Marguerite Namara, the famous and brilliant young American beauty who has won fame and fortune in two worlds by the voice and dramatic ability, has forsaken the operatic stage to conquer the world of the movies. Miss Namara will be seen at the Star Court Theatre in her big production, ‘Stolen Moments,” with Rudolph Valentino, of “The Sheik” fame, to-night. The management, of the Star Court Theatre, after much negotiation, secured this famous picture for a limited engagement, and consider it one. of the events of the season. The story of the photoplay is from the prolific pen of IT. Thompson Rich, who has written many of the most successful plays of the past few seasons. He was commissioned at. a high price to supply Madame Namara’s first, film vehicle, “and if the metropolitan critic know what they are talking about, his work ranks high among his notable achievements as a writer. One of the features of the production are the gowns worn by Miss Namara, which were designed by the famous Chicot, of Paris, and imported.to America especially for use in “Stolen Momenta.” Good, clever comedies are to-day as rare as philanthropists, and in “Just Out of College,” a master picture also shown here to night, a Beanford in the comedy line is presented. Clean, fascinating, and clever, it exudes the spirit of adventuresome youth, and builds up in climaxes that astound us with their uniqueness and complexity. The plot is based on love and pickles, so that sounds good enough, but the film will prove to be amusing and gripping as the best; you’ve ever seen.
Monthly Archives: Jan 2016
1920’s – Rudolph Valentino and NY Speakeasies
Rudolph Valentino was a native New Yorker till the end of his days frequently returning to a place of friends, business connections, and favorite hang-outs. In the 1920’s, Rudolph Valentino was no different than any other famous man about town going to many famous establishments for dinner and entertainment. At the time, Speakeasy’s were the norm with over 30,000 in the city alone. There were a couple of speakeasy’s that were favorite places of his to visit the King Cole room at the Knickerbocker Hotel on West 42nd Street, and the 300 Club, at 151 W. 54th Street. Both were underground and successfully ran and the favorite hang-out of the rich, politicians, broadway and silent film actors of the day. The King Cole Room was famous for the invention of the Bloody Mary. Also, there is a lifelike picture of “Old King Cole and His Fiddlers Three” from the brush of Maxfield Parrish that still exists today. The walls and ceilings in the establishment were fitted in oak paneling and the tables were elaborately carved.
The 300 Club named for the maximum amount of people allowed in the establishment. It was a place where Hollywood and NY agents would gather to meet with up and coming talent. Larry Fay who owned his own speakeasy on West 47th Street was able to convince his friend Texas Guinan to open her own establishment. The 300 Club was small and exclusive and a new home to city’s status elite. but the entertainment offered was very erotic for the time in the form of fan dancers. For more information please read Allen Ellenberger’s Book “The Valentino Mystique”.
21 Sep 1957 – George Raft on Rudolph Valentino
One of the few souvenirs, I have left is a huge photograph of a dark, sultry young man with sleek black hair and most people say, “Why thats Rudolph Valentino. Did you know him”? Yes, I knew him intimately. We were ballroom gigolos together. But that man in the photo is not Valentino. Its me made up and photographed to look like Valentino. When Rudy died so tragically, the promoters were knocking on my door an hour after the funeral saying. “Here’s your chance Georgie. Your a dead ringer for Rudy and you can step right into his shoes”. They dressed me in a Gaucho costume and they took pictures. One enterprising theater man offered me $1500 a week if I’d work up an act with Jean Acker, Valentino’s first wife. I said the hell with it. But I keep the photograph on my bedroom wall just to remind me that no man can step into another’s shoes on resemblance alone.
1924- When Valentino Went to Court
The result was that when Valentino arrived he had to have police assistance to force his way through the crowd of women that stormed the courtroom just to see him. Hundreds of women thronged the side-walks, refusing to obey the orders of the police to move on. They were on hand when Rudy arrived and there were more of them when he left, after paying half the bill of $165.00. It was ten minutes after he came out of the courtroom before the police could make a way for his automobile through the crowd. Such is the price of fame.
