GINO'S VOICE MAIL
No hello. No hi. He starts with your name, expressed sharply, as if he's seated across from you and suddenly wants your attention. He's almost always on the speakerphone. And you know it's him. Not because he tells you (although sometimes he does). You know by the voice. There's a guttural quality to it. In fact, it doesn't seem to start in his larynx at all, but somewhere deeper, somewhere farther down. And on the way up from wherever it starts, you can hear other bits of him. Tonsils, for instance. Sometimes you can even hear what he had for breakfast. "Just thought I should tell you. Tony Bennett will talk to you," he says. "I'm pleased about that, because he's shy about talking to people."

Gino Empry says people in Canada call him the father of publicity, which is perfectly understandable. He once handled publicity for seven concurrent Toronto shows. But his greatest career factoid-and he has hundreds-is that he was Tony Bennett's manager for 12 years, starting in the late '70s. "But he won't talk to you this week," he continues. It sounds as if he's inches from the speaker. You can hear him breathing, a raspy sound, again from deep down. A baby hiccup follows. "OK?" The "OK?" that always comes at the end of his messages is sort of sweet. Endearing, really.

GINO'S FISH
It's gold, and heavy-looking. An inch or two long, it dangles on a chain from his neck, resting in the middle of his chest. That would be just above his little pot belly. Ask him about the fish, and he'll finger it, wiggle its scaled body, flip the little floppy tail, and tell you that Lena Horne gave it to him, years ago, when he accompanied her on a North American tour. "She said, 'It's a Chinese sign of male virility. So sorry about the tail.' And I said, 'Don't worry about it, Lena. I'm Italian.'" He tells this story the same way every time, with the same words, in the same delighted tone, as though it happened yesterday. Besides the fish, he's wearing plain pants, belted. A short-sleeved shirt, patterned. A family-crest ring, gold and huge. Another ring, with diamonds that were a present from Tammy Grimes. A Mickey Mouse watch. A jacket he always takes off. Short arms, hairless. (When I asked Jackie Mason about Gino, he said, right in front of him, "He was the publicity chief of this town. By looking at him, I would never have believed it." He paused for effect, scrutinizing his subject. "His hair really threw me off.") And then there's his nose. He's got a Jane Russell story about that: "She said to me, 'Gino, you're the first man I've met whose nose is big enough to fit my cleavage.'"

GINO'S ADDICTIONS
I don't need to tell you where he is, who's around him, what the scene is. Because Gino is everywhere. At the height of his career, when he did publicity for the Royal Alexandra Theatre and the Imperial Room at the Royal York, he would go to five, six parties a night. Hal Linden once observed loudly-this was at Bemelman's, in the middle of the afternoon-"Gino is Toronto!" Rico D'Ovidio, an ex-bodybuilder who used to drive Gino and his clients around town, says, "He can go from diamonds to strip joints. He doesn't have that sense of high and low." From the Four Seasons to Remington's, the gay strip joint on Yonge Street, Gino's been there and had a good time."What some people in those backrooms will do for money," he says, shaking his head, not in moral indignation but amusement. "It's not that I'm interested in gay strip clubs," he continues. "It's just that they're there. When you go out with different people, you go to different places."

He's at all the B-list launches, and some of the A-list, too. He even likes C-list parties. "Come to the cop party." This on another voice mail message. "You'll see another side of me. There'll be winos and judges and real cops and ex-cops and druggies and lawyers. OK?" He also goes to as many theatrical openings as he can. He goes, then falls asleep as soon as the lights go down-and he snores. He doesn't drink much. Never has. He once was in the habit of taking too much Valium, he'll admit. Smoked, too. Packs a day, from a nicotine-reducing cigarette holder. But no more. Now he has only one addiction. OK, two: parties, and weekly B-12 shots for stamina.

GINO'S AGE
I asked him, of course. His age is hotly debated-and fiercely protected. It's his Hollywood affectation: age should be a mystery and, if necessary, a lie. "Forty-nine," he said without a moment's hesitation. I asked his sister Mary Coffey. "Forty-nine," she said conclusively. Affectionately, she added: "He's afraid of getting old. It's his greatest downfall." So I asked him about that, too-why he cares so much about aging. "I just don't want to be deprived of all my faculties," he said shyly.

