If you want a fully researched,
well documented, and accurate biography of former superstar Rudolph Valentino
which reveals groundbreaking discoveries about his life, then you owe it to
yourself to read Evelyn Zumaya’s Affairs
Valentino – a volume covering not only the actor’s life, but his afterlife as well.
Although we have written
previously on the major findings of the author’s research, we are taking a
second round with the screen legend’s life and legacy after finally obtaining
and reading a rare copy of her book.
We should like to dispense
quickly with remarks about the book’s format and literary deportment by first stating that it
is written in an engaging style facilitated by a technique which may leave it
open to undue criticism – a point we will address momentarily.
The book is a large 8 ½” x 11”
paperback volume with lean production values. The text is double spaced as one
would expect in a term paper, but this format makes reading a breeze. It is
also illustrated with rare photos – and some not so rare – which add interest to
the narrative.
The book sadly lacks an index and
footnotes - in spite of its rich bibliography, the former omission hardly explainable in the days of electronic
word processors. The text is speckled with grammatical, lexical,
and typographical errors which should be cleansed in a second edition.
Returning to our point of
narrative style, the author has chosen to use dramatizations to vivify the
story, a technique which may make it appealing to a popular audience, but one
which will not endear it to establishment historians and academics. All of
which is unfortunate because the substance of this scholarly triumph makes it
worth every penny this out of print book may cost.
Aside from some of these rather
pedantic remarks, we must admit that the author is a very capable writer who
has selected a fluent style which makes the book a rapid read. She
alternates between history of Valentino’s life, and the very complicated
aftermath left in the wake of his death – complications which extend to the
present time.
Valentino is probably an easy
character for many people to like if for no other reason than he was rich,
famous, and good looking. On the other hand, once you look past the glitz, you
see a highly flawed man whose life swung out of control and flamed out at a
very young age.
A teenaged Valentino arrived in America 2
days before Christmas 1913 on the USS Cleveland at the instigation of his
family who, for all practical purposes, disowned him for youthful indiscretions
which brought shame to his very traditional southern Italian Catholic family.
Although lacking absolute proof,
Zumaya speculates, with reasonable evidence which she presents in her book,
that Valentino had a fling with an older Italian woman resulting in a pregnancy
which embarrassed the family. The solution was to send young Rudolph into the
cold to America where a padrino,
Frank Menillo, awaited to sponsor him in his new country – in the vortex of
America’s melting pot – New York City. Frank would come many times to Rudy’s
aid to pry him loose from some sticky predicament – often of a financial
nature.
The child would be given to his
brother Alberto for rearing, a responsibility we believe he resented.
With limited education, Valentino
scraped by with dancing jobs which put him in high society and in bed with
another man’s wife. Escaping that melee, Valentino eventually wound up in California
where he spent a few years as a starving actor before making his big break in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
under the tutelage of June Mathis, a major screenwriter of the day.
Along the way, he married an actress,
Jean Acker, who refused to consummate their marriage. Although no
conclusive evidence is rendered, the best explanation is that she was a lesbian
who rashly entered into the marriage under outside pressures. Other legal
documents indicate she had a physical condition preventing sexual relations,
but she lived with her companion Chloe Carter for most of her life.
It did not take long for the
emotionally wounded Valentino to find solace in Natacha Rambova, a stepdaughter
of a wealthy businessman who maintained many residences worldwide, including
one on the French Riviera and San Francisco’s Nob Hill – facts unknown to
Valentino until well into their affair.
Although they met in a torrent of
love and lust, their marriage would end 3 years later in a torrent of hate and
anger. She was an avant-garde, bohemian free spirit who wanted to share
professionally in Valentino’s career, but who in the end was shut out.
It is perhaps this controlling
feature which secured the wedge between them, but in the final analysis, it
seems that Natacha loved Natacha rather than her husband. Through the use of
detectives, Rudy caught her carrying on with a cameraman, a discovery which
broke the camel’s back of their unraveling marriage. Any complaints from
Valentino on this score would probably resemble the pot calling the kettle
black, but what hurt Valentino the most was his wife’s refusal to bear him
children. She allegedly had 3 or 4 abortions, a matter which caused Valentino
considerable pain, making reconciliation impossible.
Valentino’s career zoomed upward
after The Shiek which made him the
first cinematic global superstar – a fame he retained even during his walkout
on The Famous Players-Lasky which lasted into 1923. His astute business manager,
George Ullman, kept him afloat financially by taking him on tour to promote
Mineralava beauty cream. Ullman was hired on the advice of Valentino’s closest
advisor – Black Foot – a demon he conjured up in one of his daily trances and
automatic writing sessions.
