Rudolph valentino funeral
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| Rudolph Valentino | |
| Birth name: | Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla |
|---|---|
| Date of birth: | May 6, 1895(1895-05-6,) |
| Birth location: | Castellaneta, Italy |
| Date of death: | August 23, 1926 (aged 31) |
| Death location: | New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Spouse: | Jean Acker (1919-1923) Natacha Rambova (1923-1926) |
Rudolph Valentino (May 6, 1895 – August 23, 1926) was an Italianactor. He was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi in Castellaneta, Italy, to a middle-class family. He was introduced to acting after fleeing New York City following a number of legal difficulties and eventually traveling to San Francisco and meeting actor Norman Kerry, who urged him to pursue a cinema career. Valentino challenged the typical depiction of masculinity, the All American, fair, light-eyed man. His image was threatening and would cause other men to shun him and actors to refuse to work with such a character. His ominous image led journalists to regularly call his masculinity (and his sexuality) into
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The sudden death in 1926 of silent screen superstar Rudolph Valentino caused an outpouring of anguish. In both Europe and America, women reportedly killed or attempted to kill themselves over the news. His girlfriend, the screen vamp Pola Negri, dramatically collapsed on so many occasions it damaged her career, while his ex-wife Jean Acker released a commemorative song to cash in on his death. To this day, Valentino’s ghost is said to haunt countless tourist spots in Los Angeles.
But lost in the legend was the real man. In the even-handed, meticulously researched Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino, author Emily W. Leider painstakingly extracts the documented facts from a life story mired in myth. Despite her almost academic reserve, the drama and tragedy of Valentino’s brief life burst through the pages as Leider exposes Valentino as an imaginative, naïve dreamer thrust into a role he could not control.
If Leider takes too much time on Valentino’s filmography, perhaps that’s fitting for a man whose celluloid presence eventually overpowered his sense of self.
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Rudolph Valentino: The Italian “Latin Lover”
Next week’s Tenement Talk will focus on Making Italian America: Consumer Culture and the Production of Ethnic Identities, a new collection of essays that explores the contributions that Italians and Italian Americans have made to American culture, which are vast and varied. In the early 20th century, culture was greatly made by the newest medium to sweep the nation – film – and the first “movie star” was an Italian!
In the 1920’s, newspapers across the world gave great attention to movie star in particular: Rudolph “Latin Lover” Valentino. One of the first movie stars, pop icons, and sex symbols in American history, Americans flocked to the movie theaters to see all of Valntino’s films. In the Lower East Side, people would have gone to the Thalia Theater at 46 Bowery, which had transformed from a Vaudeville theater to a movie theater. When he died at age 31, his name was on seemingly every newspaper in the world and his many female fans became hysterical. When his body was taken to a funer
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