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Rudolph Valentino

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Rudolph Valentino

Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was an Italian actor. Nicknamed "The Great Lover", he was the first true male movie sex symbol of the silent era.

Childhood and youth

He was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antoguolla in Castellaneta, Apulia, Italy to a middle-class family in the same year as the invention of cinema. His mother, Marie Berthe Gabrielle Barbin, was French and his father, Giovanni Antonio Giuseppe Fidele Guglielmi, was Italian. He had an older brother, Alberto, and a younger sister, Maria.

Education

Although imaginative and well read, he was an indifferent student, balking at classroom routine and defying his teachers. His troubled behaviour may have been caused in part by the death of his father when Valentino was eleven. At fifteen he tried to enroll in a military academy, but was not accepted because he did not meet the physical requirements, his chest circumference was one inch too small. Eventually he studied and qualified in Agricultural Science at Nervi in Genoa. He spent some time in Paris, where he learned dancing, and then returned to Italy, where his perceived lack of ambition angered his family.

New York

In 1913 he left for the United States, following the advice of Domenico Savino, a friend of his. He landed in New York City on Christmas Day, 1913. After using up a small legacy he endured a spell of poverty during which he supported himself with odd jobs such as bussing and gardening. Eventually he found work as a taxi dancer and instructor, and later as an exhibition dancer. He gained attention for his rendition of the Argentine tango.

Hollywood and first marriage

Valentino joined an operetta company that traveled to Utah and disbanded there. From there he traveled to San Francisco, where he met the actor Norman Kerry, who convinced him to try a career in cinema, still in the silent movie era. After small parts in a dozen films, in 1919 he married, for a few years, Jean Acker, a part Cherokee film starlet who was a lesbian. The marriage was rumored to have never been consummated: Acker locked Valentino out of their hotel room on their wedding night, and despite Valentino's efforts at a reconciliation the two separated shortly afterwards. They were divorced in 1922.

The Sheik

Valentino met screenwriter June Mathis who had been impressed by his role as a "cabaret parasite" in The Eyes of Youth. She suggested to the director Rex Ingram that he be cast as a male lead in his next film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The film, released in 1921, was a commercial and critical success, made Valentino a star and led to his iconic role in The Sheik

Second marriage

On May 13, 1922, in Mexicali, Mexico, Valentino married costume designer and art director Natacha Rambova. This resulted in him being jailed for bigamy, since his divorce from Acker was not finalized. California law at the time required that divorcing couples wait a full year after a divorce before remarrying. Valentino and Rambova remarried a year later.

Blood and Sand, released in 1922, and co-starring Lila Lee and the popular silent screen vamp Nita Naldi, further established Valentino as the leading male star of the time. However, in 1923 a dispute with Paramount Pictures resulted in an injunction which prohibited Valentino from making films with other producers. To ensure that his name remained in the public eye, Valentino, following the suggestion of his manager George Ullman, embarked on a national dance tour, sponsored by a cosmetics company, Mineralava, with Rambova, a former ballerina, as his partner. During this time he also traveled to Europe and had a memorable visit to his native town. Back in the United States, he was criticized by his fans for his newly cultivated beard and was forced to shave it off.

File:Hull Sheik.jpg
Valentino in a scene from 'The Son of the Sheik'.

United Artists

In 1925, Valentino was able to negotiate a new contract with United Artists which included the stipulation that his wife not be allowed on any of his movie sets. (It was perceived that her presence had delayed earlier productions such as Monsieur Beaucaire). He separated from Rambova shortly afterwards. After his separation, Valentino had an affair with the Polish actress, Pola Negri. During this time he made two of his most critically acclaimed and successful films, The Eagle, based on a story by Alexander Pushkin) and The Son of the Sheik, a sequel to The Sheik, both co-starring the popular Hungarian-born actress, Vilma Banky (with whom he had a brief relationship prior to his involvement with Negri).

Chicago Tribune

In July of 1926, Valentino was attacked in an anonymous editorial published by The Chicago Tribune in which the author, incensed by a powder dispenser he had seen in a public washroom, blamed him for the supposed feminization of the American man. Furious, Valentino responded with a challenge to a boxing match that went unanswered. Shortly afterwards, Valentino met for dinner with the famed journalist H.L. Mencken for advice on how best to deal with the public slur. Mencken later professed that he found Valentino to be likable and gentlemanly and wrote sympathetically of him in an article published in Photoplay some months after Valentino's death.