Ullman forms an important part of
the story – especially after Valentino’s death. The two men became fast friends
with Ullman constantly performing a 7 ball juggling act to keep his boss
solvent. Valentino was accustomed to high living from his first steps on
American soil – even though he spent some very lean years with Natacha in a cramped bungalow
with an odd assortment of animals he picked up from the studio.
In his final 18 months –
especially after his divorce from Natacha – Valentino's boozing, womanizing, and smoking
took its toll – to the point where Valentino was a certified alcoholic. It is
possible that his alcoholism finally undid him when he died of acute perforated
ulcers – a condition insufficiently treatable at the time.
The disintegration of Valentino
before his friend and business manager’s eyes was a painful sight, a sight
Ullman craftily hid from the public - along with Rudy's many other indiscretions.
When Valentino died unexpectedly,
the task of burial and estate executor fell upon Ullman, as Valentino had wished
it in his will, but a task made enormously more complicated by one of the dishonest men he kept on his sizeable household staff.
We find that his handyman, Lou
Mahoney, a corrupt former New York City cop, tore out a page of Valentino’s
will which left the estate to his ostensible nephew Jean. We learn along the
way that Jean was most likely his son from his affair in Italy which caused his
family to exile him to America. The will stipulated that George would be the
executor of the estate and continue to run Rudolph Valentino Productions in the
event of his death.
This chicanery by Mahoney created
a series of interminable legal battles between Rudy’s brother Alberto and Ullman.
George only knew about the unamended will which named Alberto, his sister
Maria, and his former wife’s Aunt Teresa as heirs. The amendment stated that
these persons would only receive a monthly stipend until Jean reached the age
of 25. Oh, and Natacha would receive a one dollar bill.
George mistakenly advanced
disbursements to the presumed heirs from the estate for which an appeals court would find him liable
some years later after a copy of the missing page turned up in the divorce
attorney’s files and was submitted to the court. This ruling, even
after George had rehabilitated the estate's finances to the point where he paid off all
of Valentino’s staggering 300,000 USD debt, and built equity to 300,000 USD at
the onset of the depression. The greed of Alberto would undo all of this heroic
accomplishment.
These legal battles ruined George
financially but eventually vindicated him against charges of incompetence,
embezzlement, or fraud in an appeals court's stinging rebuke of the lower probate court’s
decisions. Alberto was a sleaze of the first order whose first question to
George when he walked the plank off the boat for his brother’s burial was, “How
big is the estate?”
The battle lines were drawn with
the Valentino family bitterly opposed to George. Jean inherited this animosity
especially when the depleted estate left him with precious little except
for intellectual property which he used to "extort" large sums of money in his
life as a semi-professional litigant. Jean finally relinquished George from the
staggering debt he owed him by court decree 30 years after his father’s death.
Prior to that, the story took an
even more fascinating twist. Famous Hollywood producer and executive William
Self formed a fake friendship with George in order to swindle him out of the
few Valentino memorabilia he managed to salvage from the Valentino estate.
Self, a very well to do executive living in exclusive Bel Air, would later steal George’s
few remaining mementos which he kept in his garage, even after George had
naively given him one of them each year for his birthday under the assumption that Self
would safeguard them. In reality, he was passing them along (for sale) to Jean,
or trading them with a person whom Zumaya identifies as the Evanston collector.
Self – it appears – stole the probate
court records exonerating George from the County Courthouse in Los Angeles and
sold them to the Evanston collector. Self, who also had an intense interest in
Frank Baum, creator of the Wizard of Oz, also apparently stole Baum’s probate
records. If these accusations can be proven, it makes Self a felon and I
believe that they could be proven.
Although Zumaya mercifully spares
us psychologizing about Valentino, I am not so generous. Valentino was a
self indulgent, irresponsible, reckless spendthrift who luxuriated in the
finest things money could buy. But at the same time he could be quite generous
as the author documents. He enjoyed life, spent beyond his means, but I think
in the end he wanted to transcend his materialistic morass.
By transcending, I believe that
he wanted a family – a wife and kids. His two failed attempts to acquire these
elusive possessions sent him into a depression from which he never recovered,
and whose pain he medicated with liquor and 100 Turkish black tobacco cigarettes per day. The refusal of the fascist Italian courts to grant adoption of
his son Jean probably sealed Rudy’s fate.
Zumaya has faced viciously
barbaric opposition to her work, which has compelled her to cease publication
of this fine book. This is a disastrous pity for she has done more than any
other researcher to advance our understanding of this fascinating screen
legend.
If you find her book, buy it and
don’t flinch at the price. It tells a story worthy of any Hollywood scandal.
Reference
Affairs Valentino, Evelyn Zumaya, 2011
Copyright 2012 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.