GINO'S BACK SEAT
A quintessential Gino scene: lava lamps, inky darkness, edgy music, the promise of pleasure in the rattle of a cocktail shaker. He has organized media interviews to promote Playboy's special Girls of Canada edition. He has chosen Ciao Edie on College Street, a little bar that's ingeniously Playboy-esque. Years ago, he was asked to represent a Canadian Bunny named Carrie Leigh, and he must have done a good job, because he's the guy Bunnies call when they need to know the lay of the land, so to speak. To add atmosphere, he has asked some of his friends to come along: a last-minute club of scene-makers and scene-stealers who look as if they've crawled out from between the pages of a novel. A fat man in a sparkly purple suit and larger than normal top hat who handles promotions at the Docks and introduces himself as Kid Rock. Jaymz Bee, a singer who'd be rich if his music were as memorable as his light blue suit. (He has written a song about Gino called "Gino a Go-Go"). Nikki Pezaro, a soulful-eyed actress and, according to her business card, psychic to the stars. She's also Gino's girlfriend of 12 years.

	Years ago, Lena Horne gave him the little gold fish that dangles on a chain from his neck. "She said, 'It's a Chinese sign of male virility. So sorry about the tail'"

When the three Canadian Playmates want dinner, Gino arranges for a white stretch limousine to carry them to Giovanna's, three blocks down the street. He sits in the back seat-the girls giggling and jiggling on either side of him-with an absent-mindedly pleased look on his face, ghostly white in the spotlights of the passing street lamps. The girls might as well be feeding him grapes. He's a Roman emperor, a gladiator of the night. Which reminds me: he says Empry is short for Emperatori, that his family is descended from a line of caesars.

Of course, he's a back seat kind of guy. It was part of his job at the Royal Alex and the Imperial Room to pick up celebrities at the airport when they flew in for a show. He did it for years. "One hour," he says, "and I would become their friend."

"His chief claim to fame was that he was very good at accommodating these people," says Ed Mirvish's younger brother, Bob, who handled booking for the Royal Alex in the early years, "and few of them were easy."

"He had an innate feeling of knowing how to cater to their egos," observes Sylvia Shawn, a retired theatre producer who was once his partner, "but without being phony. He was being their equal at the same time."

A sycophant (that's the job, after all), but not the Ken and Barbie sort of schmoozer-expensive suit, pasted-on smile, cellphone-you see around today. Gino understands what real estate people know: that it's all about location. One hour in the back of a limo is a lifetime of party conversation. The stories may be old, but there are always new people to tell them to. Hear the one about Elaine Stritch? "I won't do your interviews unless I get two bottles of vodka!" she told him. And the other line from Jane Russell? "You really care about me, don't you Gino? I'm not just a pair of boobs!"

Another back seat, another day. Peter O'Toole has sent a car to bring Gino to the Robert S. McLaughlin mansion in Oshawa, where he's shooting a film called Global Heresy. Gino climbs into the Lincoln and plops down with a thud. He's annoyed. Bell Canada keeps sending him two bills he refuses to pay. He swears. Shakes his head. He's going to write them more letters. But it's not just a bad Bell day. In between complaints, there are reminiscences of O'Toole. In the early '80s, the star of Lawrence of Arabia came to Toronto for a production of Uncle Vanya, which the Mirvishes took to Washington. Gino went along, and on opening night he asked Ed Mirvish for $500. "I said, 'Ed, don't ask me what it's for-I just need it. It's important, and it's for Peter.'" O'Toole, who'd had half his stomach removed and couldn't drink alcohol, needed something in order to go onstage. Mirvish forked over the money, and Gino went off to buy some hash. When he tells this story, he's quick to point out that O'Toole has since given up drugs. "He was going through a rough time. I helped him out." Would he ever get women for stars? "Oh, no," he replied calmly. "Everyone knows where to get girls if they want them."

