FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
So, who are the male, Hollywood heart-throbs of today? I honestly don’t know and don’t care. But whoever they are – they cannot hold a candle to the greatest Hollywood heart-throb of all time – RudolphValentino. His full name was Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Gugliemi di Valentina D’Antonguolla. A mouthful for sure. Yet within five short years Rudolf Valentino would dominate silent movies and fuel the fantasies of women all over the world.
Born in 1895 in the Italian town of Castellaneta, Valentino was a wild youth whose escapades frequently found him locked out of his home and occasionally locked up in jail. He failed to gain admission to a naval academy and set off for Paris where he begged on the streets to keep body and soul together.
In 1913 Valentino arrived in New York aged 18. Penniless, with no English, his only asset was his suave Italian charm which he put to use as a dancing partner for unescorted ladies at Manhattan cabarets.
Valentino’s big break came in 1921 when he landed a role in The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse which was a huge success.
Valentino was now 26. By the time of his death at 31 he would complete 14 films and become the Screen Lover of the 1920s – a meteoric rise to fame by Hollywood standards.
Valentino, however, wasn’t an empty-headed screen idol. At the height of his wealth and fame he collected rare books, was a talented linguist, an accomplished horseman and wrote a book of poems entitled Daydreams. Married twice, he narrowly escaped arrest for bigamy, as his first marriage was not dissolved before he wed the second Mrs Valentino. Valentino was about to marry for a third time when he died of a ruptured appendix on August 23, 1926 in New York.
The events that claimed his life began on Saturday, August 14, 1926 while he was resting at New York’s Hotel Ambassador. Valentino felt sudden pain in his stomach, fell to the floor in agony but refused, however, to go to a hospital. When his temperature soared the next day he was taken to hospital; unfortunately Valentino’s appendix had ruptured and infection spread rapidly throughout his system.
When it was announced that he might not recover mass hysteria ensued. Women, teenagers and adults, wept openly while hundreds promised to kill themselves if Valentino died.
The hospital issued press releases hourly. For eight days suspense built as the public fed on bulletins alternating between hope and despair. On August 23 RudolphValentino, the world’s great lover, died – struck down at the height of his fame. The public viewing of his body on August 24 caused pandemonium. The New York Times reported that “the rioting was without precedent”. Fearing souvenir hunters might strip the corpse of clothes and jewellery, the funeral director ordered the bronze casket closed; the crowd stripped the funeral home instead.
The second day his body lay in state, similar rioting took place on the streets of New York. The crowd numbered around 50,000. Most of these were screaming, crying women, young and old. People were pushed and trampled on, shop windows were smashed and cars were overturned!
Rudolph Valentino’s death had repercussions world-wide. A British actress, clutching a batch of love poetry she had written about Valentino, took a lethal dose of poison. A New York housewife fatally shot herself while cradling a collection of Valentino photos to her breast. In Japan two forlorn fans leaped into a volcano. In Italy, Mussolini, appealed to women to pray for the great idol but not to attempt to join him.
For years after Valentino’s demise a mysterious ‘Lady in Black’ laid a red rose on his grave on the anniversary of his death. In the 1950s this lady revealed her identity. A musician called Ditra Flame, she explained how, at 14 years of age, Valentino had visited her in hospital when she was gravely ill. Valentino promised her that if she died he would place a rose on her grave every day.
She lived, he died and she placed a rose on his grave every anniversary of his death.
Can’t imagine anything like that happening with the demise of any of our present-day Hollywood heart-throbs.
