"I saw him the night before he was taken to the hospital," Godowsky said later, "we were at the Colony restaurant. He wasn't a happy man."

Rudy complained of indigestion after dinner and told Warburton that he had been suffering from it for some time. Despite his discomfort, the three of them went to see George White’s Scandals at the Apollo Theatre at 219 West 42^nd Street. This was the eighth time in the past two weeks that Rudy had attended the popular revue. After the performance they met backstage with the stars of Scandals, Frances White and Harry Richman. The group were at one point invited to a party at the apartment of actress Lenore Ulric, but Rudy refused, on the grounds that he was not feeling well. Instead, they went to Warburton’s apartment, where, as later reports indicate, between fourteen and sixteen people were present, one of them being Marion Benda, who was leaving a performance in the Ziegfeld revue “No Foolin’.”

As Harry Richman explained, there had been "some drinks, music and dancing", but Valentino refused any of the refreshments since he had indigestion. The guests started to leave slowly as the night went on until only a small number were left. "Suddenly he collapsed", Richman said, and Valentino became violently ill about one-thirty in the morning before being taken back to the Ambassador, at 345 Park Avenue.

On the following Sunday morning, the initial reports stated that Rudy got out of bed at eleven-thirty. Although he was still unwell, he refused to have breakfast and instead read the Sunday papers. All of a sudden, he grew very pale, grasped his abdomen and then collapsed on the floor. Frank Chaplin, Rudy's valet, asked for help and informed Barclay Warburton. When Warburton arrived, Ullman and his wife Beatrice, who were in neighboring suites, were already with Valentino. Later that day, Ullman gave a slightly different account of what had happened:

“Mr. Valentino had gotten out of bed but had not ordered his breakfast. This fact, it may turn out, may save his life. We were sitting around reading the Sunday papers when suddenly he groaned and pressed his hand to his side, complaining of a severe pain in the region of his abdomen. The pain passed off, but a little later he turned pale again and another pain seized him. Then I called a doctor whom I know personally. He came into the hotel and as Mr. Valentino continued to get worse, we had him removed to the hospital.”

Dr. Paul Durham from the Polyclinic Hospital was a friend of both Ullman and Warburton. As soon as he had arrived, he examined Rudy but did not summon an ambulance for four hours, even though his symptoms seemed serious. There have been various explanations for this delay, one of them being that it was a hot Sunday afternoon and therefore many of the doctors were away from the hospital. According to Valentino's brother, Alberto, no one wanted to take the responsibility of operating on Rudolph Valentino and so they waited for a "well-known surgeon, [an] experienced surgeon, to come along."

Some people also say that Valentino had a fear of hospitals. Dr. Arthur Bogart, who was employed at Polyclinic Hospital in the late 1940s, knew one of Valentino’s previous physicians (who at that time was still working at the hospital). "The doctor told me," Bogart stated, "that his patient had refused any surgical treatment which could have saved his life since he was terrified of surgery."

Whatever the reason, sometime around four-thirty, Rudy was taken by ambulance to the Polyclinic Hospital at 345 West 50^th Street. According to Ullman, in his time of need, Rudy sought assistance from his spirit guides. “I remember, too,” Ullman recalled, “as he lay in that ambulance, doubled up with pain, unconscious and en route to the hospital where he was to die, he kept repeating the word, “Jenny, Jenny, Jenny.”

Just a few minutes past five in the afternoon, Dr. Harold D. Meeker, who was a consulting surgeon at Polyclinic, looked at Valentino. The man, aged fifty and a graduate of Columbia University, also held the position of professor of Surgery at Polyclinic's Medical School. On his first examination of Valentino the actor was experiencing severe pain together with a moderate fever, a fast pulse, and a rigid abdomen like a board. Meeker's initial diagnosis was a perforated gastric ulcer, although he could not exclude other possible causes at that late stage of the illness. In his expert opinion the only means of saving Valentino's life was surgery.

At six-thirty the patient was rolled into the operating room. Durham assisted Meeker; Dr. Golden R. Battey, senior house physician of Polyclinic; and Dr. G. Randolph Manning, a specialist in diseases of the stomach. During surgery, the physicians found fluid leaking through a round hole one centimeter in diameter in the anterior wall of Valentino’s stomach. Meeker’s report stated that the “tissue of the stomach for one and one-half centimeters immediately surrounding the perforation was necrotic. The appendix was acutely inflamed from a secondary infection…” Meeker repaired the opening in Valentino’s stomach and removed his appendix.

Valentino was taken from the operating room at nine-thirty and then moved to a suite on the eighth floor. The suite, known as Suite Q and the most expensive one in the hospital, consisted of two luxurious rooms and a bath, a big mahogany bed and dresser, two large easy chairs, attractive rugs and a number of smaller chairs. It had been appropriately called the 'lucky suite' since Mary Pickford had successfully recovered there in 1912. When Rudy came out of the anesthetic at about ten o'clock, he asked, "Doctor, am I a pink puff?"

“No indeed,” Durham replied. “You have been very brave.”

When Ullman came, Rudy smiled and asked him, "How did I take it?"

“You took it fine,” he replied.

“Oh well,” Rudy whispered. “Once a sheik, always a sheik.” He then fell asleep.

Shortly after midnight, Ullman announced that Valentino had reacted very well to the operation but warned that his condition was critical. “Indeed, we fear that it is doubtful if he can survive because the disease had progressed so far without him knowing or suspecting it,” Ullman said. “It will be several days at the very least before we can know the outcome.”

Late Sunday night, Valentino was lying in what the Polyclinic Hospital referred to as its "lucky suite", having survived a difficult operation to mend the perforation in his stomach. Although he had enough energy when he woke up to make jokes with his doctors and comfort his worried friends, the danger was still present. Infection had already spread throughout his body, and the doctors warned that several critical days remained to come. Outside the hospital, the general public still thought that the great screen star would make a full recovery. Within Suite Q, however, the wait had already started—and with every hour that passed the question became all the more serious: could Rudolph Valentino even escape what was coming?

The story continues tomorrow. Join me for the next chapter of Valentino’s Last Days, as we retrace, day by day, the events of August 1926 and the final journey of Rudolph Valentino, one hundred years later.

If you’ve been moved by Valentino’s Last Days, I invite you to share your thoughts on today’s chapter. Please take a moment to comment, rate and share the story as we continue retracing the final days of Rudolph Valentino.