Death

On August 23, 1926 he collapsed in his apartment at the Hotel Ambassador in New York City with appendicitis. On August 23, 1926, he died of septicemia at Polyclinic Hospital in New York City at the age of 31. He had collapsed on a Manhattan sidewalk, a short time after his double operation for acute appendicitis and gastric ulcers.

Funeral

An estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of New York to pay their respects at his funeral, handled by the Frank Campbell Funeral Home. The event was a drama itself: windows were smashed as fans tried to get in, Campbell's hired four actors to impersonate a Fascist honor guard, which they claimed to have been sent by Benito Mussolini, but which was a publicity stunt.

His funeral Mass in New York was celebrated at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church, often called "The Actor's Chapel," as it is located on West 49th Street in the Broadway theater district and has a long association with show business figures. Actress Pola Negri collapsed in hysterics while hovering over the coffin.

After the body was taken by train across the country, a second funeral was held on the West Coast, at the Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd, and his remains were interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.

Trivia

  • An animal lover and owner of several dogs and horses, Valentino's Irish Wolfhound was named Centaur Pendragon, and his Great Dane was named Kabar.
  • The American author John Dos Passos describes Valentino's youth, career, death and funeral in a chapter called "The Adagio Dancer" in his novel The Big Money.
  • Valentino's name become associated with a scandal following Blanca de Saulles' shooting of her husband Jack de Saulles who was having an on again, off again affair de coeur with Joan Sawyer, Valentino's dancing partner. Valentino was not in any way involved with the shooting itself, but earlier, when Blanca de Saulles was seeking a divorce from her husband, Valentino had agreed to provide proof in court that Joan Sawyer was having an adulterous relationship with Jack de Saulles. Valentino may have been in love with Blanca de Saulles, but there is no evidence that she returned his feelings or that they ever had a relationship. It is believed by some that in retaliation Jacques de Saulles arranged for Valentino to be arrested at a brothel a few blocks from his accommodations. Although Blanca de Saulles was eventually acquitted, Valentino was embarrassed by the publicity surrounding the case (it was even made into a movie called Woman and the Law) and left New York City. Some years later when Valentino returned to New York he tried to contact Blanca de Saulles, but she refused to see or communicate with him.
  • Valentino's reputation still stands as a legendary sex symbol of androgynous appeal.
  • To this day many fans, some dressed as sheiks, flappers or women in black, make an annual pilgrimage on the day of Valentino's death to his crypt at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
  • Valentino was paired with actress Nita Naldi in three films: 1922's Blood and Sand, 1924's A Sainted Devil, and 1925's Cobra.
  • Valentino's nephew Jean Valentino (1914-1996), of whom he was very fond, grew up to become a successful Hollywood sound engineer, working on both movies and television programs such as The Twilight Zone, Petticoat Junction and Quincy. He won an Emmy in 1971.
  • Sheik brand condoms, introduced onto the market in the 1930's, were named after Valentino's most famous role and for years featured Valentino's silhouette on the packaging.
  • In 2004 Beyond the Rocks a Valentino film co-starring Gloria Swanson and believed to have been lost, was rediscovered in a private collection in the Netherlands. It was screened for the first time in over 80 years at the Cannes film festival in May 2005.
  • For several years, on the anniversary of his death, a woman dressed in black was seen laying flowers on his grave. Some believe that she was Pola Negri or Ditra Flamé (who claimed Valentino had boarded with her family during his early days in New York). Her identity, however, has never been firmly established.
  • Famed actor Rikki Lee Travolta of the well known entertainment family has gone on record stating son Valentino Truth Travolta was named after legendary icon Rudolph Valentino.

Rumours

  • Algonquin Round Table writer Robert Benchley was said to have wound up with Valentino's top hat as he assisted the stricken Valentino into an ambulance.
  • Court documents are said to exist from his time in New York City indicating that he was held as a material witness in the aftermath of a raid on a brothel but was released afterwards and never charged with any crime.
  • There is no evidence that he was ever a "petty thief" nor a gigolo as is sometimes claimed by some reference works.
  • There were rumors that he had died from: aluminium poisoning after eating food prepared in aluminum cookware, illegal medicine taken to treat his receding hairline, or a gunshot wound to the stomach inflicted by a jealous husband.
  • There was an urban legend that at the funeral home they displayed a wax effigy of Valentino rather than the actual body itself to protect it from frenzied mourners.
  • Over the years several women have claimed to have borne children fathered by Valentino. The best known of these women is Marion Benda, a Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl who may have been dating Valentino shortly before his death. None of these claims have ever been verified.
  • His studio continued to receive fan mail well into the 1930s, and, presaging similar rumors about the American rock and roll legend Elvis Presley, there was even talk that Valentino was not dead at all but had faked his demise to escape the pressures of stardom.
  • He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and, in 1994, he was honored with his image on a United States postage stamp designed by the noted caricaturist of more than 70 years, Al Hirschfeld.