1925 – Cobra Movie Revue
COBRA, with Rudolph Valentino, Nita Naldi, Casson Ferguson, Gertrude Olmstead, Claire de Orez, Eileen Percy, Lillian Langdon, Henry Barrows and Rosa Rosanova, adapted from Martin Brown’s play, directed by Joseph Henabery; divertissements, with singing and dancing; “M. W. Balfe,” one of the “Music Master” series; Kharum, Persian pianist. At the Rivoli Edmund Goulding, who has contributed some sterling adaptations to the screen, including that of “Tolable David.” falls far short of his usual standard in the picturization of the musical comedy, “Sally, Irene and Mary,” which he directed as well as adapted. This subject emerges from Hollywood as a species of “melodrama packed with trite ideas and appallingly obvious situations. It is a tawdry preachment concerned with the night life of gold-digging chorus girls, at the close of which the old-fashioned moral holds good. The captions allude to the “Wolves of Broadway.” and the libertine of this picture, Marcus Morton, is designated the “leader of the pack.” Judging from that which is thrown on the screen, Mr. Morton thinks of nothing else except stage beauties, and one opines that he looks in exceedingly good health considering the hours he keeps. Mr. Goulding reminds the spectators that a girl has been out all night, and he shows that she is still so full of life that she enthuse to her friends about the beautiful weather—the sun is pouring its rays through the window curtains. Mary, impersonated by Sally O’Neill, learns so much about the night life that she decides to refuse wealth and return to her Jimmy Dugan, a rather awkward young man who wears the same shirt day after day. Irene, who is loved by a millionaire, is killed in an automobile wreck, which tragedy brings home to the girls the error of their ways, or at least, the fact that they are playing with fire. There is quite an imposing sequence picturing a scene on the stage with the audience in the theatre. It is perhaps the best thing in this effort, and even this is spoiled at the end by a visitation of Irene’s ghost.No picture of this caliber would be quite complete without a moon. Here, through the clouds one perceives a new moon, which is followed by the frolicsome Mary and silk-shirted Jimmy embracing each other. For suspense there is the telegraph operator writing a message as it comes over the wire, with long pauses between words. The séance’s, in the vernacular, are made to suit the occasion, and as this operator writes, the scene is switched to one of a girl and a man in a car racing with an express train, the girl leaning over and kissing the man, when a baby might have known that it was a risky thing to do. Constance Bennett impersonates the more sophisticated of the trio of chorus girls. She is attractive and does as well as one can expect. Movies come and go but this is one that leaves the viewer a positive lasting impression.
Jan 1925 – Motion PIcture Gossip
Rodolph Valentino after five days of fencing scenes, in “Monsieur Beaucaire” turned his back on the Paramount Studios on Long Island, New York and slipped off to Miami, Florida for a rest. When he returned he jumped right into the filming of the adaptation of Rex Beach’s story, “Ropes End”. Joseph Hembery is directing it.
Success doesn’t consist of doing good work only. Above all you must keep your feet on the ground. – Rudplh Valentino, 1924
1926- Sufferin-powderpuffs
Here is the pink powder puff article published Sunday in the Chicago Tribune, which was the immediate occassion for the asserted wrath of Rudolph Valentino resulting in his challenging the writer to a duel:
“A new public bathroom was opened on the North Side a few days ago, a truly handsome place and apparently well run. The pleasant impression lasts until one steps into the mens washrooom and finds there on the wall a contraption of glass tubes, and levers and a slot for the insertion of a coin. the glass tubes contain a fluffy pink solid and beneath them one reads an amazing legend which runs something like this Hold personal puff beneath this tube and then pull the lever. ” A powder puff vending machine! In a mens washroom! Homo Americanus! Why did someone quietly drown Rudolph Valentino alias Valentino years ago?
“And it was the pink powder machine pulled from the wall or ignored? It was not. It was used. We personally saw ‘two men’ as a young lady contributor to the voice of the people is wont to describve the breed step up – insert coin, hold kerchief beneath the spout, pull the lever then take the pretty pink stuff and pet it on their cheeks in front of the mirror. “Another memeber of this department one of the most benevolent upon the earth, burst raging into the office the other day becuase he had seen a young man combing and pomenading his hair in a elevator. but we claim our pink powder story beats his all hollow. It is time for a matriarchy if the male of the species allows such things to persist. Better a rule by masculine women than by effemoinate men. Man began to slip we are beginning to believe when he discarded the strtaight razor for the safety pattern. We shall not be surprised when we hear that the safety razor has given way to the depthatory.
