Film actor, born in Castellaneta, SE Italy. He studied agriculture, but emigrated to the USA in 1913, and first appeared on the stage as a dancer. In 1919 he made his screen debut, but his first leading role was as Julio in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), which made him a star. His performances in such films as The Sheik (1921), Blood and Sand (1922), The Eagle (1925), and The Son of the Sheik (1926) established him as the leading screen lover of the 1920s. He became ill and died of a perforated ulcer at the height of his fame, and his body lay in state, attracting crowds, riots, and suicide attempts by his fans.
| Rudolph Valentino | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 6, 1895 Castellaneta, Italy |
| Died |
August 23, 1926 New York City, New York, USA |
Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was an Italian actor. His troubled behaviour may have been caused in part by the death of his father when Valentino was eleven.
Hollywood and first marriage
Valentino joined an operetta company that traveled to Utah where it disbanded. Their marriage was rumored to have never been consummated - Acker reportedly locked him out of their hotel room on their wedding night - and despite Valentino's efforts at a reconciliation, the two separated shortly afterward, and 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 Valentino be cast as one of the male leads in his next film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Released in 1921, the film was a commercial and critical success, and made Valentino a star.
Second marriage
Valentino first met Natacha Rambova (a costume designer and art director who was a protégé and possibly the lover of actress Alla Nazimova), on the set of Uncharted Seas in 1921. This resulted in Valentino being jailed for bigamy, since his divorce from Acker was not finalized; 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 his 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.
In New York City on May 14, 1923, he made his first and last record, consisting of "Valentino's renditions" of Amy Woodforde-Finden's Kashmiri Song featured in The Sheik and Jose Padilla's "El Relicario," used in Blood and Sand.
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).
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 Bánky (with whom he had a brief relationship prior to his involvement with Negri).
Chicago Tribune episode
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 men's public washroom, blamed him for the supposed feminization of the American male. 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 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 15, 1926, Valentino collapsed at the Hotel Ambassador in New York City.
Funeral
An estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of New York City to pay their respects at his funeral, handled by the Frank Campbell Funeral Home. 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. 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). After a few years, she revealed that Valentino visited her when she was an ill little girl. An animal lover and owner of several dogs and horses, Valentino had an Irish Wolfhound named 'Centaur Pendragon' and a Great Dane 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 where he was staying. 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 talk to him. 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. "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. In 1979 the writers of the Mexican film of Muñecas de medianoche mentioned that Gina, the main female character of the film (played beautifully by Sasha Montenegro) has been in love with Rudolph Valentino since she was 14 years old. Towards the film's end, the hero of the film Raphael (Jorge Rivero) comes into Gina's bedroom dressed up as Valentino in A Sainted Devil; The new short film "Days Dreams of Rudolph Valentino"( with Russian actor Vladislav Kozlov as Rudolph Valentino) was presented at Hollywood Forever cemetery on August 23, 2006, marking the 80th anniversary of Rudolph Valentino's death.
Films about Valentino
The life of Rudolph Valentino has been filmed a number of times for television and the big screen. The most notable of these biopics is Ken Russell's Valentino (1977), in which Valentino is portrayed by Rudolf Nureyev. An earlier feature film about Valentino's life, also called Valentino, was released in 1951. It was directed by Lewis Allen and stars Anthony Dexter as Valentino.
There are rumors that Warner Brothers plans to film a biopic of Valentino's career, his marriages, and his battles with the press.
Rumors
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. There is an urban legend that in the funeral home a wax effigy of Valentino was displayed rather than the actual body to protect it from frenzied mourners. Over the years several women have claimed to have borne children fathered by Valentino, but none of these claims have ever been verified. The best-known of these women was Marion Benda (not to be confused with the Marion Benda who married Zeppo Marx), a Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl who dated Valentino shortly before his death. She maintained that she and Valentino were the parents of two children, but was later diagnosed as being delusional. There are rumors that Valentino was bisexual or homosexual (and that he entered into a lavender marriage with both Acker and Rambova), but evidence is lacking that would either confirm or disprove them. 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. 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) 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 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 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
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