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| You have to give it to a man who's prettier than his dance partner |
With the advent of cinema in the late 1910’s,
America obtained its first taste of modern mass culture as people from all
social classes and regions suddenly had access to a mutual art form. As a
result, fashions, slang, and standards of beauty became the fabrics that were
now able to tie together the diverse threads of American culture. One of the
most scintillating of these cultural changes was the arrival of the concept of
national sex symbols. While today celebrities are expected to possess a
standard form of sex appeal, during the 1920’s filmgoers were enthralled by the
arrival of one actor who possessed a combination of matinee idol good looks
and star-powered charisma; Rudolph Valentino. In his brief life and career,
Valentino went from an unknown taxi dancer to a major Hollywood player and
international icon.
Valentino was born Rudolfo Alonso Rafaello Pierre
Filibert Gugliemi di Valentina D’Antonguolla in Castellanata Italy on May 6,
1895 as the second child of Italian veterinarian Giovanni D’Antonguolla and his
French-born wife Marie. A poor student, Valentino earned a degree in
agricultural studies rather than pursue an academic degree before traveling to
Paris, only to find himself unable to obtain work. After a year of working
various odd jobs, he departed Paris for New York and emigrated to the United
States. He found similar difficulty finding work in the U. S. and ultimately turned to a
job working as a taxi dancer in a New York nightclub which specialized
in providing their wealthy clientele with dance partners who were ‘exotic’ as
well as talented.
During this time, he befriended Chilean heiress
Blanca de Saulles and provided her with moral support when she discovered that
her husband, prominent businessman John de Saulles was engaged in several affairs
throughout their marriage. This friendship led many to speculate that Blanca
was engaged in an affair of her own with Valentino, a suspicion that quickly
gained popularity when Valentino testified against John de Saulles during the
couple’s divorce. During the trial, Valentino revealed that not only was de Saulles
pursuing affairs with several women, but that one of those women was actually
Valentino’s dance partner. In an effort to reestablish his own credibility, de
Saulles arranged for Valentino to be arrested on a false vice charge, alleging
that the dancer was working as an escort for known madam “Mrs. Thyme”. Shortly
after the very public trial, Valentino once again found himself unemployed, a
circumstance that was made even more hopeless when Blanca fatally shot de
Saulles and brought the events of the trial back into the public eye. In order
to distance himself from the scandal, he took a job in a national dance tour,
which later disbanded in Utah. Determined to give himself a fresh start, he
continued traveling west in hopes of pursuing his dancing career in San
Francisco.
In San Francisco, Valentino finally gained the
following that he had been seeking and soon set his sights on moving up the
show-business ladder in Hollywood. With the help his roommate, actor Norman
Kerry, Valentino began auditioning for various bit parts while continuing to
perform and teach dance lessons. Initially he was typecast as gangsters and
other villains, largely due to Hollywood’s taboo against casting immigrant and
minority actors as leads. By 1917, he finally became so discouraged that he
returned to New York, where he met and befriended cinematographer Paul Ivano
who would later become his mentor. Following Ivano’s advice, Valentino returned
to Hollywood, where he began a relationship with actress Jean Acker, a closeted
lesbian. Acker reportedly became involved with the actor in order to distance
herself from a love triangle with actresses Alla Nazimova and Grace Darmond and
to avoid the possibility of her sexuality becoming public. Acker quickly regretted
her decision and locked Valentino out of their suite on their wedding night,
ensuring that the marriage would remain unconsummated. Despite Acker’s
homosexuality, the couple remained married until 1921 when Acker sued for
divorce and claimed desertion.
While his
marriage continued to spiral downward, Valentino suddenly found his career
rapidly rising when he pursued a part in the film adaptation of the popular
World War I novel The Four Horsemen of
the Apocalypse. He began lobbying for an audition, only to learn that the
film’s screenwriter, June Mathis, was impressed with his work and had been
attempting to contact him about auditioning while he was in New York. Following
the audition, he landed his breakout role as the film’s lead, playboy turned
war-hero Julio. Through Valentino’s thrilling combination of acting skill and
dance technique the film became an instant success and brought the once unknown
actor to national attention. Following his meteoric rise to stardom, he soon
learned the difficulties of working under the studio system when he was forced
to star in the B-picture Unchartered Seas.
While the film was unremarkable, it did prove to have a lasting impact upon the
star, as it was on the set of the film that he met his second wife, actress,
dancer, and costume designer Natacha Rambova. The pair married in 1922, which
led to Valentino being charged with bigamy because he had not been legally divorced
from Acker for a full year yet, as was required by California law. In an effort
to avoid further scandal, the couple obtained an annulment and lived in
separate apartments for a year before remarrying in 1923. Unfortunately, his
second marriage proved little more successful than his first as Rambova became
controlling and alienated him from both his friends and business associates to
such an extent that MGM banned her from his film sets. The couple eventually
divorced, with Valentino so bitter towards Rambova that he reportedly only left
her one dollar in his will.
After moderate successes with Camille and The Conquering
Power, Valentino was cast in his most famous part; Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan
in the 1921 romance, The Sheik. In
the film, he plays a modern take on Beauty and the Beast as an Arab sheikh who
kidnaps a European tourist in hopes of making her one of his wives, only to
later find himself softened by the woman’s plight. The film ends with Valentino
earning the heroine’s affections after revealing that he is not really an Arab
after all but actually a half-British, half-Spanish orphan who was raised by
the local sheikh following his parents’ deaths. Although the film contains many
racist elements (including the final reveal), Valentino actually tried to
inflect as much complexity and humanity into his character as possible. He also
defied Hollywood norms when he refuted a reporter during an interview promoting
the film saying, “people aren’t savages because they have dark skin; the Arab
civilization is one of the oldest in the world. The Arabs are dignified and
keen brained”. While some consider the film’s Beauty and the Beast style
romance sexist, the film became nothing short of a cultural phenomenon, which
led to popularization of the slang terms “sheikh” and “sheba” to describe men
and women with sex appeal, and cemented Valentino’s status as a silver screen
sex symbol.
