Profile of Rudolph Valentino on Famous Like Me

Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was an Italian actor.

Childhood & Youth

He was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antoguolla in Castellaneta, Apulia, Italy to a solidly middle-class family (his father was a former officer and veterinarian), 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.

Although imaginative and well read, he was an indifferent student for the most part, 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 met 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 became a talented dancer, and then returned to Italy for a while, where his apparent lack of ambition angered his family..

The New York Years

In 1913 he left for the U.S., following the advice of Domenico Savino, a friend of his and of the opera tenor Tito Schipa. He landed in New York, New York on Christmas Day, 1913. After using up a small legacy he endured a spell of poverty during which supported himself with odd jobs such as bussing and gardening. Eventually he found work as a dancer (first as a taxi dancer and instructor, later as an exhibition dancer) and obtained a certain local fame, particularly for his rendition of the Argentine tango. It has been said, but never proven, that during this period he also was a gigolo and that he had legal troubles for prostitution-related matters (court documents from this time indicate that he was held as a material witness in the aftermath of a raid on a brothel but was released shortly afterwards and never charged with any crime). There is similarly no evidence that he was ever a "petty thief" as is sometimes claimed by reference works.

The Hollywood Years

He next joined an operetta company that soon disbanded in Utah; from there he reached 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 (1893-1978), a part-Cherokee film starlet who was a lesbian. The marriage was reportedly never consummated: Acker locked Valentino out of their hotel room on their wedding night, and despite Valentino's efforts at a reconciliation the two separated very shortly afterwards. They were divorced in 1922.

Valentino eventually caught the notice of legendary 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. This film, released in 1921, was a great success and established Valentino as a important actor. That same year, Valentino became an even greater star with the release of The Sheik.

On May 13, 1922, in Mexicali, Mexico, Valentino married art director Natacha Rambova. This resulted in him being jailed for bigamy, since his divorce from Acker was not yet final. (California law at the time required that one wait a full year after a divorce before remarrying). They remarried a year later.

Blood and Sand, released in 1922, and co-starring the popular silent screen vamp Nita Naldi, further established Valentino as the leading male star of the day. 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 called 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 U.S., he was criticized by his fans for his newly cultivated beard and was forced to shave it off.

An animal lover and owner of several dogs and horses, Valentino's Irish Wolfhound was named Centaur Pendragon, and his Doberman Pinscher was named Kabar.

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 widely believed that her interference had created havoc with 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 co-starring the popular Hungarian-born actress, Vilma Banky.

While on a transnational tour to promote "The Son of the Sheik," Valentino was attacked in an anonymous editorial published by The Chicago Tribune in which the author, incensed by a powder dispenser he had spotted in a public washroom, blamed Valentino 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.

Illness and Death

On August 23, 1926, Rudolph Valentino died at the age of 31 in New York, New York as a result of septicemia, a short time after surgery for an acute perforated gastric ulcer. He had collapsed on a Manhattan sidewalk, and author and Algonquin Round Table character Robert Benchley was said to have wound up with Valentino's top hat as he assisted the stricken Valentino into an ambulance.

(There were bizarre rumors that he had actually died from, among other things, 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.)

An estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of New York to pay their respects at his funeral, handled by the famous 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 in fact a publicity stunt), the royalty of Hollywood all turned out, and so on.

His funeral Mass in New York was celebrated at St. 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. Several of his fans were even said to have committed suicide. The popular rumor that the funeral home displayed a wax effigy of Valentino rather than the actual body itself to protect it from frenzied mourners is probably groundless.

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.

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.

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.

Aftermath

Valentino's reputation still stands as a legendary sex symbol of androgynous appeal. 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.

For several years, on the anniversary of his death, a mysterious woman dressed in black was seen laying flowers on his grave. Her identity has never been firmly established.

To this day, many fans (some dressed as sheiks or ladies in black) make an annual pilgrimage on the day of Valentino's death to his crypt at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

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.

Filmography

• Alimony (1917)
• A Society Sensation (1918)
• All Night (1918)
• The Married Virgin (or Frivolous Wives; 1918)
• The Delicious Little Devil (1919)
• The Big Little Person (1919)
• A Rogue's Romance (1919)
• The Homebreaker (1919)
• Out of Luck (1919)
• Virtuous Sinners (1919)
• The Fog (1919)
• Nobody Home (1919)
• The Eyes of Youth (1919)
• Stolen Moments (1920)
• An Adventuress (1920)
• The Cheater (1920)
• Passion's Playground (1920)
• Once to Every Woman (1920)
• The Wonderful Chance (1920)
• The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)
• Uncharted Seas (1921)
• The Conquering Power (1921)
• Camille (1921)
• The Sheik (1921)
• Moran of the Lady Letty (1922)
• Beyond the Rocks (1922)
• Blood and Sand (1922)
• The Young Rajah (1922)
• Monsieur Beaucaire (1924)
• A Sainted Devil (1924)
• Cobra (1925)
• The Eagle (1925)
• The Son of the Sheik (1926)

Valentino was also supposed having 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

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