Posts Tagged With: Joseph Schenck

Ten years ago, Rudolph Valentino died in New York City at the age of 31.  Today he lies in a borrowed crypt and his fortune whittled down to nothing. The three women in his life are living successful lives of their own.  His first wife Jean Acker is in Hollywood, substituting for a movie role in Camille vacated by the illness of Adrienne Matzenpauer and still using his name as a means of making money.  His second wife, Natacha Rambova, living in Palma Mallorca and is a wife of a Spanish nobleman.  The third woman Pola Negri who at the time of his death, announced to the world she was his fiancé and went on to marry a fake Prince.

The fortune he had at one time was estimated by friends at $2,000,000 was found to be in reality next to nothing. His manager said, “he was always in debt”.  In 1932, a court appraisal showed $400,000 had been paid out in monetary claims against the estate had dwindled that amount down significantly.  Yet Rudolph Valentino at the time was the highest paid actor.  Joseph Schenck chairman of United Artists said Valentino earned $1,000,000 in the year, before his death and spent it lavishly on jewelry, paintings, travels, and horses.  When he started out, he was early $5.00 a day as an extra. In 1926, he was under contract at $200,000 for two movies a year, plus one fourth of a producer fee a gross income from his pictures more than the value of his salary.

In London, there is a Rudolph Valentino Memorial Association which from time to time inserts obituary notices about him in the newspapers and supports a roof top garden named after him.  In June of this year, buyers paid $23 for the contents of three trunks he left in Turin, Italy he left in 1925.  They contained old clothes.  Roger Peterson manager of Cathedral Mausoleum says from time to time complains to police people are chipping marble off the Valentino crypt. A few women still come occasionally to pray and leave flowers, he said recently, and one visits the tomb regularly and her name is Jean Acker.  Mr. Peterson is talking about writing a book.