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| Beating Fabio to the punch by seventy years |
Despite the film’s success, Valentino was displeased
with the way in which it limited his career. Following The Sheikh, he was cast in a series of similar films, all of which
featured him in the role of the ‘exotic lover’. While the typecasting ensure
that he would continue to receive steady work, it also left the actor
frustrated with the lack of challenges it posed. Compounding this issue, he was
still making significantly less money than his fellow stars ,which led him to go
on a ‘one man strike’ against his studio, Famous Players. The studio retaliated
by suing, but quickly withdrew the suit after their other leading actor, Roscoe
“Fatty” Arbuckle became embroiled in a career ending scandal. After the end of
his strike, he continued to feel limited in his career and took a brief hiatus
from acting during which he returned to dancing in a national tour alongside
his wife, Rambova. In 1923, he returned to acting and starred in a series of
successful films at Famous Players, but left the studio in 1924 when Charlie
Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks approached him about joining their new studio
venture, United Artists.
Although he achieved success at United Artists, Valentino’s
career suffered as a result of Rambova’s insistence upon managing his career.
In an effort to help him move beyond the roles he was typecast in, she picked a
series of films that required him to play more subdued, even effeminate parts.
The drastic change in roles caused a shift in his public perception,
particularly amongst male moviegoers who viewed the star as a ‘sissy’.
Following his divorce from Rambova, speculation arose that the star was
actually a closeted homosexual and that both of his marriages were attempts to
hide his sexual orientation. These accusations infuriated Valentino, who viewed
the rumors as both an affront to his masculinity and a slight against his
personal character. When an editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune
that accused him of contributing to the rise in homosexuality in America, he
arranged for the writer to face him in a boxing match. While the stunt did
provide publicity for Valentino’s latest film, the writer failed to
attend the match and rumors continued to abound regarding Valentino’s
sexuality.
Towards the end of his career, he continued to
challenge himself with a variety of new ventures. In 1923 he attempted to
launch a writing career by publishing a book of poetry entitled Day Dreams, and several articles for
Life and Photoplay magazines. He also produced two song recordings, “Kashmiri
Song” and "El Relicario", which were not released until after his death. He eventually
achieved his goal of gaining more input in his films and continued to challenge
himself by venturing into the business world with the creation of Rudolp,h Valentino
Pictures in 1924. He also started the tradition of awarding honors for the cast and
crew of exceptional pictures before the Academy Awards was even formed when he
awarded the first (and only) Rudolph Valentino medal to John Barrymore for his
role in Beau Brummel in 1925.
While on tour promoting the sequel Son of The Sheikh, Valentino collapsed
and was rushed to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with gastric ulcers and
appendicitis. Following surgery to remove his appendices, he suffered a
pleuritis relapse in his left lung and entered a coma. After briefly regaining
consciousness, he slipped back into the coma and died on August 23, 1926 at age
31. An estimated 100,000 people attended his funeral, including numerous
distraught fans who made dramatic scenes and threatened to commit suicide in
hopes of gaining media attention through association with the deceased star.
Four actors were also hired by the funeral home to impersonate Benito
Mussolini’s Blackshirts and pretend to guard the funeral in hopes of stirring
up more publicity. Valentino’s then-girlfriend, actress Pola Negri, also
participated in the pandemonium by throwing herself onto his coffin and
announcing that they had been engaged, despite the fact that none of his
friends had been told of any such engagement. Even after the funeral, the
stunts persisted with a woman being hired by a local newspaper to visit the
star’s grave and place flowers upon it while wearing a black veil that
concealed her face. The ‘woman in black’ tradition continued for decades as
dozens of copycats imitated the original stunt.
Today, the name Valentino remains as synonymous with
seduction as the fictional Don Juan. In his brief career, Rudolph Valentino
proved himself to be far more than a mere pretty face, however, as he continued
to challenge himself as a dancer, actor, writer, and entrepreneur. His films
remain a reminder of the timelessness of talent and magnetism, as his
performances continue to cast their spell nearly a century later. Take a tango on the sultry side and see how much there is to love about cinema's most famous of Latin lovers.
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| Rudolph Valentino: Making the ladies say ole since 1921 |
“The
Dinosaur Project” is a British film released in 2012, that documents a
fictional story from the perspective of a missing crypto-zoology group that
goes into the heart of the Congo to look for a mysterious river monster known
as “Mokele Mmbembe”, which the group believes to be a previously thought to be
extinct plesiosaur. The expedition is led by famous explorer Jonathan Marchant. Unbeknownst to Jonathan his teenage son Luke,
snuck on board his plane because he wanted to go on the adventure with his
dad. While flying over the jungle the group’s
helicopter collides with a mysterious bird like creature and crashes into the
jungle. It is later discovered that the
helicopter was attacked by a group of Pterodactyls, and that there are even
more dinosaurs living in a secret forest in the Congo. The group believes that they have made the
discovery of a lifetime, but the happiness of their discovery is short lived as
they realize that dinosaurs are just the tip of their hidden danger. 
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