The morning of Monday, Aug. 16, 1926, while at my father’s chateau in Juan les Pins on the Riviera, I received a cable from George Ullman, sent at Rudy’s request, telling me of his sudden illness and operation. This came as a great shock to all of us for we thought him in the best of health. Although the message hinted that the illness was grave, we had no idea how grave it was. Aware, as we were, of Rudy’s splendid strength and unusual physical resistance, it did not occur to us for a moment that he might not recover. Nevertheless, the news worried me and, in the unexpected anxiety it aroused, all the petty resentment of our misunderstandings faded from my mind. Once again, he was the same old Rudy, in trouble, and he needed me. I cabled immediately that I would come to New York by the first sailing if he wanted me. “I never received an answer to that cable.” If Rudy received it at all it was while he was in a state of unconsciousness. Death came with unexpected swiftness. Even as the next two days passed we did not realize the danger. Mr. Ullman continued to notify us almost hourly of each slight change in Rudy’s condition and the news in his cables, as .they came, seemed favorable rather than discouraging. The actual presage of his death came through psychic communications. It happened that as guest at the chateau at that particular time was George Wehner, the distinguished American psychic, who had led us far along the ways of understanding of the spirit world. It had become our custom to have family sittings from time to time, with Mr. Wehner acting as medium. Wednesday evening during one of these sittings, while Mr. Wehner was in a state of deep trance, Rudy “came through.” We were first aware of his presence by mutterings of a few almost incoherent words and the repeated calling of auntie’s name and mine. This did not surprise or terrify us. Those who have investigated psychic phenomena know that it is not at all unusual for the consciousness of a person still living in the earth world to manifest itself or communicate at a distance while the body is sleeping or unconscious. On waking the person may remember these experiences in the form of a dream. Friday morning my cable from Mr. Ullman brought us news that Rudy was better—greatly improved and on the road to recovery. We were enormously cheered. That evening we were impressed to have another sitting. Almost immediately after Mr. Wehner was in trance, Black Feather, Rudy’s Indian friend who once had saved his life, “came through” to tell us that he was the chief and would not leave him. Then Jenny spoke, saying she had been constantly with Rudy since the beginning of his illness. He himself had seen her and called her name as he was taken to the ambulance. In confirmation of this X received a letter from my sister in New York the very week of Rudy’s passing, giving me details of his illness; explaining among other things, that Mr. and Mrs. Ullman had told her that Rudy kept calling the name of “Jenny” as he was being taken in the ambulance from his hotel. These communications from Jenny and Black Feather worried me. I could not reconcile them to the cheerful news of the morning’s cable for they seemed neither happy nor hopeful. And now, to cause me ever greater concern, a teacher from whom Rudy and I had received many lessons in the past, took control and talked to me gently, kindlv of personal things between Rudy and myself, and with such compassion as I had never heard him use. He spoke of Rudy’s great love for me, his life, his character and career, and explained that his term on this earth schoolroom was completed. Within the next few days he would pass to another plane of consciousness in this ever-continuing life. Early next morning I cabled Mr. Ullman for news of Rudy’s condition. The cable was not answered. What was there to say? We had been given the answer the night before, but had refused to accept it as truth, for what we do not wish to realize we try to stifle in our hearts. Monday morning I awoke to find the atmosphere of my room heavy with the perfume of tuberoses—and then I knew Rudy had passed on. When on Tuesday the delayed cables arrived announcing his death, I was grateful to the prophecy from the other world whose kindness and understanding had softened the cruelty of this news. The third day after his passing Rudy came to us for the first time, led by his mother, Gabriella. His attitude of mind, resentment at having been taken at the height of his career while his work he felt was not yet completed, made this first contact an unhappy one. He spoke not clearly but incoherently, remained with us only a moment, called auntie’s name and left suddenly. Then his mother spoke with us. She was almost distracted by his state of mind and regretted the day she had ever allowed him to leave Italy. What was the benefit of a success that had brought him to such bitterness aad anguish? Then others came to comfort us. They explained in a beautiful way that Rudy’s attitude was only natural. With all the force of world thought and grief directed upon him, nothing else was possible. We must have patience and each of us try to help him in our several ways. They, too, would help him, and this first darkness and despair would soon pass. It has, for I have communicated with Rudy very often since then and I know he is happy, still continuing on another plane the work he only began on this earth. Many will smile at what I am writing now, give it no credence, I discard it as the phantasms of my I brain. But a few years ago those same people would have smiled with I equal skepticism at the messages I the radio brings us to-day. How, I they would ask, can voices picked | out of the air be transmitted by an; unseen force over miles of empty | space? To-day no one doubts the validity of radio transmission. It is I just another scientific phenomenon to which yesterday we were blind. Each new development of science, from the steam car to the aero-plant, from the lightning rod to the telephone was at first hailed as a fraud by those who had not yet tested it. In the astounding revelations of the last quarter century, we are only beginning to comprehend the unseen forces of the universe which man has not yet utilized. Those who have not yet received test messages from the other world find it difficult to believe in communication after death. The man who has never heard a radio would be loud to declare that there is no such thing as music In the air about us. But we who have listened to it pay no attention to his beratings. We know he has never investigated it. For this reason, I am untouched by the stupid criticism of those who insist it is impossible for me to talk with Rudy, who has passed on to another plane apart from and above my own. How do I know these messages are not frauds? Can I see Rudy or touch him? But when my mother calls me by long distance phone from Chicago or from Paris, I cannot see her, but I hear her voice and I know it is she by the idiosyncrasies of her speech, by what she says and the way she says it. Fraud or impersonation would be impossible. The same is true of my messages from Rudy. If during the period I knew and lived with Rudolph Valentino I did not learn to know him better than to be duped by fraudulent messages, then I am a gullible fool! Fraud is for those who are willing to accept it. Truth is for those who seek it. Thus, I dismiss the subject for my belief is secure. Rudy was dead—yet he still lives, for life is ever-continuing. In all contemporary history there is only one young man who in his 20s was strong enough to withstand the great deluge of fame, adulation and flattery that was heaped on Rudolph Valentino.