When Gino arrives at the mansion, O'Toole-tall, rakish, impossibly grand-pulls him to his chest like a forgotten favourite teddy bear. "Gino," he says fondly, in his rich, dramatic voice. Gino says O'Toole has been on the phone to him just about every day. The shoot, which is nearing its end, is tiring him. Too much travel. He's asked Gino if he can arrange a helicopter to take him and his co-star Joan Plowright to another set in Hamilton the next day. Gino has been making calls, finding out the insurance requirements, seeing what's available. (In the end, it doesn't work out.) But why is he doing it? O'Toole isn't paying him. Neither is the film company. (Jackie Mason doesn't pay him, either. They met for breakfast when he came to Toronto in the fall. Gino brought him newspaper reviews of various restaurants. They checked out four or five before ending up at Shopsy's, where Mason got the "blackened scrambled eggs" he was looking for.) Gino performs these services for free. What he gets in return are fresh anecdotes, which he feeds to newspaper columnists, who don't pay him, either.

GINO'S PAD
Everywhere: wall-to-wall white carpet. In the bedroom: a large bed covered with a fur throw made from "an Asian animal, like a llama." On the foot of the bed: a back-scratcher, the kind with a little humanlike hand. On the floor: a congregation of teddy bears, all different sizes and eyeball shapes, watching the bed. Leading to the bedroom: a den with a fireplace beside a closed-in balcony of plants. (They're Peggy Lee's fault, he says. She gave him his first plant 15 years ago when he moved in. Ever since, he's had a green thumb.) In the den: shelves of Hollywood videos, shelves of movie star biographies, one shelf with all the books-American and Canadian, about a dozen or so in total-that have mentions of Gino. Next to the den: a hallway wall filled with masks from around the world, Japan, Venice, Tahiti, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Northern Ontario-all places he has travelled. Beside the masks: one of a pair of doors from Jaipur, a Chinese goddess of mercy and tranquility from Shanghai, a piece of rosewood, an amateur painting from some doctor in Vietnam. Next to that: pencil drawings of celebrities-Laurence Olivier, Ella Fitzgerald, Joni Mitchell, Jessica Tandy-that were done for publicity. After that: a colourful, Van Gogh_like portrait of Gino. (There's a more traditional one of him in the dining room.) Down the hall: a guest room and some claims. "Richard Gere stayed here," he says. "Doesn't like hotel rooms. So did Eartha Kitt and William Hutt." Other end: the living room, all white and red and black, a baby grand, a painting by Tony Bennett above the fireplace. Final stop on the tour: "Want to see the orgy room?" The bathroom, carpeted in orangey-pink, with a large Jacuzzi tub on a platform. On the floor: a book, Help for Shy People.

GINO'S DISH
He's standing in his black and white kitchen, cooking pasta and dishing up bits of his life. On the wall in the kitchen alcove is his collection of plates, some cheap, some special edition: Marilyn Monroe next to Wayne Gretzky next to the Wizard of Oz next to Vatican cherubs. Classical music plays on the radio. From the bedroom and den emanate strains of E-Z Rock. (In his car, he listens to CHFI.) For Christmas, he's travelling by himself, as is his custom, to Brazil to see the Iguassa Falls, to Peru to see Machu Picchu, then to Rio de Janeiro. Before he leaves town, he's invited me over for lunch. He peers into the pot, stirs the pasta, pokes at it, tastes the sauce, grumbles wordlessly, shakes in some salt, stirs some more. He's making salad, too, chopping tomatoes, putting them in a wooden bowl, tossing the lettuce and grumbling some more. He wears a piece of psychedelic ammolite on a gold chain (a present from Ella Fitzgerald), green pants and a brown short-sleeved shirt. A little sign on the wall reads peace begins at home.

He wasn't close to his father, he is saying. Knew him only as the man who shared a bedroom with his mother. They ran a grocery and butcher store on the periphery of Little Italy. His mother doted on Gino, who is the eldest of nine children. But that didn't prevent her from wielding her wooden spoon. "Get yourself killed crossing the street, and I'll murder you," she'd yell. She didn't allow Mary, the eldest daughter, to wear lipstick until she was 18, and she smacked her the first time she crossed the street on her own, at 14. Their father was a shy man who never laid a hand on them. "Just wait until your mother gets home," he would say when they misbehaved. Gino was smart in school, and he liked it, which led others to tease him. But his parents urged him on. As the eldest son, he was expected to succeed. To make friends, he saved the weekend entertainment section of The Toronto Star and created a theatrical library in the basement of his father's store. In high school, some of the kids called him "garlic eater," but he persevered. At 14, he was organizing plays for a Catholic youth organization in the basement of Chiesa de Santa Maria dell' Angeli, at the corner of Dufferin and Davenport. He'd figured out what he wanted to do: he wanted to be an actor.

