Marchen Jorgensen and Rudolph Steinbock pose with a painting of actor Rudolph Valentino.

Rudolph Valentino was asked to define his ideal girl and the man whose portrait adors a million dressing tables, whose image trills a million hearts, Valentino says she must have:

“A little bit of beauty” “A little bit of brains” “A dash of physical attraction” “A little bit of character”

“The loneliest ebb of my life came on that Christmas Eve, only one day after my arrival in New York. The abyss of loneliness. I ate a solitary dinner in a small cafe, and the food tasted better with my unshed tears.  One doesn’t dare cry in America. It is unmanly here”.  – Rudolph Valentino

The long-awaited movie “Babylon” by writer-director Damien Chazelle is a treat for both fans of silent films and Rudolph Valentino.  This 3-hour movie gives viewers insight on the late 1920’s Hollywood movie industry during the transition from silent to talking pictures.  The actors starring in this movie immersed themselves in early Hollywood history to give them a background for the character roles they would be portraying, and it truly paid off. 

Margot Robbie her inspiration Clara Bow

Olivia Hamilton her inspiration Dorothy Arzner, Alice Guy Blache, Lois Weber

Jovan Adepo his inspiration Duke Ellington, Sidney Easton

Diego Calva his inspiration Dudley Murphey, Ramon Novarro

Li Jun Li her inspiration Anna May Wong

Brad Pitt his inspiration John Gilbert

Jean Smart her inspiration Adela Rogers St Johns, Elinor Glyn

The movie starts out with a debaucherously over the top party at a mansion in the Hollywoodland Hills and it makes one wonder how accurate this scene was. Each character’s storyline was filled with a sense of realism and showed their initial career filled with the brightest studio lights and a gradual decline in a long-forgotten ending. The movie industry had people who wanted to make an impact and it shows. Early Hollywood was a magical time for many who were lucky to experience this first-hand and this film gives viewers a glimpse into what it was like. This movie gives off a Sunset Boulevard Movie vibe and I recommend watching.

We cited the case of Valentino in our last article but since then Rudolph is piling anguish upon anguish emotion upon emotion. Partings, reunions, long anguished shipboard good-byes, passionate cancellation of bride’s voyage —all triumphantly coincident with sumptuous rival bids for his dramatic services, demands for higher pay, better scripts and writers, and more publicity perfectly gorgeious staggering fights between producers for his affiliation. If Rudolph can only keep it up we can foresee an ebullient publicity agent desinating him the “highest-paid” actor in the world bar none before the year year sets in