Big Cheese

Crooner Perry Como, who has made a profession of the easy manner, lifted his eyelids last week long enough to sign the most eye-popping contract in TV history: a $25 million deal with Kraft Foods for 66 one-hour NBC-TV color shows over the next two years, plus another "seven-figure" contract to serve as a Kraft publicity symbol for the next ten years. As producer of his own show, Como will pay expenses-out of the $25 million and keep what is left. As performer, he will go on collecting $1,200,000 yearly from NBC. Said languid Perry: "Frankly, I don't know a thing about the deal. But I've met the president of Kraft [J. C. Loftis], and he seemed a helluva nice guy. Also, I'm quite a cheeseman myself."

The other cheesemen picked Perry precisely because he sees the world as filled with nice guys, and makes audiences feel the same way. The clean-cut Como appeal runs from toddlers to dodderers. It is no surprise that convent TV sets glow for Como, that he was rated America's ideal husband in a poll of 20-year-old girls, or that three years ago he made Saturday night the loneliest night in the week for brilliant but irascible Jackie Gleason. Says a Kraftman: "Out in Arkansas, he's the type they want on a family program. Nobody else could do the trick."

Family Man. Perry, 47, has never wavered from the family feeling that he got back in Canonsburg, Pa., where he was born "lucky," the seventh son of a seventh son. His father was an Italian immigrant mill hand with 13 kids. Perry began early as a barber, at 14 had his own shop, and never intended to leave Canonsburg. Even after crooning for Ted Weems during the 1930s, Perry went home in 1942 intending to open another shop. But booking agents never stopped phoning, and soon he was at Manhattan's Copacabana.

Today, after selling 50 million records (eleven have topped the 1,000,000 mark), Perry the pro is mainly a solid family man. He lives unostentatiously at Sands Point, L.I., has few cronies and owns but two cars, a Cadillac and a Thunderbird. His wife Roselle, whom he married 25 years ago in Canonsburg, does the cooking; he sometimes dries the dishes. His interests are golf (high 70s) and his three children. Chief entertainment: watching TV while sprawled on a couch in his den, and writing congratulatory telegrams to TV comedians.

Organization Man. Perry was not entirely spoofing when he said he knew nothing about last week's enormous deal. He attended none of the negotiations. Perry is an organization man, operating under contract to Roncom Productions, Inc. (named after eldest son Ronnie, 20, a sophomore at Notre Dame). Roncom is wholly owned by the Como family, but sport-shirted Perry is rarely seen in the outfit's Park Avenue offices. His 33 full-time employees (soon to be expanded to 100) run his affairs, which include a TV-packaging subsidiary (Roncom TV Inc.) and music-publishing firm (Roncom Music Co.). Perry's amiable patter is written for him by TV's highly esteemed ($11,500 per show) Goodman Ace, who has three writers working with him.

All Perry invests is careful rehearsing six days a week--and his own ineffable personality. Says greying, Princeton-cut Perry: "My first love is to keep singing as long as I'm accepted. You'll see a little child come up to you, then a 16-year-old, then a woman of 85, and they all throw you the flattering things. I get a kick out of it. Those three-year-olds can give you the damndest double takes."

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