In his final year of high school, he worked as a night auditor for a now defunct trucking firm, Direct Winners Transport. "I found out how the truckers were cheating the management, how they made their margins," he explains proudly. After graduation, he got a full-time position with Smith Transport. "I became the fastest-rising executive in the trucking industry," he says. He was still pursuing acting on the amateur theatre circuit. "I was convinced I was the world's greatest actor. I was wonderful in The Teahouse of the August Moon," a story set in Japan. "The only thing that gave me away was my nose." But working at two jobs wore him out. He was going to bed at three and getting up at seven. A management psychologist advised him to quit trucking and go full time into show business, which he did but without much success. "There's a wall three feet thick between amateur and professional theatre," he laments. He wrote hundreds of letters to radio producers, theatre owners, anyone who might give him a break. Pauline McGibbon, who had been president of the Dominion Drama Festival, befriended him."I used to cry on her lap," he says. Finally, he gave up and took a job with Ontario Hospital Supplies. "I'd cry all the way home. I loved the theatre so much."

He easily recalls the details of this personal narrative: names, places, productions. (Beside Help for Shy People in his bathroom was a book about how to improve your memory.) Especially the turning point. It was 1964. Herbert Whittaker, the Globe and Mail theatre critic, asked him to help with a fundraiser for the ailing Crest Theatre. Ed Mirvish donated a night at the Royal Alex, which he had recently purchased. Gino got to know Mirvish. Mirvish got to know Gino. The Royal Alex needed a new press agent. Gino got the job. His assignment was straightforward. The O'Keefe Centre got all the big shows. The only way the Royal Alex could compete was to bring in big names. At first, the touring companies sent their own press agents. Gino learned the business at their feet, and eventually they decided, as he puts it, "that they didn't need to worry about Toronto."

"At the beginning, we were only running eight weeks a year," says Bob Mirvish, "but before long we were 52 weeks a year. Gino had a lot of stamina."

	Gino asked Ed Mirvish for $500. "I said, 'Ed, don't ask me what it's for - I just need it. It's important; it's for Peter O'Toole.'" Mirvish forked over the money, and Gino went off to buy some hash

Gino Empry, publicist, was on his way. Soon he had his own company, ushering in the golden era of Gino power. He operated out of a warrenlike office on Wood Street, behind Maple Leaf Gardens. Barry Avrich, who handled the advertising account for the Royal Alex in the mid-'80s, remembers going there for meetings. The walls were covered with autographed eight-by-10 head shots of famous people, charity awards and framed clippings of newspaper stories he had orchestrated for his clients. A dry cleaning bag containing his outfit for that night's party. A desk strewn with papers. "He approved all of the creative and media plans for the Royal Alex without showing the Mirvishes anything," says Avrich, who remembers bringing him storyboards for television commercials for Spoils of War with Kate Nelligan.

Ushering me into the red dining room, filled with tchotchkes (a large Chinese vase, a Turkish coffee urn, ornate boxes ), Gino sets a plate of pasta down on a carefully arranged table. He has tomato sauce all over his fingers but doesn't appear to notice. "I hope it's all right," he says, urging me to help myself. He has put out little wooden bowls for salad. The cutlery is gold-plated. There are matching placemats and cotton serviettes. He takes an already opened, unlabelled bottle of white wine from a stand on the table, and with his teeth yanks out the cork. "Wine?" he says, pouring some into my glass.

It's easy asking him questions. He doesn't throw up walls. Which doesn't mean he answers them truthfully. He is, by turns, confessional and evasive, shaping the story he wants told. On the subject of plastic surgery, he admits only to having had his eyes done. "I had a cyst on one eye," he says with the confidence of someone who has rehearsed an answer, "and the doctor said he could see another one starting on the other eye and that while we were at it we might as well take out the bags underneath."

But often, and seemingly unwittingly, he gives out information most people would pay a publicist to keep quiet. His first and only homosexual experience, for instance. He was 15, he says, when an older man "took an interest in me." Gino would wait for him outside beer parlours, being too young to enter. There was a lot of "hugging and touching," he says, but nothing more. "I loved him." It's as if he's saying this to himself, remembering how it felt. His father was so remote. He craved reassurance. "All my life, I looked for a father figure." He takes a bite of pasta. "Perhaps that's why I liked truck drivers, and policemen," he shrugs, bemused by his own self-analysis.