“Who or what is to blame is what puzzles us. Is this degeneration into effeminacy a cognate reaction with pacifam to the virilities and realities of the war? Are pink powder and aarlor pinks in any way related? How does one reconcile masculine cosmetics, sheiks, floppy pants and slave bracelets with a disregard for law and an aptitude for crime more in keeping with the frontier of half a century ago then a twenty century metropolis.” Do women like the type of man who pats pink powder on his face in a public washroom and arranges his coiffure in a public elevator> Do women at heart belong to the Wilsonian era of “I didnt rais my boy to be a soldier”. What has become of the old cave man line? It is strange social phenomenon and one that is running its course not only here in America but to Europe as well. Chicago may have the powder puffs, Lond has its dancing men and Paris its gigolos. Down with Decatur; up with Elinor Glyn. Hollywood is the national
school of masculinity. Rudy, the beautiful gardeners boy. It is the prototype of the American male. “Hells, bells, oh sugar! The foregoing editoral is mild, however, compared with the following published Nov 10, 1925, entitled “thank God for 50 yard McCarty” being a line crushing Chicago full-back: “right at the start we admit prejudice, all sorts of it. Our gorge rises our back hair prickles; we want to chew tobacco and spit; we wan to go home and assert our masculinity by rescuing those torn but so dearly beloved carpet slippers from the waste barrel on the back porch and wearing em despite orders to the contrary. Probaby there’s no one quite so cordially hated by the average American male as Valentino. We admit sharing the feling. Call it what you will. We repeat the admission and announce were proud of it. A symphony in green was Rudy when he passed through Chicago. thank heavens, our green suit went the way of wool five years ago. And a beavor
collar on his overcoat. Great guns, what a man. And the wrises watch worn on a slave bracelet? It gives us a horrible sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach to know that within the next few days tailors and clothing stores will be swamped with requests for green suits, think overcoat buyers will demand beavor collars, tha jewelers will be besought for slave bracelets whatever they are Just like Valentinos. Sadly we acknowledge ourselves that this will happen. “Rudy says he tried to make his wife happy. But a man with my particular temperament being very suspectible to any kind of beauty, whether in feminity or art really hasnt any business with a wife. There always is that feeling of disatisfaction; that consciousness of the women in the background.” As they say in vaudeville and they shot Lincoln. “Rudy doesn’t like marriage because it cramps his style. He says there is too much fun to be found afield to be tied down by the conventions of monogamy.
Rudy is a strayer, is this lover of things beautiful? Blood will tell. Heredity and early environment do mold the individual. Green suit, beaver collar, slave bracelet adorning this Don Juan. whos too self-important, too bent on gratifying his fancies, to fancy marriage. Rudys nothing more than a spaghetti-gurgling garnders helper, product of modern feminishm, and all the wishy-washy feminine gurgling in the work cant change him. Thank god for five-yard McCarty.
2 Jan 1928- Rudolph Valentino Was He Poisoned?
Was Rudolph Valentino poisoned by a jealous woman whose advances he rejected? According to messages from the “Seccolo” of Milan, private detectives in New York are working on a clue which may lead to a solution of the numerous rumors surrounding the death of the famous film star. According to one report, a detective and his wife were the witnesses in a Broadway Night Club of an incident which, it is alleged may afford an explanation of an incident which, it is alleged may afford an explanation of Valentinos illness and death. Valentino, it is stated, was approached by a woman who was apparently in love with him. Valentino turned his back on her and entered into a conversation with another woman. With anger the spurned woman is said to have made a sign to two men. A lady detective says she overheard one of them say “The Indian method is infallible”. One can mix diamond dust with a drink, and it will cause death by internal perforation. Doctors will say death was due to an incurable malady or attributed to appendicitis.
1973 -Valentino Award
Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren make hand prints in clay on Monday in Lecce, Italy after they had been awarded the 1973 award for their work in films.
All About Rudolph Valentino 
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