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Mar 26,2006 - Apr 2,2006 |
11 - Valentino leads intellectual migration
Hollywood movie star was one of first Italians to head towards United States' west
By Antonio Maglio
Originally Published: 2002-10-06
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Rudolph Valentino
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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."
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