And then he's telling me about his love affairs with women. When he was working at the trucking company, trying to break into the theatre, he lived on Toronto Island. "The happiest time of my life," he recalls. He fell in love with a beautiful woman named Georgie (oddly, he can't remember her surname), who was half native, half Portuguese. Her hair was dark, her face heart-shaped. "She worshipped the ground I walked on," he sighs. "Why, I don't know." They had two children, a boy and a girl. He arranged for the adoptions. Once Georgie managed to visit the little girl and brought back a picture to show him. "My hand flung out and hit her," he says. "The little thing looked like me, poor thing. If you attached any memories…" he trails off. But the affair didn't last. A man showed up at the house one day asking for Georgie. "She's at the store," replied Gino. "Would you like to wait?" The man said, "No, I'll be back. Tell her that her husband is looking for her, and her children want her home." Gino was stunned. Georgie never returned. Perhaps her husband ran into her on the street. "I don't know," he says. "I blanked out [memories] after that. I have no memory of packing her bags or anything." And there was another woman. They almost got married. "Always beautiful," he smiles. "Beautiful women seem to like me."

He offers a close-lipped smile. "I'm the old adage," he says "To know me is to love me."

GINO'S FALL
One day, I asked him if he thought he was eccentric, and he responded with a mixture of indignation and wounded pride. "I know when I look in the mirror that I'm not Tom Cruise," he sniffed. "But eccentric? I'm a practising individualist." He has no idea that what he does is in any way odd or off-putting, says Joyce Davidson. Sylvia Shawn thinks of him as Winnie-the-Pooh, a dear old bear who needs a Christopher Robin. Of course, the theatre world is full of characters, so for a long time Gino fit right in.

It caught up with him first at the Imperial Room, the Royal York's 400-seat '20s-style dining and dancing salon. In 1969, Louis Jannetta, its legendary maitre d', recommended Gino as someone who could help the Imperial Room keep up with changing times (Gino insists that it was Chuck Burton, then the hotel's general manager, who made him "an offer I couldn't refuse.") Gino's choice of entertainers included not only the expected-Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Vic Damone, Peggy Lee, Brenda Lee, Guy Lombardo-but the unexpected. He brought in a Las Vegas revue. "The Imperial Room was always first class," says Jannetta passionately. "Do you think [female impersonator] Craig Russell is first class?"

But it wasn't just Gino's taste in entertainment that annoyed Jannetta; he also refused to observe the Imperial Room's formality. "Gino didn't give a shit if you didn't have a jacket," says Rico D'Ovidio. Louis thought a jacket was everything." And then there were Gino's "gypsy nights," when he dropped the cover charge for anyone in the entertainment business, Jannetta didn't approve of the crowd. "We'd walk in," says D'Ovidio, "and Gino would be standing up on a couch, waving his arms, saying, 'Hi, I'm here.' Jannetta would be freaking." It got so tense that Gino wouldn't enter the room without one of his policeman friends. "He [Jannetta] was harassing me," Gino says, "pushing me around with his big belly." But for Jannetta, who'd been there for over 40 years, the ultimate slap in the face was the sight of Gino assuming public proprietorship. "Gino was in publicity," huffs Jannetta, "so he promoted the idea that he was the Imperial Room."

Then things turned sour at the Royal Alex. David Mirvish, Ed's only child, was taking over the family's theatre business. His decision to mount Les Misérables signalled a new era. "Rather than bringing in touring shows, David wanted to start producing here," explains John Karastamatis, the director of communications for Mirvish Productions. "He convinced Cameron Mackintosh to produce and cast in Toronto, which broke the mould." Richard J. Alexander, a flamboyant man who worked with Mackintosh, didn't like the way Gino ran the publicity. "He turned on me" is the way Gino puts it. "He sent someone mainly to watch me. No matter what I did, I couldn't please Alexander. One time in the lobby, I got so annoyed I told him to fuck off. Some bystanders heard. I was told that if it happened again I'd be thrown out. Eventually, David phoned and said, 'You've become a problem to us.'"

