Silent All These Years

It has been a while since I logged a blog and with Valentine’s day approaching I started thinking about possible content. . . and then I remember this Sunday afternoon when I was young and I was in the house playing when I heard this strange music coming from the kitchen .

My dad was sitting at the head of the dining table staring at the tv screen where this yellowish tinted scratched up scenes where showing projector like ….there were words that would appear on the screen that would explain some of the story but there were no word to follow up…

I remember my dad picking me up and explaing to me that this was a silent film it was “ The Sheik” starring Rudolph Valentino. He Told me Valentino was an Italian but moved to America where he because one of the first Hollywood legends. And when I asked how he could watch an entire movie with no dialogue he told me that “ as it it people use too many words and they leave no space to the imagination ’

I am not sure I quite understood what he meant then….but I certainly do now.

I still remember the first scene the camera zoomed in Valentino’s face as he and Agnes Ayres exchanged glances , and I think those black eyes have in a way haunted and charmed me since.

Valentino was definitely the first movie star that took my breath away not to mention he is single handedly the reason I fell in love with silent movies all toghether. I discovered Buster Keaton , Charly Chaplin, and F.W. Murnau because of him…and my dad of course. To this day I can’t watch any silent movies without remembering him.

So as Valentine’s day fast approaches here are some fun facts about Hollywood’s first hearthrob.

1 - Valentino was born Born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla, on May 6, 1895 in Castellaneta, Puglia, Italy.

2 - His father was a veterinarian and died when Valentino was 11.

3 - Valentino was refused from Military service supposedly for being too frail, so he decided to study Agricultural studies.

4- He was a Dreamer. In 1013 at the young age of 18, he immigrated to the United States . He arrived in Island New York where he worked many odd jobs including dishwasher, gardener and dancer.

Here Valentino took on a wide range of jobs. Some of these included a dishwasher, a landscape gardener, a waiter, and a taxi driver.

5- He was involved in a scandalous affair. While working as a dancer, Valentino met the unhappily married Chilean heiress Bianca de Saulles, and it reportedly wasn’t long before their affair began . They started plotting her split from her husband John, with Valentino even testifying at their divorce trial. And that’s where things turned really bad.

After the divorce when through, John de Saulles got a brutal revenge on his romantic rival. The tycoon called up every political connection he had, accused Valentino of being a gigolo, and had him detained alongside his supposed “madame.” Valentino only ended up spending a couple nights behind bars…but the damage was done.

6 - A scandalous affair, an arrest, and now a shooting.

Shortly after the divorce trial, Bianca De Saulles fatally shot her hushband prompting Valentino ‘s move to the west coast .

7- Before making his Hollywood debut he worked as a dancer in Los Angeles.

At the beginning of his career he received minor roles in 17 movies before becoming a star following his role in ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse’.

8 - Valentino was married twice. First, to Jean Acker from 1919 to 1923 His first marriage was not exactly the perfect love story,Acker was actually a lesbian who married Valentino to escape a volatile love triangle with two other actresses. Acker immediately regretted her actions. Supposedly on their wedding night, Acker locked Valentino out of their room, and continued to refuse him then and forever after. Their union was never consummated, and they separated quickly, divorcing in 1921.

He married Natacha Rambova from 1923 to 1925.

9 - Screenwriter June Mathis had seen Valentino’s latest film and knew she had to have him for the part of Julio Desnoyer, in the four horsemen of the apocalypse which turned out to be his breakout role. Valentino’s days on the set of Four Horsemen were pretty harsh. Veteran director Rex Ingram signed on, but he had no faith in the Valentino as an actor and the pair clashed continually. The studio wasn’t much help either: They refused to give Valentino any raise, and even made him pay for his costume.

After The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse became a bona fide blockbuster, Metro studios somehow still refused to recognize Valentino as a star and relegated him to a B-movie for his next project, Uncharted Seas.

Valentino however had no problem standing up for himself . He left Metro studios in a huff just as soon as he could, partnering up with Famous Players-Lasky searching for better roles and a better salary.

10- In 1921, Valentino received his leading role in The Sheik as as Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. He literally became and overnight icon and redefined male beauty standards . But not everyone was so impressed by his demeanor nor style. Countless men who imitated Valentino’s distinctive, heavily-pomaded hairstyle and adopted his general look, became not-so-affectionately known to as “Vaselinos.”

11- At the height of his career, Valentino was so famous that even the most minuscule change to his physique caused huge frenzies. In 1925, the fact that Valentino grew a beard for a film role became literal front page news and sparked a sensation.

12- Women may have loved Rudolph Valentino, but men often felt extremely threatened by his more effeminate masculinity, particularly in America. There were frequent reports of American men walking out of Valentino’s movies in disgust, leaving their swooning women behind them.

Even journalists weren’t always too kind toward Valentino, and one particular article caused an absolute scandal. In a Chicago Tribune piece now notoriously known as “the pink powder puff” article, the anonymous writer somehow blamed Valentino for a powdering station he’d come across in a bathroom.

The article stated” “A powder vending machine! In a men’s washroom! Homo Americanus! Why didn’t someone quietly drown Rudolph Guglielmo , alias Valentino, years ago?… Do women like the type of “man” who pats pink powder on his face in a public washroom and arranges his coiffure in a public elevator?… Hollywood is the national school of masculinity. Rudy, the beautiful gardener’s boy, is the prototype of the American male.”

Valentino was furious, and he sent a challenge to a competing Chicago newspaper:

“To the man (?) who wrote the editorial headed ‘Pink Powder Puffs’ in Sunday’s Tribune, I call you in return, a contemptible coward and to prove which of us is a better man, challenge you to a personal test.”

He then goes on to challenge him to a boxing match. The challenge was never accepted, but Valentino still received boxing lessons from his friend Jack Dempsey and, after all the tough talk, a sportswriter named Frank O’Neil decided to take Valentino on. The match took place on the roof of the Ambassador Hotel. O’Neil only got one punch before Valentino quickly took him down. But, always the gentlemen, he immediately helped him up and apologized. The public ate it up.

13 - Valentino was an ardent dog lover. Never one to resist an opportunity for flair, he had an Irish Wolfhound that he named “Centaur Pendragon” and a Great Dane named “Kabar.”

14- At the height of his fame, Rudolph Valentino was receiving as many as 10,000 fan letters per week.

15- Valentino was paid $200,000 per movie for his roles in ‘The Eagle’ and ‘Son of Sheik’. This amount was unheard of at the time.

16- He died at the age of 31 in Manhattan, New York City, on August 23, 1926. The cause of death was peritonitis and a perforated ulcer. The hospital where he died received over 2,000 calls per hour following his death from grieving female fans.

17 - at the time of his death he was dating actress Pole Negri.

18 - The Latin Lover would inadvertently come to play an intimate role in people’s bedrooms, at least in spirit. In the 1930s, Sheik Condoms came out and featured Valentino’s silhouette on the packaging for years.

19 - Despite the fact that he became a household name in America, Valentino never became an American citizen and never officially immigrated to the country.

This hot-blooded Italian remained always fully Italian.

20- he is buried at The Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles :)