The Valentino Affair (50 page)

Rudolph Valentino—formerly known as Rodolfo Guglielmi—in his most famous role as
The Sheikh

While Blanca struggled to come to terms with this latest tragedy, her erstwhile savior, Rodolfo Guglielmi, was making headlines all on his own. After several false starts in the stage-name department, he had finally settled on Rudolph Valentino. It had the right ring to it, exotic, but not too foreign-sounding; and under this guise, the former gardener from Castellaneta had taken Hollywood and the world by storm. In just four short years he had gone from uncredited extra—usually in roles that featured his dancing ability—to being one of the most famous actors alive. His breakthrough movie,
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,
had become the highest grossing film of 1921 and made him the heartthrob of millions. But what few knew at the time was that just two years earlier, his career had teetered on the brink of disaster. All thanks to Blanca de Saulles.

His problems surfaced at a party thrown in September 1919 to celebrate the completion of
Stronger Than Death,
the latest movie of temperamental Russian-born stage star Alla Nazimova. For Valentino it was an unmissable opportunity to network, and he managed to wangle himself an invite. It just so happened that among those sitting at Nazimova’s table was Dagmar Godowsky, an old friend of Valentino’s from New York, and as she saw Valentino dancing past, she raised a hand and beckoned him over. Nazimova’s face was thunderous as he approached and when Dagmar attempted to introduce the upcoming actor to the rest of the party, Nazimova snubbed him cold. She lowered her head and refused to even look at Valentino. Soon, she was joined in this act of public humiliation by the rest of her guests. Valentino, face flushed red with embarrassment, withdrew without saying a word. Nazimova glared at Godowsky. “How dare you bring that gigolo to my table?” she hissed. “How dare you introduce that pimp to Nazimova?”
⁴³
She then regaled everyone with a raunchy—and wholly fictitious—account of how Valentino had fled New York to avoid being dragged into a sordid society murder. Blanca de Saulles, she said, had shot her husband out of love for that pimp!

When news of Nazimova’s outburst reached Valentino, it shook him to his core. Naively, he thought that that dark interlude in New York had been left far behind. Was there nowhere he could escape his past? Despair grabbed hold and then squeezed tighter still as his already chaotic life grew even messier. Among the other guests at Nazimova’s table that night was a beautiful actress recently signed to Metro Pictures named Jean Acker, and she was also beset with a potentially career-threatening problem. But in Valentino she saw a possible remedy. Jean was blessed with the same ethereal quality as Blanca, the pale skin and dark hair, so that when she secretly sought out Valentino, it was déjà vu of the heart for the impressionable young actor. A whirlwind romance followed—or so it was reported in the movie journals—in truth, theirs was a platonic relationship, because what Valentino had failed to realize was that Jean was a lesbian. And, just lately, her most ardent lover had been the fiery Alla Nazimova.

With the Hollywood gossip mill on full production, Jean, desperate to keep her career on track, turned to Valentino for help. She begged him to marry her. The streak of hopeless naivety that had shaped so many of his romantic decisions was indestructible. Always a sucker for a damsel in distress, Valentino duly obliged, and the couple tied the knot on November 6, 1919. They spent their wedding night at the Hollywood Hotel, where they danced into the early hours, but when Valentino tried to join his bride in the honeymoon suite, he found the door locked against him. The frustrated groom pounded on the door with his fists—loud enough to wake the other guests, some of whom stumbled out in pajamas and dressing gowns to see what all the ruckus was about—but Jean refused to budge. Disconsolately, Valentino trudged back on foot to his own apartment. The marriage never was consummated. Just like Blanca before her, Jean Acker had exploited the gullible young man for her own ends and then thrown him to the wolves.

In no time at all, details of Valentino’s humiliation whistled around the Celluloid Village. For someone hoping to carve out a career as a romantic lead, such a rejection was not just deeply embarrassing, but profoundly worrying. Hollywood tittle-tattle was bad enough, but what if people went digging even deeper for dirt? Valentino’s nerves began to fray, especially as his career was finally beginning to show signs of taking off. He had been hired by Universal Studios and his name was starting to figure in the film credits. If news of his involvement in the de Saulles divorce action and his subsequent arrest on vice charges leaked out into the public domain, he knew Universal would drop him like a lump of red-hot coal.

So he came clean and told his bosses everything. In the early days of silent films, movie moguls were wondrously adept at covering up scandals, and Universal wasn’t about to see its latest golden goose get cooked. Although there is no proof of bribes being paid to officers, what is certain is that at some time in the early 1920s, all details of Guglielmi’s arrest mysteriously disappeared without trace from the NYPD records office. And the press, too, was targeted. On May 17, 1920, the
New York Sun
published a strange clarification under the headline R
ODOLFO
G
UGLIELMI
W
AS
N
OT
A
CCUSED,
explaining how it had earlier reported Guglielmi’s arrest over the Thym affair and now took “pleasure in stating the articles were not intended to reflect upon Mr. Guglielmi’s character . . . and [he] was speedily released from custody.” On the same day, the
New York Tribune
published a similar retraction, saying, “Mr. Guglielmi was not taken into custody upon any criminal charge. The
Tribune
did not assert or intend to assert the contrary and it neither made nor intended to make any reflection upon him.”

