Below I share one more article I wrote some years ago about a "find" I made while researching Affairs Valentino and its bizarre story:
The
interview had all the elements of a scene right out of an Alfred
Hitchcock movie: a Peter Lorre look-alike mortician, tastefully
blacked-out mortuary windows and air sickeningly sweet with a mother
lode of fresh blooms awaiting the morning’s funeral. In search of
details about Rudolph Valentino’s death, I had traveled a long,
long way for this interview. Despite the macabre setting and the fact
that the gracious mortician was far too welcoming for my comfort, I
forged on. Perhaps my uneasiness was due to the chilling realization
he was employed by a vast corporation proudly billing themselves as
the, “world’s largest death-care provider.”
At
some point during the interview, I was asked if I’d ever heard of
Valentino’s second coffin. The mortician explained how it had long
been rumored within the funeral business that an outer casket encased
Valentino’s coffin on the train ride from New York to Los Angeles.
I said I knew nothing about an outer casket and asked why such a case
would have been used. He went on explaining how in order to transport
a corpse across state lines, coffins were required by Federal law to
be encased in a sarcophagus or shipping case. Valentino’s coffin
was encased in just such a shipping case which was custom-made for
the journey and believed to still be in existence. Although the
mortician claimed he had no idea where the case was located, he
promised to make a few phone calls to see what he could find out.
That
was the end of our discussion of the shipping case that day and I
proceeded to photograph the Valentino file on record in Campbell's
archive which included the lengthy invoice for services rendered and
a massive scrapbook of newspapers clippings.
For a short while
after that interview I had no clue my presence at Campbell's that day
piqued interest in the location of Valentino’s shipping case. The
imaginations of several morticians were sparked and this inspired a
covert operation to capitalize on the missing shipping case.
About
one month after the interview, I opened an e-mail from “the world’s
largest death-care provider” to see photographs of a metal coffin
loading onto the screen. While the images were downloading, I
received a call from the mortician with news that this was indeed
Valentino’s shipping case. Furthermore he’d found the owner and
was trying to secure permission for me see the hidden treasure.
I
told him I thought the piece should be authenticated by an expert and
once again asked him for the owner’s contact information. With this
he said he would get back to me and hung up. I would have to be
content with nothing more than the thrilling photographs for a while
longer.
Yet
almost immediately, the intrigue surrounding the location of the case
and the identity of the owner became so intense I began to wonder if
I would ever see it. The mortician called me several times to update
me on the status of my request to see the case. He also asked me what
I thought the cash value of such a piece could be. Smelling the rat,
I told him I didn’t have the slightest idea of its monetary value
or interest in anything but its history.
I prepared to move as soon as I was given a go ahead and assumed I
would make a quick trip to wherever, snap a few pictures and have my
story. Instead, I soon landed squarely in the middle of heady
negotiations for the sale of the shipping case and risked my neck for
a just a few moments with Rudy’s mythical sarcophagus.
Access
to the actual case complicated as the mortician made his power play
to position himself as the only contact with the owner and thereby
cash in on in any possible deal the shipping case’s owner might
make. Granting new meaning to the word cagey, he brainstormed an
elaborate but thinly constructed system of communication to guarantee
his role.
He
asked me not to call him at work, to only call him through a second
contact he put me in touch with, to use only this cell number and
that e-mail, etc. and I was never given the owner’s name. As he
began his methodical and territorial watch over the artifact, the
welcoming host who greeted me in his mortuary office a few months
earlier morphed into agent OO undertaker.
He
informed me the owner was interested in selling the shipping case and
added that he had run into a snag because a few of his mortician
cronies heard about the case’s impending sale and were scheming for
their cut of the sale.
Mortician
was thoroughly dismayed at this turn of events and lamented to me
about it over the phone. He was so distressed and paranoid at the
deteriorating status of his gambit I could almost hear the sweat
beading on his forehead.
Ignoring
the cloak and dagger, I called the cell phone of mortician's mystery
contact number two and after some doing, I was at long last given an
address where I could view the case. I scheduled some immediate
travel arrangements and boarded a plane for Los Angeles. Within a few
hours I had landed, rented a car at the airport and was following my
usually unreliable MapQuest directions to the designated address.
