Rudolph Valentino
Rudolf Valentino is probably the most famous silent
film star. Apparently Rudolph Valentino was my grandmother's
favourite actor... Surprise, surprise... ;-)
Rudolph Valentino died in 1926 at the age of
31. He was at the peak of his fame and celebrity and was already
one of the biggest names in Hollywood, however, as with Marilyn
Monroe and James Dean, death of a life so young and super-charged
with potential propells the star to iconic legend.
We all wonder what it must be like to be the
focus of hordes of adoring fans and an article about Valentino
by journalist H.L. Mencken offers an insight. Valentino met
with the journalist for advice on how best to deal with a
report in the The Chicago Tribune by an anonymous journalist.
The offending report accused Valentino of feminizing men -
a pink talcum powder dispenser had appeared in a top hotel's
mens washroom and an outcry ensued that men were becoming
effeminate. The advice Mencken offered was for Valentino to
"let the dreadful farce roll along to exhaustion",
but Valentino insisted the editorial was "infamous."
Mencken found Valentino to be likable and gentlemanly and
wrote sympathetically of him in an article published in the
Baltimore Sun a week after Valentino's death:
“ It was not that trifling Chicago episode
that was riding him; it was the whole grotesque futility of
his life. Had he achieved, out of nothing, a vast and dizzy
success? Then that success was hollow as well as vast —
a colossal and preposterous nothing. Was he acclaimed by yelling
multitudes? Then every time the multitudes yelled he felt
himself blushing inside... The thing, at the start, must have
only bewildered him, but in those last days, unless I am a
worse psychologist than even the professors of psychology,
it was revolting him. Worse, it was making him afraid... Here
was a young man who was living daily the dream of millions
of other men. Here was one who was catnip to women. Here was
one who had wealth and fame. And here was one who was very
unhappy."
I find that an interesting piece...
After the offending article had been published
in The Chicago Tribune, Valentino issued a challenge to the Tribune's
anonymous writer to a boxing match. The anonymous journalist
failed to respond, but the New York Evening Journal boxing
writer, Frank O'Neill, volunteered to fight in his place.
Valentino won the bout which took place on the roof of New
York's Ambassador Hotel.
Boxing heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, who
trained Valentino and other Hollywood notables of the era
in the art of boxing, said of Valentino: "He was the
most virile and masculine of men. The women were like flies
to a honeypot. He could never shake them off, anywhere he
went. What a lovely, lucky guy."
It would appear that Rudolph Valentino was more
than just a pretty face...
Tim Rees
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