He relays this information dispassionately, even though he admits "it was the worst moment in my life. I've thought it over a thousand times."

GINO'S AGE (REVISITED)
Tony Bennett is on the phone from New York. I explain why I want to talk to him, that a story about Gino has to be a story, in part, about how he managed Bennett's career. Gino has written about it at length in a memoir he's working on. In Gino's mind, the relationship began with a phone call in the late '70s. Bennett had fallen in with a crowd he couldn't trust. He wanted Gino to handle his career-to do everything an agent, manager and publicist would do. Bennett had worked with him at the Imperial Room and the Royal Alex. Bennett said to him, "You have a face that can't lie."

More than once, he's told me about the gigs he got Bennett, the several tours he did with him across North America, the ritual he had of going backstage with him just before a performance, the special requests Bennett made for hotel rooms and food. Sylvia Shawn had told me that when Gino was working for Bennett they got phone calls from him every day. That Gino often scouted venues before committing Bennett to a booking. I tell Gino that Bennett said he introduced him to good people and helped him find a good agent. "See?" he says, brightening up. "That's managing."

	Gino managed Tony Bennett for 12 years

The day before he left for his Christmas holiday, he asked me to meet him at his condominium. "I have to talk to you," he said. "Not on the phone. And I have something I want to show you." I wait in the lobby. He walks in, laden with files. His office, he had told me, was 12 floors below his condo, although he never showed it to me, even when I asked.

In the file folders, he has letters recommending his appointment to the Order of Canada in 1995. Tony Bennett, Jack Lemmon, Peggy Lee, Paul Anka, Graham Greene-all wrote letters commending Gino for his contribution to the cultural life of Toronto. Then he launches into a long recitation of his charitable activities, describing the many certificates of appreciation he's received for his good works. "I know all this," I tell him. I had spoken to Diane Dupuy, the founder of Famous People Players. "He has a very soft heart," she said. "Sometimes people think he's gruff, but deep down he's got heart." She said he helped the company free of charge for 20 years. Nikki Pezaro had also spoken of his generosity. He often goes to out-of-the-way theatrical events and performances by new musical groups or singers, she said in her dreamy voice, because he wants to be supportive.

In fact, I was surprised he hadn't spent more time promoting his philanthropy. Was he worried it would make him seem conventional? That it would somehow age him? Had he offered me stories about his youth, about the homosexual encounter and Georgie, because he knew how well they'd play in print? Like items in a gossip column? He loves to talk about his police connections but never explains why he has them. He once showed up at a party at Planet Hollywood with a two-car police escort. Is it the underworldliness of it all that appeals to him? That it makes him seem mysterious? The truth is much less glamorous. The police do things for Gino because Gino supports their charities. "He's a genuine guy," said Ed Blaha, a paralegal and self-described "former copper." "If you're a police officer and you see someone who's been good to the community, you give him slack."

But Gino isn't going to rest until he's satisfied I understand the true nature of his relationship with Bennett. From the lobby, he takes me down to a storage space in the basement. Behind the parking spot for his car-a silver 1999 Buick with "G Empry" vanity plates and a Dalmatian and a tiger on the dashboard-he stands at a plain grey door, fiddling with a key. We step into a dusty, cold space, about 12 by 10 feet, filled with overstuffed filing drawers, worn cardboard boxes, old posters, papers. "Here," he says indignantly, picking up a warped record album cover. "I did this for Bennett." He points to a few file drawers and says they're full of correspondence about Bennett's career. But there's nothing of note here. Mostly it looks like junk. Then he shows me a shelf stacked with framed photographs of celebrities. I can't help thinking, why aren't they in his office?

GINO'S CURTAIN
There won't be one. Like the Eartha Kitts and Tony Bennetts, who perform as long as they can, Gino is determined, defiant, indefatigable. The star of his own show. A man of many parts. He'll reveal some, hide others, create new ones as the drama shifts. " I always think there's something more for me," he said wistfully one day when I asked about the future. His memoirs, for instance. Maybe they'll be a hit, he said, ever the optimist. As the deadline for this story draws near, he phones again. "I've decided not to worry about the article," he says cheerfully. "I'm just going to hope for the best." The show must go on. The show will go on, no matter what.