Monthly Archives: Oct 2015
3 May 1938 – Rudolph Valentino By His Wife Natacha Rambova
28 Nov 1924-A Movie Poet
Rudolph Valentino, the cinema actor, is a poet. He. is publishing a collection of short poems in a volume entitled ‘Day Dreams.’ If Valentino’s verses are as ‘soulful’ as he endeavours to make his acting at times, his feminine admirers will experience further emotional thrills.
11 Apr 1923 – Valentino Doesn’t Understand Women Tells Small Akron Audience
Mr & Mrs. Valentino appeared at the armory Sunday afternoon and evening with their own band. It was a most disappointing exhibition, and audiences of both performance fell way below expectations. Mr and Mrs. Valentino danced exactly 40 minutes. He then spoke briefly on his picture work. The afternoon audience waited patiently for almost two hours because the train carrying the Valentinos was hours late. “If I ever make another Sheik picture, it will be an honest-to-God last one. “Why, I didn’t even look like a Sheik in the other one. I was a drawing room hero. “Don’t you like flappers?” someone asked. “That’s a subject I never discuss. I am not qualified as a judge of women. Any man who says he understands women is either a fool or a liar”.
“ I am in the dark, I don’t know what she is going to do. All I can do is await the lady’s pleasure”..Rudolph Valentino on the status of his marriage 9 Nov 1925.
11 Nov 1924 – Valentino in Spain
Rudolph Valentino returned with wife Natacha Rambova from a trip to Spain. He wore a small goatee beard. Which he said would be needed in he picture he is going to do in California, the scene of which is laid in Spain in the 14th century. The play will centre on the romantic days of the Moors at Granada and their encounters with the Spanish knights who sought to drive them from their stronghold. He said he had visited Seville, Madrid, Granada, and Cordova and found them very interesting. Nita Naldi who accompanied the couple on the trip will play opposite Valentino in the new film and is to be produced by the Ritz-Carlton Film Company
These boys in Valentino pants. Don’t give poor Rudolph half a chance. Marion High School, Marion, IN, 1923
24 Mar 1928 – Male Movie Stars more fussy about hair
A woman is fundamentally the same, whether she is a movie star or a Park Ave society bud the happiest moment in her life is when her hair turns out just right. But that does not mean that women have a corner in the personal vanity market. NO woman in the world could be more fussy about their hair than a male movie star. These are the deductions of an expert, Ferdinand Joseph Graf, for three years, the official hairdresser to moviedom who is now at Arnold Constables. Mr. Grafs first job with Famous Players was to prepare the wigs for Valentino in “Monsieur Beaucaire”. Natacha Rambova the stars wife, brought him out to the studio from the 5th Ave beauty parlor she patronized for that purpose. He liked the work so well and the stars apparently liked him so he well became the official hairdresser at the studio for three years.
Screen success is due not only to mental and histrionic qualities, but to physical culture and development. Rudolph Valentino, 1923
1997 – Crown Point, IN
Crown Point became the marriage mill of the Midwest because couples could obtain a license and be married immediately by justices of the peace with offices nearby, by the city’s mayor, clerk-treasurer or local judges. For example, on March 14, 1923, Rodolfo Guglielmi (AKA Rudolph Valentino) and art director Winifred de Wolfe (AKA Natacha Rambova) applied for a marriage license. They had traveled to Chicago to be married when his divorce from his first wife became final, then learned that Illinois law required a year’s wait for a remarriage. They traveled to Crown Point, where he took out a marriage license listing his birth name as Rodolfo Alfonzo Rafaelo Pierre Filbert Guglielmi de Valentine D’Antonguola, and his occupation as motion picture player. “As he left the (license) office, Valentino (and his bride) crossed the street and went to the second story of the building where Howard Kemp, the justice of the peace, performed the ceremony,” recalled Wilbur Heidbreder, now 92, who worked for the Lake County Title Co. and was at the Old Courthouse at the time of Valentino’s wedding. After the ceremony, the couple strolled by a few stores and stopped in a bakery, where the heartthrob bought a doughnut for his new bride, Heidbreder recalled.
