Music: Personality

After Enrico Caruso died, one of his fiddler accompanists decided to bow it alone. But Manhattan critics had few good words for his well-mannered Beethoven and Bach, and his Los Angeles concert fee was not enough to pay the room rent. Says hawk-nosed Xavier Cugat: "I knew that the American people was polite to an artist but crazy for a personality, so I decided to become a personality."

Personality (in his case, that of a malaprop with a Spanish accent) has paid Cugat well. Last year his records, radio, film and nightclub work grossed...