Dorothy Park Benjamin

Dorothy Caruso (6 August 1893 – 16 December 1955) was an American socialite and the wife of the Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso.

Born Dorothy Park Benjamin on 6 August 1893 in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, she was the daughter of Park Benjamin, a lawyer and author, and Ida Crane.

Caruso's wedding party on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City, 20 August 1918. Left to right: Bruno Zirato (Caruso's personal assistant), Dorothy Caruso, Enrico Caruso, Mrs. J. S. Keith. On 20 August 1918 she married Enrico Caruso, with whom she had a daughter, Gloria, born in 1919; Enrico Caruso died in 1921.[1] She married Captain Ernest Augustus Ingram (1892–1954) in London on 14 November 1925.[2][3] They had a daughter, Jacqueline,[4] and divorced in 1927.[5] She then married Charles Adam Holder (1872–1955) in Paris in 1933. They too, were later divorced.[6][7]

Dorothy Caruso died of cancer in Baltimore, Maryland on 16 December 1955, and was buried in Druid Ridge Cemetery, Baltimore County, Maryland.[8]

Caruso wrote two biographies of her husband: Wings Of Song: The Story Of Caruso published in 1928, and Enrico Caruso: His Life and Death published in 1945. The latter book was the basis for the screenplay of the 1951 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer motion picture The Great Caruso, with Mario Lanza in the title rôle. Dorothy Caruso was portrayed in the film by Ann Blyth.[9][10]

Her autobiography, Dorothy Caruso: A Personal History, was published in 1952.

In marrying Caruso, American Dorothy Benjamin, created a tumult in 1918. Her father, Park Benjamin, a wealthy patent lawyer and New York society figure, fiercely opposed the match between his daughter, then 25, to Caruso, who was 45. After the couple eloped, Park Benjamin disowned her. When he died in 1925, he left her $1 from his substantial estate.