SHEIKH OF ARABY RUDOLPH VALENTINO COMING BACK TO U.S. SILVER SCREEN

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34047, 10 January 1976, Page 12

SHEIKH OF ARABY RUDOLPH VALENTINO COMING BACK TO U.S. SILVER SCREEN

< By

CHARLES FOLEY.

in Hollywood, tor the Observer Foreign Slews Service)

The second coming of Rudolph Valentino is upon us. Hollywood, which is indulging in an orgy of nostalgia over its o\\Hpa>t( induced h v the immense financial success of “That’s Entertainment ). with films about Gable and Lombard, W. C. Fields, Errol Flynn and of hets in the making, has plans for a revival of the great lover industry.

At least five projects have been announced about the legendary idol of the silent screen to coincide with the 50th anniversary of hisi death at the age of 31 in 1926. British director Ken Russell leads the field, in prestige and budget-size.' with a wide screen version for United Artists starring another Rudy — Nureyev. Paramount has its own; Valentino “biopic” — to use the industry’s word — in the works. In Rome, “The Story of Valentino” is reportedly all set for shooting in an Italo-American production. Various other treatments of the dashing Sheikh’s life are bouncing around the studios. And Elvis Presley has been offered $2,500,000 to star in an Americanised version of j an Italian musical that has ( been kicking around for! years, called “Ciao, Rudy.” j

Ken Russell, whose outrageous extravaganza on the life of Franz Liszt is nauseating United States audiences, at present, first considered casting a black actor as Valentino, then tried for rock superstar David Bowie before inviting Nureyev to play the role. Negotiations are still under way, but the great dancer who defected from Russia’s Kirov Ballet 14 years ago is said to be very interested. Russell promises — and those who have seen his other films will believe him — that his version will be “different.” For one thing, he says, he’ll explore the Sheikh’s sex life, including his rumoured homosexuality, more deeply. If all this gives you a feeling akin to heartburn, imagine the sentiments of Valentino’s hard-core admirers — the sort of people who turn up each year on August 23 at a mausoleum

jin Hollvwood Memorial Park, Cemetery to mark the anni'versarv of their idols death. This gathering* has been a regular Hollywood in-p stitution since 1927, duti-p [fully attended by a photo-J grapher and a reporter or/ two. These days it is likely I' to include a sprinkling ofF teenage fans, dressed up in.' baggy Arabian-style pants, 11 with perhaps some actors I hopeful of inclusion in onei of the current projects. Va- 1 lentino lives! 1 Latin cover What makes him. after half J a century, a figure of such 1 fascination? Was it some| personal quality he pos-J sessed, or something that hisj* myriads of followers lacked I 1 and were determined to read f into the shadow on the ■ screen? His beginnings were < inauspicious. Born in Castellaneta, as small village in the heel of t Italy, near Taranto, Valen- i tino was the son of a moder-jt ately well-to-do veterinary [s surgeon and a schoolteacher |r of French extraction. Dis- ,

patched to the United States at the age of 19 by the family to make his fortune, Valentino quickly ran through the S4OOO he had been given, and went into showbiz by way of a stint as a “professional host” — a gigolo — at the tea dances in various New York restaurants. An excellent dancer, he graduated to the chorus of a musical, went to Hollywood where he played bit parts in several silent films before being picked by screenwriter June Mathis to star in “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” And at once Valentino was catapulted into the role of the great Latin lover, the dominant male—something completely new to the screen. The image of the upright, all-American, he-man hero was replaced overnight by this exotic, amoral, feline male in all kinds of silk-and-satin fancy dress. It was also the first time a foreigner was allowed to be the hero, and, as Mel Shavelson. producerdirector of a Valentino movie for N.B.C. television observes, “he was the first leading man, long before Jimmy Cagney, to slap a woman around.” Shavelson has beaten a crowded field to the post with his two-hour "Valentino,” seen recently on N.8.C., with the Italian actor Franco Nero in the lead. The critics were lukewarm: the film was well enough done, but it offered little insight into the star’s lasting appeal, no real exploration of his [ ambiguous sex life. Why did Valentino’s first j wife leave him on their wedding night? Why did his second wife, a dominating older woman who was more( interested in his career than in him. threaten blackmail when he tried to break away from her rigid control and sign studio contracts of which she disapproved? Behind legend

These questions are pertinent to an understanding of the Valentino phenomenon. According to one biography by Brad Steiger and Chaw Mank (the latter a long-time Hollywood publicist who set

I up the original Valentino fan clubs of the 1920 s and later (headed a Valentino Memorial Fund which helped perpetu.ate the legend), the second (wife, dancer Natacha Ram (bova. declared that if he interfered with her plan to (divorce him after the break. )she would “tell the world what kind of man he was, • 'man incapable of love, a freak, not a sheikh.” ■ This 1966 book, reissued to latch on to the present revival, portravs him as a bisexual who was often im-

potent with women and only felt comfortable with motherlv "madonna” types. Certainly Valentino was ruthlessly pursued by jealous husbands and journalists with charges of effeminacy and “unmanliness.” A scurrilous editorial attack in the Chicago "Tribune” headed “Pink Powder Puffs,” accused the actor of undermining the masculinity of the American male by using cosmetics, wearing floppy pants and a slave bracelet, not to mention, horror of horrors, a wrist-watch rather than the

‘ manly pocket watch. 'I The thin-skinned Valentino, plainly none too sure of him‘jself about his sexual orien- ■, tat ion, tried to silence such .talk by plaving the stud, getIting into fights with journalists, womanising frantically, 1 (drinking and partying until all hours. The strain was [too much: he developed a [ nervous condition which led to stomach ulcers and ' eventually to death. He died, i. says Mank, in “a pathetic , effort to prove his masculinity through an orgy of dissi- . pation.” I. Yet perhaps Valentino’s sexual ambiguity, his all- : ilhings-to-all-peopie mystique ' is at the heart of his appeal. That, and his romantic early [death, which reinforced his status as the symbol of release from the crippling i restraints of Victorian j hypocrisy. ! Possibly Ken Russell will (help to clarify the riddle J with his forth-coming movie. . Thanks to the success in the (United States of Russell’s “Tommy,” no expense is be- ( ing spared. The project was ! launched recently with a I splashy party in the Amen can Film Institute’s spacious i courtyard, dolled up with 'coloured tents, belly dancers, vaguely Arabian music, and (plates of shish-kebab, with Russell himself, in a white 11926 suit and English old school tie. explaining that he i did not plan to try to sepai' ate the man from the myth (because the two were, in 4 sense, one. “Valentino was (someone on whom people put their fantasies.” Given Russell’s predehcItion for the grotesque, he (should have a field-day with Valentino’s funeral, a danse macabre attended bv a frenzied crowd of 80,000 who trampled one another underfoot, smashed windows, and kept two emergency hospitals and a force of 200 police i busy in their hysterical eff

lorts to approach the bier of the Sheikh. It was an orgiasItic spectacular that far outclassed any movie made by (the young immigrant from [Castellaneta. —O.F.N.S. Copvright.