Arturo Giuseppe Nazzari was born in Brescia, Italy on the 3rd November 1897. At the time of his arrest on the 11th June 1940, Arturo worked as a head waiter at the Savoy and lived with his wife Dorina at 11 Cobourg Mansions, Handel Street, London.
In Tatura Camp, Arturo was in charge of hygiene and cleaning. His wife’s nephew Emilio Previdi was a UK Italian internee in camp with him.
Arturo was classified as ‘infirm’ which meant he was not fit for service with the Civil Aliens Corps. He was however released to Melbourne on the 31st August 1944 for employment at the Menzies Hotel, William Street where six other UK Italian internees were employed.
Arturo aka Joseph became well known in Melbourne and remained in Australia. In 1947, the following article was written about Joseph: Man of Many Lands...
Joseph is headwaiter at the Florentino, which is an Italian restaurant near the top of Bourke Street,
He is an inscrutable middle-aged Italian who became an Australian last October.
His surname is Nazzari, but that is unimportant. He is Joseph of the Florentino, as he was Joseph of Madame Re and the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo, and Joseph at the Savoy in London and of Ciro’s in Paris, and the Galle Face in Colombo.
Joseph was one of the Italians rounded up in London when Italy went into the war. He was one of the Italians shipped for internment in Canada in the Northern [Arandora] Star which was torpedoed in the Atlantic.
A Canadian destroyer picked up survivors after they had been nine hours in the freezing Atlantic. He was taken back to London [Liverpool] and interned for nearly five years at Tatura.
He was Joseph the director of sanitary details in the Tatura camp where he was paid 1/ a day and lived very pleasantly, with some of the famous cooks from London’s leading hotels turning Australian rations and a few private purchases into delicacies.
Joseph never wants to live anywhere but Australia now. His wife, a beautiful Italian woman whom he married in London, and of who he is very proud, recently arrived here. They have a flat in Albert Road, South Melbourne. Joseph hires a horse and rides it on Sundays, a thing he has always wanted to do since he wangled a job as batman for an Italian general in the first war, so he could sometimes ride the general’s horse.
And now Joseph, who attended the Duke of Windsor and the King and the Aga Khan and Indian potentates and Russian princes and millionaire Americans, wants for nothing more than his South Melbourne flat, his Sunday ride, and his concerns on subjects such as the lack of cream for the sauces in a Bourke Street café.
One thing more, perhaps, he wants. That is his younger brother, Umberto, the cocktail expert-extraordinary at the Galle Face. He hopes soon to have him in Melbourne, mixing his prescriptions where they will be appreciated.
Joseph stands at the top of the single flight of stairs, which leads into the Florentino with an eye of intense scrutiny. There is a smile for a favourite patron, and the moderate bow will deepen into gallantry if the lady is charming. But mostly Joseph operates with almost an un-Italian dourness, the dourness of the professional man who knows his job, and expects you to put yourself in his hands.
Joseph perhaps makes one little concession to Australian informality, or perhaps it is to the atmosphere of the Florentino. His waiters wear the conventional stiff shirt and black tie and short black mess jacket, with white aprons to their shoes.
But Joseph wears striped trousers and black sac coat at lunch, and a dinner jacket at dinner, rather than tails and white tie.
Joseph was one of the five sons of an innkeeper in Milan, in Italy.
At 13 he left home and went to Cannes where he worked in a hotel as a boy carrying the dishes from the kitchen to the waiters.
In those days he spoke only Italian. But the people of Cannes speak a French dialect which is allied to the Italian and Joseph was soon able to pick it up and then pure French. At Cannes he first waited on the royalty of Europe and learnt discretion.
Nobody, except possibly head-waiters in whatever secret places they meet, had heard Joseph discussing the idiosyncrasies of his customers or even what they prefer to eat. The nearest he will come to it is an admission that the Duke of Windsor liked pressed beef as well as anything at the Savoy. And he may occasionally recall the Russian princeling of 14, at Cannes, who went to meals with three brothers, a sister, and two nurses. The boy would order the food for the whole party, and always pay cash in English sovereigns.
From Cannes Joseph went to the hotel at Plombieres les Bains, a beautiful little village below the hills in western France. For the first war he went back to Italy and joined the 5th Artillery Regiment, which fought up near the Austrian border. At first he worked in the officers’ mess. Then he got the job with the general.
After the war he waited at Ciro’s famous restaurant in Paris for three years; then a series of switches between the Savoy in London, for the London season and Monte Carlo for the season there.
The money was good, but he spent a lot in between-season holidays in Paris.
Joseph speaks nostalgically of Madame Re in Monte Carlo. It was a small restaurant, where nothing was cooked beforehand. Everything was displayed raw on a buffet. Pick your filet mignon, or whatever it was, some potatoes, how many peas you cared to take and promenade until the meal was ready.
Joseph says the Sporting club in Monte Carlo lost 250,000 francs a year on its restaurant in those days. It served dinner at 45 francs (250 to £1 English) as an attraction to its gambling tables.
He occasionally bet and lost 30 francs himself. He never won. He is not a gambling man.
Twenty-one years ago he married. Then he settled down at the Savoy, where after three years as a waiter he became head waiter and assistant to the manager. There were 70 cooks in the Savoy kitchen. The only break from the Savoy until internment was eight months leave to act as manager of Colombo’s Galle Face, while the manager, his brother (not the cocktail expert, another one) took a holiday.
The Italians in London had expected Italy to declare war, and to be interned.
Joseph says the police came to his house and were very nice. They apologised and explained what their instructions were, and asked him to take his time in packing and arranging his affairs.
Mrs Joseph stayed in London through the war. She sent out money to supplement the Tatura 1/.
Joseph is a simple man. He admits no wish for the famous places of the world, but only for an Australian life with his wife and for the end of shortages so that some extensions can be made to the Florentino kitchen and a bigger menu can be served with the sauces he wants.
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