Filmography

Valentino was also supposed to have acted, at the beginning of his career, in the following films:

  • The Battle of the Sexes (1914)
  • My Official Wife (1914)
  • Seventeen (1916)
  • The Foolish Virgin (1914)

Other names by which he was known:

  • Rudolph DeValentino
  • M. De Valentina
  • M. Rodolfo De Valentina
  • M. Rodolpho De Valentina
  • R. De Valentina
  • Rodolfo di Valentina
  • Rudolpho De Valentina
  • Rudolpho di Valentina
  • Rudolpho Valentina
  • Rodolph Valentine
  • Rudolpho De Valentine
  • Rudolph Valentine
  • Rodolfo di Valentini
  • Rodolph Valentino
  • Rudi Valentino
  • Rudolfo Valentino
  • Rudolf Valentino
  • Rudolph Volantino

Further reading

  • Emily Leider (2003), Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino, ISBN 0374282390

Selected coverage in the New York Times

  • New York Times; July 21, 1926. Rudolph Valentino arrived here yesterday from Chicago indignant at an editorial which appeared in The Chicago Tribune Sunday, entitled "Pink Powder Puffs," and vowing to return there next Monday or Tuesday to whip the man who wrote it.
  • New York Times; August 16, 1926. Rudolph Valentino, noted screen star, collapsed suddenly yesterday in his apartment at the Hotel Ambassador. Several hours later he underwent operations for a gastric ulcer and appendicitis.
  • New York Times; August 21, 1926. Rudolph Valentino, screen star, who is recovering at the Polyclinic Hospital from operations for appendicitis and gastric ulcer, felt so much better yesterday that he asked to be taken to his hotel. His request was promptly vetoed by the attending physicians, who told the patient that he would not be allowed to sit up in bed for several days.
  • New York Times; August 22, 1926. Rudolph Valentino, motion picture actor, who underwent a double operation for acute appendicitis and gastric ulcers at the Polyclinic Hospital last Sunday, took a turn for the worse yesterday. His surgeons found that he had developed pleurisy in the left chest. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon the patient's temperature rose to 104.2.
  • New York Times; August 23, 1926. The condition of Rudolph Valentino, motion picture actor, grew more critical yesterday, and the three doctors who have been attending him at the Polyclinic Hospital since he underwent a double operation for acute appendicitis and gastric ulcers called in a fourth.
  • New York Times; August 24, 1926. Rudolph Valentino, motion picture actor, died at 12:10, yesterday afternoon, at the Polyclinic Hospital where he had undergone a double operation for acute appendicitis and gastric ulcers on Aug. 15. He was thirty-one. His youthfulness and rugged constitution aided him in making a valiant fight even after his five doctors had given up hope.
  • New York Times; August 27, 1926. The public was barred yesterday from the bier of Rudolph Valentine, motion picture actor, because of the irreverence of the thousands who had filed past the coffin in the Campbell Funeral Church, Broadway and Sixty-sixth Street, on Tuesday and Wednesday.
  • New York Times; September 4, 1926. A letter from Dr. Harold E. Meeker, the surgeon who operated on and attended Rudolph Valentino during the illness preceding his death, to S. George Ullman, the dead actor's friend and manager, describing in technical detail the steps of diagnosis, operation and treatment, was made public last night by Dr. Sterling C. Wyman of 556 Crown Street, Brooklyn, Pola Negri's physician.
  • New York Times; September 9, 1926. Los Angeles, California; September 8, 1926. Rudolph Valentino's will, disposing of property which may amount to more than $1,000,000, became public tonight, in advance of being offered for probate here tomorrow. The instrument provided a great surprise, evento lifetime confidants of the dead moving picture star, in that it shared the actor's estate in equal thirds among his brother, Alberto Guglielmi of Rome, who is ...
  • New York Times; September 10, 1926. Los Angeles, California; September 9, 1926. A contest over the "surprise" will of Rudolph Valentino was being considered tonight, it was admitted by Milton Cohen, Los Angeles attorney, who declared that he had been retained to represent Alberto and Maria Guglielmi, brother and sister of the screen star.
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