Significantly, neither apology mentioned that Guglielmi had gone on to enjoy success in the movies, and nowhere did it mention the name by which he was becoming increasingly known—Rodolpho de Valentina (the full and final transition to Rudolph Valentino would not come until the following year). Universal had ensured that if anyone did decide to go digging for dirt in some dusty newspaper morgue, Valentino was covered. With the really damaging evidence buried forever, Valentino was safe, at least for the time being.

It’s reasonable to assume that Blanca was aware of Valentino’s extraordinary success—remaining ignorant of his global superstardom would have taxed the reserves of a Trappist monk—but after the trial she washed her hands of him. As for Valentino, he never did get over the lady from Chile. Speaking privately he once said, “For years I had cherished a picture in my mind of how the perfect woman would look, a picture composed of the many things I had read and some of the great paintings I had seen. When Mrs. De Saulles stood before me it was as though the picture had come to life.”
⁴⁴

This obsession haunted Valentino for the remainder of his short life. Mae Murray tells of a strange incident that happened in December 1925. Valentino was in Europe to publicize his latest film
The Eagle,
and Mae Murray was along for the ride. After being mobbed by thousands of ecstatic fans in London, the Hollywood superstar escaped to Paris, only to receive the bombshell news that his second wife, stage designer Natacha Rambova—who could have passed for Blanca’s sister—had filed for divorce.
⁴⁵
To combat his despair, Valentino was desperate for diversion, and it came in the form of gossip that his beloved Blanca happened to be in Paris at the same time. This, he figured, was his big chance. After all, he was now the world’s premier sex god, lusted after by millions of women around the globe, a far cry from the humble tango dancer that Blanca had once known. Surely now she would respond to his advances?

Valentino found out where Blanca was staying and bombarded her with requests for a reunion. She rejected him cold. In desperation Valentino turned to Murray and begged her to act as an intermediary, to tell Blanca that he craved one more chance to see her. Murray approached the elusive Blanca and pleaded Valentino’s case. After considerable hesitation Blanca agreed to meet Valentino on one condition: no speaking or touching. The bizarre assignation reportedly took place in a Paris hotel.

From all accounts, the Great Lover arranged himself on a sofa in the foyer and waited like a skittish teenager for the woman he had not seen in nine years. At some point, Blanca glided into view. Their eyes met and nothing more. Blanca sashayed by Valentino and out of his life for good. Shortly after this, she returned to Chile and Valentino caught a liner back to New York City. But nothing could efface the memory of Blanca. According to Murray, even when Valentino fell in love with other women, he could never escape “the shadow that Blanca De Saulles had cast over his heart.”
⁴⁶

Less than a year after this alleged meeting, tragedy struck. On August 15, 1926, at the height of his fame, Valentino collapsed at the Hotel Ambassador in New York City. He was rushed to the Polyclinic, where an examination revealed him to be suffering from appendicitis and gastric ulcers that required surgery. The operation was not a success and Valentino developed peritonitis. At first his doctors were optimistic, but six days after surgery, and still very weak, Valentino was stricken with severe pleurisy in his left lung. This time the prognosis was lethal. As was customary at the time, Valentino was spared the details of what awaited him, and for a while he remained quite cheerful, even chatting with doctors about his plans when he left the hospital. The end came on August 23. Suddenly, the Great Lover fell into a coma and died. He was just thirty-one years old.

In a coincidence that might have been lifted from a Hollywood screenplay, his body was taken to Campbell’s Funeral Church, the same undertakers that eight years earlier had attended to Jack de Saulles’s bullet-riddled corpse. At the time people had marveled at the ceremony lavished on the former Yale football star, but those scenes paled into insignificance compared with the frenzy that attended Valentino’s death. More than one hundred NYPD officers—most on foot, some on horseback—were drafted in to keep control of a crowd that numbered in excess of one hundred thousand people. A full-scale riot ensued, with distraught fans smashing windows and fighting to gain access to the funeral parlor, desperate for a final glimpse of their idol. Around the world, it was rumored, some women were so overcome by grief that they committed suicide. Everyone wanted a slice of the Valentino pie. Polish actress Pola Negri, claiming to be Valentino’s fiancée—this was never confirmed—collapsed in hysterics while standing over the coffin, while the studio hired four actors to impersonate a Fascist Blackshirt honor guard, allegedly dispatched by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

After a funeral service in New York, Valentino’s body was taken by train cross-country to California, where, after a second service, it was interred in the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery. To this day, fans of the actor gather at his tomb on the anniversary of his death, to celebrate his life, to pay their respects to a life that was tragically brief, and to worship at the shrine of the silent movie era’s greatest romantic male lead. Like those other great sex gods, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, Valentino died at the right age, his beautiful image preserved forever on celluloid. He would forever remain the Great Lover.