totally be removed from his role in promoting the spread. He also has appeared in commercials for Wickes Furniture, and was featured in the video for Jill Sobule's 1995 song I Kissed a Girl [1]

Fabio is also known amongst video game enthusiasts for his box cover pose for the NES game Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II in 1988.

On March 30, 1999, Fabio made news after being hit by a low-flying bird while riding the roller coaster Apollo's Chariot at Busch Gardens Williamsburg (now Busch Gardens Europe) in Virginia. The bird, which one park guest claimed to be a goose, slammed into Fabio's face during a 210-foot drop, leaving an inch-long laceration on the model's nose. After the ride ended, he was rushed to Williamsburg Community Hospital where he was promptly treated and released. Fabio did not take legal action against the theme park.

He had long claimed to have been born in 1961, but it was discovered by People magazine in 2001 that he had been fabricating his age and was in fact born in 1959.

During Superbowl XL, a Nationwide Insurance advertising campaign debuted featuring Fabio rowing a gondola supposedly promoting a new Fabio brand shampoo. After several cuts back and forth, he finally aged about 30 to 40 years resembling an older, less appealing version of Fabio. The slogan on-screen reads "Life Comes At You Fast". For the Nationwide ad they hired Jurassic Park's famous makeup artists to transform the icon into an older man. http://www.nationwide.com/nw/about-us/our-ads/index.htm

Books

Trivia

  • In June, 2004, on the day that O.J. captured the world media with his slow speed chase, The National Enquirer exposed the illicit six month relationship that Fabio had with then fifteen year old Shoshana Lowenstein, Jerry Seinfeld's fiancee before Seinfeld met her.
  • In April 2006 he appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien advertising 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter' during one of Conan O'Brien's "talk to a regular audience member" segments.

References

  1. ^ http://www.westword.com/Issues/1995-08-02/music/backbeat5.html
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