11 - Valentino leads intellectual migration

Hollywood movie star was one of first Italians to head towards United States' west

Between late 1916 and early 1917, a tall, elegant young man with deep eyes arrived in Los Angeles via Paris, New York and San Francisco. Leaving his native Castellaneta, in the Italian province of Taranto, he told his brother: "Italy is too small for me, I'll go to America." His name was Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Filiberto Guglielmi. Within a few years, the world would know him as Rudolph Valentino.
His artistic sensitivity and natural charm turned him into the greatest actor of silent movies and the man of dreams of a great many admirers. He interpreted with fervent intensity the fatal and dark seducer. This character, which had an immediate impact on the audience, was immediately seized upon by the motion picture industry, which at the time was creating its headquarters on the hills of Hollywood. This was a good decision; The Eagle, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Camille, to mention but a few of Valentino's films, made history in world cinema.
When The Son of the Sheik, possibly his best film, was being released in theatres, Rudolph Valentino fell suddenly ill. He was brought to the hospital where he was diagnosed with gastric ulcer and appendicitis. To try and save him, the surgeons performed an emergency operation, but it was useless. He died on August 23, 1926, at the age of 31.
His funerals were imposing. There were two of them, one in New York City, the other in Los Angeles. An ocean of flowers and people, and the tears and fainting spells of his fans, accompanied his coffin to the Hollywood Cathedral Mausoleum in the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery (now called Hollywood Forever Cemetery) in Los Angeles, where it still lies.
As seen from our times and from the places that witnessed his success, Valentino (for decades simply "Rudy") anticipated the intellectual emigration that today can be an added bonus for Italy. "Here in Los Angeles, and then in San Francisco, Hollywood, or Silicon Valley," says Mario Trecco, publisher and editor of L'Italo-Americano, the most widely distributed Italian weekly in California, founded 93 years ago, "Italian professionals, intellectuals, and businesspeople feel at home. I'm not referring to the children and grandchildren of the immigrants, who also occupy high positions; I'm talking of those who arrived here in the last 15 or 20 years, usually with a master's degree, and were successful."
One of them is Giampaolo Goattin from Verona, a major in the Italian Air Force, who was named as "Flight Commander of the Year," a prestigious recognition from the USAF. It happened a few months ago. For the past two years Major Goattin has been an instructor at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, working at a training program for "top guns" from all over the world. For the first time ever, the award this year did not go to a U.S. pilot. This was major news in America.
"In California there are over two million Americans of Italian heritage," continues Mario Trecco. "But on this side of the United States there are other large communities in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona; Albuquerque and Gallup, New Mexico; Las Vegas and Sparks, Nevada. They amount to between 230,000 and 250,000 people."
What are Italian-Americans like, nowadays? "Broadly speaking, they have attended university and have a profitable profession or business," says Trecco. "There are no poor among the Italian-Americans who live in California."
On the other hand, Italian immigrants here always entered the quietest and safest economic sectors. During the Gold Rush, 150 years ago, they steered clear of the risky business of getting a concession and mining gold; they preferred letting other people do that. Instead they went into trading (an activity that had gained new impulse from fresh capital), services, running bars, banking.
In more recent times - some 50 years ago - they were active in the fishing industry (e.g. in San Pedro, Los Angeles, or San Diego) and, inland, in agriculture: wine, cotton, dairy products. "Those were the industries where Italians were more visible," says Trecco, "because Italians integrated in every sector of society."
Dialects survive among these people, kept alive mostly by elders, and for this very reason there is just moderate interest for publications in Italian. The demand for RAI programs is on the rise, however. Maybe, if one has only a partial understanding of the language, visuals can help.
In recent years though, there has been a revival of the Italian language and culture, despite the policy of the melting pot where the main ingredient is the U.S. mainstream. Thanks to pressure and donations from Italian-American associations, the Italian language has been introduced in numerous high schools in Los Angeles; in the rest of California there are excellent private courses.
What is the reason for this revival? "The third generation of Italian-Americans," replies Trecco. "These youth are fully American, but display typical Italian sensitivity and curiosity. The dominant feeling among first generations is, or was, one of nostalgia; second generations showed more or less indifference towards Italy; third generations are returning to their roots, in a rational as well as sentimental way, with a proud rediscovery. This generates the need to learn and understand more."
Today over 28,000 Italian-Californians are entitled to vote for the Parliament in Rome, according to the lists kept by the Consulates General of San Francisco and Los Angeles. "Do you want to know what I really think?" asks Trecco. "Well, this whole story of the vote could have been solved in a simpler way. Had they thought of it, it would have taken much less time."
Which simpler way? Trecco explains "They should have found a way to let us vote by mail, like many other modern countries. After all, Italians who lived abroad had never been stripped of their voting rights, but they could not exercise it because of the need to go and vote in Italy. With this kind of solution, I mean the Foreign Ward, I think that we shall have problems, because they have politicized a problem that was not political."
On the other hand, the decision taken in 1908 by Gabriello Spini of Florence, to found L'Italo-Americano was political, as well as cultural. At the time the Californian community was still called a 'colony', and it needed a newspaper that helped it in achieving self-awareness. Considering the results, Spini's mission was accomplished. When his newspaper started to consolidate, he had his 18-year-old nephew, Cleto Mario Baroni, come from Italy, and for almost 50 years he would be the soul of the weekly. In his old age Baroni sold the newspaper to the Scalabrinian Order, which entrusted its editorship to Trecco, with the task of revamping it.
Trecco did that by introducing an English section, increasing and enriching the pages and purchasing another ancient weekly, San Francisco's L'Eco d'Italia, merging it with L'Italo-Americano. Almost as a natural consequence, in 2000 Trecco became the owner of the publication.
What next? "We must answer the demand for Italy that comes from the third generation. Newspapers, you know it as well as I do, are made also for this."

Publication Date: 2002-10-06
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=1842