27 Dec 1921 – Matinee Girls at the Movies
Four beautiful matinee girls enthralled by “The Sheik.” Deep down in her heart each Matinee Girl is thinking: “Oh, how lovely it would be if a big handsome sheik would only steal me away!” “The matinee girl on the extreme left has about made up her mind to look into it. “Dear Answer Man,” she’ll write to her favorite movie magazine, “is Rudolph Valentino married?” She will sign it “Sultana.”
17 Jun 1925 And Wedded Bliss Thrives On
Who said anything about divorces in the film colony? It’s perfectly proper of course, to make some remarks about the subject occasionally. The facts are, of course, that while there have seemed recently to be indications of an outbreak of domestic unhappiness, there are always and every equally plentiful examples of the prevalence of the joys of home life. Only, as a rule, they do not achieve quite as much notoriety as the disturbances. Rudolph Valentino and Natacha Rambova are notably devoted. They share their artistic interests, and of late Mrs. Valentino has assumed the role of producer of her own pictures.
12 Oct 1929 – A First Glance At New Books
Add to the horrors of house to house canvassing and the collection of bills and the threat of red-haired psychic woman, who calling upon her control, was seized with a superhuman strength and threw a fresh expressman down the stairs. And if you don’t believe it, there it is in print on page 111 of “A Curious Life” by George Wehner an interesting but doubtful book. Mr. Wehner in the book admits he is possessed of a familiar and so he ought to know whether a red-haired lady in possession of her favourite spirit could throw a big man down stairs like the gander descending upon the man who wouldn’t say his prayers. He says she can. Among Mr. Wehner’s spirits is Frank “who generally opens my séances by whistling very beautifully”. Leota, rechristened Lolita by Dorothy Benjamin Caruso is a guide frequently difficult to understand. She is a wise-cracker and apparently an Indian. Alestes reveals the hidden meanings of dreams and in no such manner as that of Dr. Sigmund Freud. Dr. Freeman is the guide who helps the author go into a trance, while Rudolph Valentino is breaking his heart trying to become one of Mr. Wehner’s guides. Black Hawk on the other hand has already succeeded and can tell what is ailing people with an uncanny precision not usually associated with a dead Indian Chief or an eight-cylindered motorcar.It is all very interesting and doubt less Mr. Wehner believes it is all very true. The reader, addicted perhaps in such material and non-occult matters as the march of Eli Yale through Georgia or the slaughter wrought by the Athletic batsmen on the Cubs pitching staff will be more likely to raise an eyebrow to ask how the author gets that way. It might be recorded however that Valentino told Natacha Rambova he knew she would come to the séance in New York. Which suggests that Mr. Banton, the District Attorney and Mr. LaGuardia, the candidate for Mayor, and Mr. Enright who didn’t solve the Dot King and Elswell murders, might better get into consultation right away with Mr. Wehner. Perhaps Black Hawk or Alestes or Lolita or Rudolph Valentino could tell them who really did shoot Arnold Rothstein.
17 Mar 1949 – Valentino Shrine Plans for Former Home Fade
Maybe the Sheik’s omnipresence is fading. At any rate, plans for converting Falcon’s Lair, Rudolph Valentino’s home until his death in 1926, into a shrine for the lovelorn have apparently gone awry. In San Francisco, the head of a Bay City Group of five women who purchased the fabulous hilltop mansion several weeks ago admitted disillusionment over the project. Robert T. LeFevre was quoted as saying people drop into the place “but only because they gotten lost in the hills”. The only ones who have shown any interest in the shrine idea were several old ladies, three Italians and a British spiritualist. In addition to which, he went on, the idea of firing a nightly red, white and blue rocket skyward was quashed by the law. The red incidentally was to be for passion LeFevre added. Even the idea of a wishing well on the grounds for Valentino worshippers fizzled when it was found that pennies killed the goldfish.
13 Jul 1922 – Commentary
I hate the Sheik, I think he’s a ‘he-vamp.’ and I hate the way he rolls his eyes, l know Sydney girls have got Rudolphitis and I know that my young wife sees the Sheik in everything – the grilling steak holds his image the wringer holds his spirit. But I hate him. I hate a man who rolls his eyes snd behaves like a Spanish senorita. I cannot understand the army of girls who have fallen to his cheap charms. Girls who see romance in the Sheik would see romance in the butchers boy. They represent decadent flapperitis in its most advanced stage. Give me a man like ‘B.J’ Hart, who represents manhood in its greatest sense. Why is It that the fair, frail flappers of Sydney have gone on about a man who rolls bis eyes and makes prisoner of a poor, pure pretty girl alone and defenceless. Do they approve of his lax morality? Is it an indication of degeneration! Do the girls of todays countenance a man who defies decency to compromise an Innocent woman?
All About Rudolph Valentino 
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