On August 23, 1926, Hollywood suffered the loss of its first genuine superstar. Thousands of sorrowful fans gathered on the streets outside New York's Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel. Some women collapsed, men scaled the cars in order to get a better view, and the police had great difficulty in managing the growing crowd. Reporters were sent by the newspapers to report on the event as though it were a national emergency. The man who had died was not a president, a military hero, or an industrial giant. He was an actor. Yet no film star had previously aroused such devotion, and maybe no silent-screen idol has ever held a position so prominent in the public mind. A hundred years after his death, Rudolph Valentino is still one of Hollywood's most lasting legends—a man whose fame was so great that it contributed to the formation of the modern idea of movie stardom.

After a busy July dominated by blockbuster releases, the first weekend of August offers a more eclectic mix of films. Comedy fans finally get a long-awaited sequel to a beloved cult favorite, romance enthusiasts are treated to an unconventional love story with a science-fiction twist, and horror devotees can indulge in Eli Roth's latest nightmare. While none of these films is expected to dethrone Spider-Man: Brand New Day at the box office, each offers something distinctly different for moviegoers looking for an escape from the summer heat.

Rosa Rosanova was never regarded as a glamorous screen star or a romantic leading lady; rather, she established a remarkable career in the silent film era by portraying women who had already lived through hard experiences—such as immigrant mothers, widows, servants, and family matriarchs who were struggling to protect their children in a changing world. Because of her expressive face, her theatrical background, and her natural air of authority, she gave these characters a sense of warmth and dignity that would otherwise have been missing.

In the summer of 1926, when he was at the peak of his fame, Rudolph Valentino was promoting The Son of the Sheik, the film that was to be his last appearance in a Hollywood movie. Although the public continued to adore him as Hollywood's "Great Lover," Valentino was still a frequent subject of criticism from writers who disliked his foreign origins, his elegance, the fact that he was popular with women, and his refusal to fit in with the narrow American concept of masculinity. This resentment came to a head when the Chicago Tribune published an editorial called "Pink Powder Puffs", a sarcastic attack which did not simply question Valentino's appearance but his manhood; the article led him to launch one of the most well-known challenges in the history of Hollywood.

When Albert Einstein arrived in Southern California at the end of 1930, Los Angeles greeted him with an unusual combination of sunlight, scientific reverence and Hollywood stardust. He had come primarily to work at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, but Einstein was already more than a physicist. Since the dramatic confirmation of his theory of relativity in 1919, he had become one of the most recognizable men in the world.

Even before Hollywood and Vine became one of the most well-known intersections in the world, the area was a place where actors who were having trouble finding work would go. They waited for the buses, swapped stories about the studios, and hoped that somebody might give them a day as an extra. It is said in Hollywood legend that Lon Chaney also used to wait there.

The final weekend of July offers moviegoers a little bit of everything. Marvel launches its biggest film of the summer with the long-awaited return of everyone's favorite web-slinger, while arthouse audiences can choose from a provocative psychological thriller, a historical drama, an independent science-fiction mystery, or an action-packed heist picture. Whether you're looking for blockbuster spectacle or something off the beaten path, here are this weekend's theatrical offerings.

Among the many forgotten pioneers resting at Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a man who spent much of his life challenging the accepted medical wisdom of his day. Dr. Thomas Powell was a physician, author, lecturer, sanitarium founder, and one of the most controversial medical figures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Admired by supporters as a visionary and dismissed by critics as a crank, Powell became nationally known as the "germ-eater," a nickname earned through a series of astonishing public experiments in which he deliberately exposed himself to disease-causing organisms to prove his theories. Today, his story remains one of the most unusual in Hollywood Forever's long history.

Even long before movie stars became the main draw of Hollywood, there was another type of celebrity who held the public's attention. This small Swedish immigrant would calmly walk into cages containing furious leopards and end up gaining their full trust. Olga Celeste, who was known all over the world as the 'Leopard Lady', was one of the real pioneers of the motion picture industry. When few women were allowed to work with dangerous animals, she established an outstanding career by carrying out exactly what everyone else regarded as impossible. For over forty years she trained wild cats for circuses, vaudeville, and films, helping to determine the appearance of early Hollywood adventure movies and at the same time winning the respect of both filmmakers and audiences.

Before Hollywood became the center of the movie industry, there was Inceville, a film colony set between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Mountains. Though now mostly remembered through old photos, film clips, and stories, Inceville was once the most ambitious studio in the world and set the stage for the modern Hollywood studio system.

Saturday afternoon I attended a special screening of the long un-seen Letty Lynton (1932) hosted by the Art Deco Society and Hollywood Heritage at the restored 1929 American Legion Hollywood Post 43 Theatre. The magnificent new 4K restoration of the Joan Crawford film was introduced by film historians Scott Eyman, George Feltenstein and Richard Adkins who shared insights on the incredible journey to bring the film back to life.

Hollywood doesn’t need another monument or a new studio research center. If it could choose the perfect library, it would be on Hollywood Boulevard, under the simple sign of Larry Edmunds Bookshop. The shop is packed with scripts, photos, biographies, and all sorts of paperwork from an industry that rarely looks back. The aisles are tight and crowded. Larry Edmunds, whose full name was Laurence O’Connell Edmunds, started it all. He was quiet and bookish. Though his life ended in tragedy, his legacy is part of Hollywood’s story.