Rudolph Valentino was still one of Hollywood's biggest legends in the late 1940s, more than twenty years after his death. The silent screen idol was born in Italy and had died suddenly at the age of thirty-one in 1926. His death unleashed unprecedented public hysteria with women fainting in front of Campbell's funeral home in New York while newspapers published dozens of pages of tributes to him and Hollywood came to a standstill to mourn him. For movie producers in the late forties looking back on the silent film era, Valentino's rags-to-stardom-and-death story fit perfectly with the biographical film that flourished during the post-war era. However, it turned out to be very difficult to make a film about his life.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
The French version poster for Valentino
Actually, the first major effort to stage Valentino's life story may have occurred as far back as 1938. An independent producer named Edward Small declared his intentions to produce a motion picture about Valentino's life. It was touted to be an expensive look at the man who revolutionized the role of the silent screen romance hero with films like The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Sheik. But as so many Valentino projects would before and after it, problems arose almost immediately. Screenplays were assigned and rejected, prospective stars attached and then unattached themselves, and legal worries threatened the endeavor from the start. Since Valentino's colorful existence had been linked with many wives, lovers, and assorted characters many of whom were still living at the time, there were many who would take umbrage at any unfavorable depiction.
Script development continued to bog down during the 1940s. Writer after writer put pencil to paper—eventually turning out more than thirty different scripts--each one struggling to reconcile the facts with the legend the public insisted upon. The problems were not just literary ones.
Throughout the war years Hollywood was reluctant to sink money into a picture about an Italian-born star when Italy was an enemy nation. After the war another dilemma arose: who would play Valentino?
A long list of candidates tried out for the role. Louis Hayward, Cornel Wilde, Helmut Dantine, Louis Jourdan and John Derek were among those tested. But none matched. Valentino had not simply been attractive; he had an aura that made him one of the first global sex symbols of film history. Studio executives worried no one would accept a replacement who didn't approximate the original.
The solution arrived in an unexpected form. In 1949 Edward Small announced that an unknown twenty-nine-year-old actor named Anthony Dexter had been chosen for the role after more than two thousand men had auditioned. Dexter’s resemblance to Valentino was remarkable—so striking that publicity photographs of the newcomer often fooled casual observers. Small immediately placed him under contract and ordered months of training in dance and movement to recreate the screen idol’s famous tango style.
Rudolph Valentino
Anthony Dexter as Valentino
With the lead finally secured, the production moved forward rapidly. British-born director Lewis Allen was hired to helm the picture and was reportedly paid $60,000 for his services. Allen approached the film not as a strict historical biography, but as what he called an “imaginary romantic story” inspired by Valentino’s career. That distinction proved crucial. To avoid lawsuits from Valentino’s surviving relatives and former wives, the script avoided using real names except for the star himself. Most characters were fictional composites, and many incidents were invented entirely.
George Bruce was credited with writing the screenplay. The film's fictionalized story revolves around Valentino's early life when he came to America as an immigrant with few job skills and little money. Valentino's character begins aboard a ship from Naples to New York where he works as a dancer. After drifting around America unemployed with few prospects, he gets a job as a dancer in a nightclub. He meets and falls in love with a glamorous movie actress, who boosts his career to motion pictures stardom. The story then turns into a love triangle involving the actress and film director. Valentino plays the passionate, moody lover.
Patricia Medina, Anthony Dexter, Eleanor Parker, Richard Carlson, and Dona Drake
Production began in June 1950, with filming conducted at the Columbia Ranch and the Samuel Goldwyn Studios. Though the story took considerable liberties with history, the filmmakers attempted to recreate moments from Valentino’s actual career. Elaborate sequences reenacted scenes from several of his famous silent films, including The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle, and A Sainted Devil. One curious touch connected the picture directly to Valentino’s own past: George Melford, who had directed the star in the original The Sheik, appeared in a small supporting role.
The movie was shot in Technicolor by cinematographer Harry Stradling. Valentino was produced for about $1.3 million dollars and distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film received much publicity as Columbia heavily advertised Valentino as Hollywood's first major screen biography of its passionate lover.
With such anticipation after it's delayed release in 1951, Valentino arrived in theaters. Reviews of the film were mixed. Critics complained that the film’s fictionalized story had little to do with the real Valentino. Some critics dismissed the script as romantic nonsense, while others felt Anthony Dexter’s performance relied too heavily on his resemblance to the star rather than emotional depth. One reviewer famously described the picture as “corn, but pretty interesting corn,” a remark that neatly summarized the mixed reaction.
Audiences responded cautiously as well. Despite the publicity surrounding the project, the film failed to become a major hit at the American box office. Produced for about $1.3 million, it earned roughly $1.55 million in domestic rentals, making it one of Edward Small’s more disappointing financial ventures. Curiously, the film performed better in Latin America and parts of South America, where Valentino’s legend had remained especially strong. Dexter himself capitalized on the interest by embarking on a dance tour through several South American countries.
If the film's performance at the box-office was underwhelming, the subsequent legal fallout would be even worse. Weeks after its release, actress Alice Terry (who was director Rex Ingram's widow at the time) filed a lawsuit against the producers seeking damages of $750,000, claiming that it implied she committed adultery with Valentino while still married to Ingram.
Long lines waiting outside New York's Astor Theater for the premiere of Valentino
Anthony Dexter signs autographs outside New York's Astor Theater.
Around the same time, Valentino's brother and sister filed suit for $500,000 as well, citing that the film misrepresented the actor’s life and harmed the family's reputation. Eventually both suits would be settled, but not before demonstrating just how perilous it can be to fictionalize someone's life.
Regardless of its problematic history, Valentino remains an oddity of sorts. It was Hollywood's first effort to tell the life story of one of its first superstars. Valentino also exemplifies the strange tension between history and mythology that typically characterizes film biographies. Attempting to avoid litigation, the film morphed fact into fiction - romantic fantasy that had little to do with the flawed, but charismatic, man audiences knew.
For Anthony Dexter, the film briefly opened the door to stardom. Columbia attempted to build him into a romantic leading man similar to Valentino himself. Yet the effort proved short-lived, and after a handful of films Dexter faded from the screen.
Still, the fascination with Rudolph Valentino never disappeared. Over the decades Hollywood would return repeatedly to his story, producing new biographies and television dramas in an effort to capture the mystery of the silent screen’s most famous lover. None, however, could quite replicate the strange cultural moment when Valentino himself electrified the world.
The 1951 film, which can be watched on YouTube, may have struggled to do justice to its subject, but it remains a revealing artifact of Hollywood’s attempt to reconstruct its own mythology—an era when the industry looked back at the silent screen not merely with nostalgia, but with a desire to recreate the magic of the man whose name had once caused hearts to race in theaters across the world.
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