The rise to star­dom of the orig­i­nal Hol­ly­wood “Latin lover”, Rudolph Valenti­no, is a remark­able one. I’m pret­ty sure nobody who knew him in his child­hood could have had the slight­est inkling of what lay in store for him: he was born in 1895 in Castel­lan­e­ta, at the top of the heel of Italy, to a cap­tain of cav­al­ry in the Ital­ian army and a French moth­er. Although even as a boy he was known for his excep­tion­al looks, he did poor­ly at school, squeezed a cer­tifi­cate out of agri­cul­tur­al col­lege in Genoa, and couldn’t find work. As with so many oth­ers, he depart­ed for the Unit­ed States, and was processed at Ellis Island in 1913, aged 18.

Rodol­fo, as he was then (real name: Rodol­fo Alfon­so Raf­fael­lo Pierre Fil­ib­er­to Gugliel­mi di Valenti­na d’An­tonguel­la), sought work bussing tables at var­i­ous New York restau­rants. He was fired sev­er­al times, but even­tu­al­ly one skill that he did have – danc­ing – secured him work as a “taxi dancer” (hired to dance with cus­tomers) at Maxim’s Restau­rant-Cabaret. He befriend­ed a Chilean heiress there and became entan­gled in some­thing of a scan­dal which moti­vat­ed him to leave town, join­ing a trav­el­ling musi­cal which took him to the West Coast.

It was on the West Coast that things start­ed hap­pen­ing for Rodol­fo; he was encour­aged to seek screen roles and his “exot­ic” looks led him to win bit parts in sev­er­al movies. His big break, though, came when he won a lead role in the 1921 silent movie, The Four Horse­men of the Apoc­a­lypse, which became a com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal suc­cess and cat­a­pult­ed him to star­dom. He was mar­ket­ed as the “Latin lover” with a new stage name, and the movies The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle, and The Son of the Sheik all fol­lowed, each one cement­ing Valentino’s rep­u­ta­tion and star qual­i­ty.

He soon became the arche­typ­al sex sym­bol of the silent movie era, along­side the fair-com­plex­ioned, all-Amer­i­can male leads Wal­lace Reid and Dou­glas Fair­banks Junior, as well as the oth­er con­tem­po­rary hearththrob mat­inée idol of for­eign extrac­tion, Tokyo-born Ses­sue Hayakawa (who decades lat­er would appear as Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the Riv­er Kwai). Valentino’s sta­tus as a cul­tur­al icon was sealed in 1926 by his ear­ly death from peri­toni­tis, aged just 31. Mass hys­te­ria ensued, and indeed the events of Valentino’s funer­al are a sto­ry in them­selves (100,000 lined the streets to pay their respects, but so much dis­or­der broke out that 100 mount­ed NYPD offi­cers were need­ed to restore order).

Here is a mon­tage of Valenti­no footage in var­i­ous pub­lic­i­ty shots and off-screen sce­nar­ios – if your only image of him is in cos­tume and make-up (per­haps as “the Sheik”), then you might find this quite com­pelling and worth view­ing to get an insight into the “real” Valenti­no and why the women swooned…feast your eyes!