My Book

Louis Jannetta ‘s story is how a young Italian immigrant overcomes a poverty-stricken childhood to rub shoulders with Kings, Prime Ministers, Sports Celebrities and Movie Stars. As a youngster in Italy, life was hard but happy with fond memories of feeding the family animals, being an alter boy, playing in the sun, stomping grapes and riding donkeys bareback. When he was one his Father left for Canada and six year’s later in July of 1935 Louie’s Mother told him and his sister to start packing, they were going to join their Father in Toronto where the streets were lined with oranges and they could eat as many as they wanted. After a grueling trip across the ocean their ship landed at Ellis Island.
There Louie’s head was shaved and everyone dusted for lice, then on to Toronto. The Father he didn’t remember offered Louie a bite of a fruit he’d never eaten before, a banana. He spat it out and felt the sting of hard smack across his face. It was the middle of the depression and this set the tone of the relationship with his father for the rest of his life. Louie went to a tough school in a tough neighborhood where getting beat up was a daily occurrence.

With nickels and dimes saved from selling fruit and doing deliveries he’d spend every minute he could in movie theatres where he dreamt about living a different life through the stars of the big screen. After Grade 8 his parents said it was time to help support the family full time. Lying about his age on June 23rd, 1942 at 14 yrs. old Louie began his climb to the top of his now infamous career of almost 50 years, at the legendary Royal York Hotel.
What a coincidence that most of his life would be spent in the first building he’d seen when he walked out of Union Station at seven years old.  From Marlene Dietrich and Lena Horne to Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett, Louie brings to life true stories about a lost era of glamour and elegance, laced with scandal and heartache in his must-read book” King of the Maitre d’s.