After
odolfo left Italy to find work in the
United States,
He started out as a busboy in New York,
but his good looks allowed him to work as a gigolo while pursuing a dance career. He made his way to California
in 1917. A friend named Norman Kerry convinced him to go into silent
pictures. Rodolfo moved in with Kerry in Los Angeles where he began taking
extra and bit work and eventually changed his name to Rudolph Valentino.
Rudy impulsively married the lesbian actress
Jean Acker who had been caught in a love triangle with
two other actresses, Grace Darmond and Alla Nazimova. Acker thought
that her marriage to Rudy might end the rumors. Allegedly, the marriage was
never consummated. Rudy had not been told of her sexuality and thought
he had done something wrong. Nazimova introduced him to her friend Natacha Rambova, also a lesbian, who fell in love with
Rudy and they lived together for a
while and then eloped to Mexico in the belief his divorce from Jean Acker
was official .But divorce papers were never filed and Rudy was jailed
and fined $10,000 for being a bigamist, After their re-marriage two
years later. Rambova left him because he signed a contract that barred her
from being on his set. He began dating Pola Negri and was also linked
romantically to actress Vilma Banky.
Rodolfo's continued involvement with
lesbian and bisexual women led to the rumors that he was also bisexual.
Rudy got his big break when he was signed to star in
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). The first million dollar production saved Metro and made
him a star. He left Metro and signed with the more commercial Famous
Players-Lasky studio. Jesse Lasky cast him as the lead in The Sheik
(1921) as Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. The film was a major success and would go on to
define his image as film's first male sex symbol.
In 1926, Rudy had a surgery for a perforated ulcer after which
peritonitis set in and he died at age 31
His death caused mass hysteria among his female fans. He was severely in debt when he
died, and his family could not afford a burial plot for him. Script writer June Mathis
offered to temporarily loan him a space in her family crypt at Hollywood
Park Cemetery so he could be interred upon his body's arrival in Los Angeles
following a coast-to-coast funeral train ride from New York. Rudy's
body remains in that "borrowed" crypt, interestingly next to Mathis to this
day. For many years on the anniversary of Rudy's death, a
mysterious woman, dressed all in black, was seen laying a wreath of flowers
on his grave. Her identity was never established.
So to celebrate Rudys birthday, what could
be more appropriate than the Lebanese treat, Sheik el Mahshi and renting a
copy of The Sheik?
|