Valentino Affair

In 1922, Rudolph Valentino was one of the most famous men alive. But few knew that the star had a dirty secret that he desperately wanted to bury. The lurid tale began a decade earlier when former Yale football star and notorious playboy Jack de Saulles made headlines across three continents by pursuing the beautiful young Chilean heiress Blanca Errázuriz, known as the Star of Santiago. After the birth of their son, though, the marriage soured. Jack was going after every chorus girl on Broadway, claiming that Blanca had banished him from their bed. By 1916, Blanca wanted a divorce, rare then and even more so in a wealthy, powerful Catholic family. Enter Valentino, then still known as Rodolfo Guglielmi, a professional dancer in New York City, famous for the Argentinean tango. Blanca discovered that her husband had been sleeping with Joan Sawyer, Rodolfo’s dance partner, so she set about cultivating the hungry young performer. Whether Blanca and Guglielmi became lovers remains unclear, but the ambitious Italian gave evidence on her behalf in divorce court. Furious, de Saulles had Guglielmi arrested on trumped-up vice charges, tarnishing the dancer’s reputation. But Blanca was fighting bigger battles. De Saulles’s family had been pulling strings, persuading the courts to grant him partial custody of their child. When it appeared that he wasn’t going to return the boy to his mother’s care, Blanca exploded. On a sweltering August night in 1917, she drove to Jack’s mansion and shot him dead. Several people witnessed the act, but Blanca’s family hired the best defense lawyer around, who salvaged de Saulles’s reputation and made Blanca out to be a saint. During the “most sensational trial of the decade,” millions devoured the juicy details of how a high-society marriage violently unraveled. Guglielmi, desperate to avoid further poisonous publicity, fled to California, changed his name to Rudolph Valentino, and the rest is Hollywood history.

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. In the post–World War I American climate of isolationism, nativism, democratic expansion of civic rights, and consumerism, Italian-born star Rodolfo Valentino and Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini became surprising paragons of authoritarian male power and mass appeal. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States and Italy, Giorgio Bertellini’s work shows how their popularity, both political and erotic, largely depended on the efforts of public opinion managers, including publicists, journalists, and even ambassadors. Beyond the democratic celebrations of the Jazz Age, the promotion of their charismatic masculinity through spectacle and press coverage inaugurated the now-familiar convergence of popular celebrity and political authority. This is the first volume in the new Cinema Cultures in Contact series, coedited by Giorgio Bertellini, Richard Abel, and Matthew Solomon.

For more than a century, people have been drawn to sites of tragedy involving the rich, beautiful and notorious of Hollywood. Tourists at the center of the movie universe flock to Rudolph Valentino’s grave, the house where Marilyn Monroe died, the “O.J. murders” condo, the hotel where John Belushi overdosed, a myriad of haunted mansions. In its extensively researched and enlarged second edition, this book tells the stories of these locations and makes finding them simple. Seventeen driving tours include more than 650 sites. Each tour covers a specific area, from Hollywood and the Sunset Strip to Brentwood and Malibu, covering the entire Los Angeles basin. Concise, easy-to-follow directions are given to each location with 145 photos and the fascinating story behind each stop.

In 1928, searching for a career out of Hollywood, Natacha Rambova wrote a play called "All that Glitters." This play showed her hatred for Hollywood and the pain she felt as a movie star's wife (she was married to Rudolph Valentino for a few years). However, Natacha's film foray (which she was very upset over her eventual portrayal) and stage work did not live up to her expectations. She never produced or published this play. For years it was unknown whether the text existed. But here, Theodosia Tramp Publishing, is proud to present it for the first time. Whether you are a fan of Rambova, curious about what tidbits she'll divulge, or wishing to produce this script as a play or film, you will be pleased with this publication! Set in the Lavish 1920s, 20 something Henry dreams of living a lavish life with his wife Alice. One night working at a movie theatre, Henry is spotted by a group of film stars who declare he 'has it' and he should come in for a film test. He does and promptly rises to stardom. While Henry enjoys the good life, his wife is left to suffer and clean up his messes. Henry's arrogance soon overtakes his career. The good times are over? Or are they?

While the impact that legendary actors and actresses have had on the development of the Hollywood film industry is well known, few have recognised the power of movie fans on shaping the industry. This books redresses that balance, and is the first study of Hollywood's golden era to examine the period from the viewpoint of the fans. Using fan club journals, fan letters, studio production records, and other previously unpublished archival sources, Samantha Barbas reveals how the passion, enthusiasm, and ongoing activism of film fans in Hollywood's golden era transformed early cinema, the modern mass media and American popular culture.

Personal letters of Samuel Goldwyn's personal secretary provides an inside look at life as a young professional in 1920's Los Angeles.

A story of risk, adventure, and daring as four American bobsledders race for the gold in the most dangerous competition in Olympic history. In the 1930s, as the world hurtled toward war, speed was all the rage. Bobsledding, the fastest and most thrilling way to travel on land, had become a sensation. Exotic, exciting, and brutally dangerous, it was the must-see event of the 1932 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, the first Winter Games on American soil. Bobsledding required exceptional skill and extraordinary courage—qualities the American team had in abundance. There was Jay O’Brien, the high-society playboy; Tippy Grey, a scandal-prone Hollywood has-been; Eddie Eagan, world champion heavyweight boxer and Rhodes Scholar; and the charismatic Billy Fiske, the true heart of the team, despite being barely out of his teens. In the thick of the Great Depression, the nation was gripped by the story of these four men, their battle against jealous locals, treacherous U.S. officials, and the very same German athletes they would be fighting against in the war only a few short years later. Billy, king of speed to the end, would go on to become the first American fighter pilot killed in WWII. Evoking the glamour and recklessness of the Jazz Age, Speed Kings will thrill readers to the last page.

The Salome Ensemble probes the entangled lives, works, and passions of a political activist, a novelist, a screenwriter, and a movie actress who collaborated in 1920s New York City. Together they created the shape-shifting, genre-crossing Salome of the Tenements, first a popular novel and then a Hollywood movie. The title character was a combination Cinderella and Salome like the women who conceived her. Rose Pastor Stokes was the role model. Anzia Yezierska wrote the novel. Sonya Levien wrote the screenplay. Jetta Goudal played her on the silver screen. Ginsberg considers the women individually and collectively, exploring how they shaped and reflected their cultural landscape. These European Jewish immigrants pursued their own versions of the American dream, escaped the squalor of sweatshops, knew romance and heartache, and achieved prominence in politics, fashion, journalism, literature, and film.