Oh Mister Rudolph Valentino / I know I've got the Valentino blues
And
when you come up on the screen / Oh! You're so romantic, I go frantic
at the views [1]
I.
Like many men at the time [2], D. H. Lawrence was not a fan of cinema's greatest male sex symbol of the silent era, Rudolph Valentino, the so-called Latin Lover [3]:
"We think ... a handsome man must look like Rudolf Valentino. ... But ... there is a greater essential beauty in Charlie Chaplin's odd face than there ever was in Valentino's ... which only pleases because it satisfies some ready-made notion of handsomeness." [4]
II.
As the above quote makes clear, Lawrence dislikes Valentino because he thinks the latter reinforces a stereotypical ideal of beauty.
But he also accuses actors cast in the same mold as Valentino of conterfeit emotion and of stimulating such in their audience. In a poem written about his experience at the cinema, for example, Lawrence jeers at the black-and-white feelings and fake ecstasies pretended by those who moan with pleasure when watching close-up kisses on a screen [5].
One suspects that, just as he thinks Valentino's sex appeal to be essentialy false, Lawrence might also have cast doubt on the actor's masculinity if given the chance to do so and may even have agreed with the attack upon him by the Chicago Tribune in the so-called 'Pink Powder Puffs' controversy ....
III.
There had long been those who had called Valentino's manliness and, by unspoken implication, his heterosexuality into question.
Some all-American boys - fair of face and blue of eye - felt threatened by his dark good looks and strange foreign manner; particularly as these things clearly excited the all-American girl. Anti-Italian racism was not uncommon at this time and if wops could also be seen as effeminate as well as criminal and foolish, then that was all the more reason to despise them.
Thus, Valentino's critics repeatedly pointed to his pomaded hair, his dandyish dress sense, and the misogyny that seemed to underlie his treatement of women.
This abuse came to a peak - whilst paradoxically hitting a new low - when an editorial in the Chicago Tribune concerning the installation of a facial powder dispenser in a gentleman's washroom at one of the cities leading hotels, decryed the feminization of American men and pinned the blame for this on Valentino and his movies.
The article, published on 18 July 1926, so infuriated Valentino that he challenged the anonymous writer to a fight [6]. As this challenge was not taken up, Valentino sought advice from others, including the writer H. L. Mencken, on how else to respond to such an infamous libel [7].
Unfortunately, however, Valentino didn't get the chance to take matters any further; for he was to die in hospital following surgery the following month, aged just 31.
IV.
Since his premature death in August 1926 [8], rumours have continued to circulate regarding Valentino's sexuality; was he secretly homosexual; was he bi-curious; or - as the evidence suggests and his recent biographers [9] conclude - was he in fact a genuine lover of the ladies, with no desire to suck cock ...?
Who knows?
And these days, who cares? Thankfully, a man can now present another man with an art deco dildo without everyone rushing to judgement, or speculating as to what such a gift reveals about that person's orientation or sexual preferences.
Even Lawrence, who may not have been a fan of Valentino's - and often addressed questions around gender and sexuality in a way that many might now find problematic to say the least - conceded that the most girlish looking men often have "the finest maleness, once it is put to the test" [10].
Don't you ever stop being dandy
showing me you're handsome [11]
Notes
[1]
Lyrics from 'Rodolph Valentino Blues', by Jack Frost (published by Jack Mills Inc., 1922). For a recent version of the song uploaded to YouTube by valentinolover70, click here.
Note that the spelling of Valentino's first name is not an error; in February, 1922 Life magazine reported that he would henceforth prefer to be known as Rodolph rather than Rudolph. This semi-Italianised styling of the name seems not to have caught on, however.
[2] As the author of the WordPress blog Rudolph Valentino-Connections writes, Valentino was a target of innuendo, racism, and ridicule almost from the start of his career. In the July 1922 issue of Photoplay, for example, which featured Valentino on the cover, the cartoonist and illustrator Dick Dorgan wrote a piece entitled 'Song of Hate' which asserted that all men hate the actor for his foreign features, including his slicked hair and glistening white teeth.
Click here to access the post, which also includes the 'Pink Powder Puffs' editorial in the Chicago Tribune (18 July 1926) which we shall discuss shortly and which declares: 'Better a rule by masculine women than by effeminate men.'
[3] Valentino was born in southern Italy, but arrived in New York in December 1913, aged 18. Although eligible - and despite becoming a Hollywood icon thanks to his exceptional good looks, personal charm, and unique talent - he never completed an application for US citizenship.
Undoubtedly the role that defined not only Valentino's career but his image and legacy, was that of Ahmed Ben Hassan in The Sheik (dir. George Melford, 1921) - much to his own irritation.
[4] D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 145-146.
What Valentino thought of Lawrence's looks is not, as far as I know, on record. But, interestingly, Clark Gable - the actor promoted as Valentino's successor after the latter's untimely death in 1926 - named Lawrence as his favourite author. See the article 'Will Gable Take the Place of Valentino', by Gladys Hall, in Movie Classic (November 1931), which can be read on the Clark Gable archive site dearmrgable.com: click here.
[5] See the poem 'When I went to the film' in D. H. Lawrence, The Poems, Vol. I., ed. Christopher Pollnitz (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 385.
[6] Although Valentino didn't get to fight the writer of the Pink Powder Puffs editorial, he did box sports writer Frank ONeill from the New York Evening Journal, who volunteered to fight in place of his colleague from the Chicago Tribune. Valentino - who had been trained by world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey - won the fight. Afterwards, Dempsey described Valentino as the most virile and masculine of all the actors he had worked with.
[7] Mencken, who found Valentino very likeable, advised the latter to simply let the whole thing fizzle out. After Valentino's death - just a month later - Mencken published a sympathetic piece in the Baltimore Sun, in which he claimed that it was not the Chicago episode that really upset Valentino, but the grotesque futility of his life as a famous film star. See H. L. Mencken, 'Valentino', in A Mencken Chrestomathy, (Vintage Books, 1982), pp. 281-284.
[8] Valentino died on 23 August 1926 from infections following surgery for perforated gastric ulcers. A future post discussing the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his death and his posthumous life will follow shortly.
[9] See, for example, Emily W. Leider's biography Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino (Faber & Faber, 2003).
[10] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 126.
[11] Lyrics from 'Prince Charming' by Adam and the Ants, a single release from the studio album Prince Charming (CBS, 1981), which reached number 1 in the UK charts. The video for the song, directed Mike Mansfield, famously ends with Adam singing the chorus refrain - ridicule is nothing to be scared of - in the guise of several iconic male figures, including Valentino as Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan. Click here to play on YouTube.
