Too Big

Few U.S. war heroes have made more money or become better known than warm and selfless Major Victor Joppolo, central character of Novelist John Hersey's best-selling A Bell for Adano. Few are now more obscure than ex-Lieut. Colonel Frank E. Toscani, the prototype of Joppolo in real life.

After the stage adaption of Adano (by Playwright Paul Osborn) opened in New York, Lieut. Colonel Toscani flew home from Italy on leave. He was entertained by Actor Fredric March (the stage Joppolo), Author Hersey, and Mayor LaGuardia. Solemnly he began to sign letters "Frank (Major Joppolo) Toscani."

Then Manhattan-born Frank Toscani, a grade-three clerk in New York City's Department of Sanitation before he went off to war, began to find embarrassed frustration as well as wonder in his shadow. Both stage & screen showed Joppolo carrying on--though not quite carried away by--a love affair. Joppolo also countermanded a stupid order by a general, and got transferred for it. Worst of all, Frank Toscani felt that the shadow was not sharing his huge earnings with anybody but Writer Hersey, Playwright Osborn, Producer Leland Hayward and the Playwrights Producing Co., Inc., and Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp.

Last week, Civilian Frank Toscani, now sales manager for a Bronx moving and warehousing firm, decided (after two years) to try to collect from his dominating shadow. He filed suit for $225,000 against Hersey (now a correspondent in China for the New Yorker and LIFE) and the others who had exploited the Adano story, charged defamation of character, and declared that "the defendants . . . were unjustly enriched."

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