MUSSOLINI'S BARBER

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 289, 7 December 1933, Page 20

MUSSOLINI'S BARBER

NEVER TELLS STORIES

PRAISED FOR HIS RARITY.

A CHEVALIER OF ITALY.

Premier Benito Mussolini is a great man to his barber. And this ten years from the morning when a police officer entered Domenico Rossi's shop in the Via Rasella and said to him, "Come shave II Duce."

Domenico,- now thirty-nine years old and a chevalier of the Crown of Italy, has since cut the Duce's hair and shaved him three* or four times a week. On other occasions Mussolini uses a safety razor. Within the decade Mussolini has become bald, but Domenico says: "He doesn't worry about it and he never asked for a tonic."

It was in 1923, Domenico relates, that a police sergeant began coming to his shop. The sergeant talked politics while being shaved and sounded out Domenico on Fascism. Then one day the sergeant escorted him to the nearby Tittoui palace. "You can imagine how excited I got," Domenico said with a smile, his eyes

shining. But his hand must not have shaken, because the Premier called for him again and again. Now Domenico goes out to the Villa Torlonia, Mussolini's present home, to shave the Fascist chieftain. Sometimes a militiaman rushes him out there in a sidecar motor cycle.

"I am happy to have been trusted this way," he said. "I regard it as the greatest satisfaction of my life." While Mussolini is in the barber's chair, Domenico confided, he never speaks, but reads newspapers. Once he remarked to Domenico:

"You are a rare barber, because you never tell me stories, as most of your colleagues do when shaving their clients."

The Premier does not want Domenico to waste any time on this operation, and the barber says that when II Duce shaves himself he does not take time enough to lather his face sufficiently and, therefore, irritates the skin.

Domenico has given up his annual vacations. He takes a few days off here and there when II Duce goes out of Rome.

Domenico's shop contains two large photographs. One shows Muesolini in full dress, smiling pleasantly. Domenico said:

"I am glad to have this photograph, because II Duce seldom smiles."

The other photograph is of the Duke of Bergamo, relative of King Victor Emmanuel, another of Domenico's famous clients.