The
address was that of a mortuary situated deep in some heavy inner city
skid row real estate. It was the kind of neighborhood no prudent soul
would dare cross without a police escort. Nevertheless, it was easy
to imagine a time when the establishment could have been surrounded
by a more Mayberry-like backdrop. But on the morning of my
appointment the streets were alive and humming with prostitutes
pacing for work, homeless campers organizing their life's possessions
on the sidewalk, and wild-eyed, ranting desperados preaching to whom
ever would listen.
Having
arrived a few minutes early, I made a quick dash into a nearby
McDonalds for a sorely needed cup of coffee. This was no predictable
Micky Dee safe zone that sunny morning. After noticing several of the
tables were burned char black in an apparently substantial blaze and
that the disheveled, armed guard posted in front of the counter was
swaying and half conscious, I made what I hoped would be a subtle
retreat to my rental car.
I
failed miserably only to be followed through the parking lot by a
squirrley-eyed teenager. At this point I made the executive decision
to spend the remaining few minutes before my private viewing of
Rudolph Valentino’s long lost shipping case sipping my coffee in
the safety of the rental car driving around the block.
Meanwhile
inside the mortuary, the bronze and copper casket was being dragged
out of its warehouse storage for the first time in seventy seven
years. Like
a great vessel run aground, the case was so cumbersome it took three
mortuary workers to heft the unwieldy bark onto a mortuary gurney.
They had their orders to have the neglected relic on display in one
of their private chapels by nine o’clock sharp. Just before the
hour they wheeled the shipping case into the small sanctuary, lifted
off the heavy cover and propped it against the wall.
It
was up to the floor mortician that morning to oversee the
arrangements in each of the mortuary chapels and it was during his
inspection of the shipping case installation that he noticed an
inscription on the casket’s tarnished lid. After retrieving a can
of brass polish from his office he began to wipe away the years of
neglect. The inscription read, “Rudolfo Gugliemi, Rudolph
Valentino, Born May 6, 1895 Died August 23, 1926.” The mortician
found the inscription curious because his name also happened to be
Rudolph.
Mortician
Rudy had just finished his brass polishing when I arrived. He
escorted me into the side chapel off the lobby where the gurney had
been positioned in front of several rows of church pews. After months
of anticipation, I paused to appreciate the point blank impact of the
moment. The e-mailed photographs did this masterpiece no justice.
The
case was in extraordinary condition,
masterfully
constructed and appeared to have been completely hand made. The
delicate beads of solder were so expertly placed I was sure some
jeweler in 1926 must have labored an eternity in its execution.
In his best professional
whisper, mortician
Rudy left the chapel telling me to take my time. He didn’t seem
sure why I was there and probably wondered why I would come so far to
sit in a church pew paying my respects to an empty casket.
I
was there to document
the objet d'art and as soon as he departed I got down to work. The
case was mine to investigate and inspect from all angles so I set up
my tripod and took a quick twenty or thirty photographs. I brushed my
hand along its dusty interior and examined the detailed tooling of
the handles. Scratch marks from the transport of Valentino’s
interior coffin were still evident. The mortician had polished the
cover of the case to a brilliant shine and I noticed Guglielmi had
been misspelled.
Staring
into the long metal box it was hard not to visualize its cargo of
long ago. It was in this case Rudy’s lifeless body jostled along
the rails on his last ride home to California. I felt no subtle
twinge at that thought and at the evidence before me of the brutal
honesty of Valentino’s death. And after weeks of negotiating access
to view the shipping case, I was suddenly gripped by the desire to
pack up my briefcase and camera and get as far away as I could from
the grisly find.
I
stopped by Mortician Rudy’s office on my way out to shake his hand
and thank him for his time. Before I left I decided to have a stab at
it and asked him directly if he could give me the owner’s name.
Apparently he had not been briefed on the subterfuge preventing me
from knowing the identity of the case’s owner. For with no
hesitation he jotted down the man’s name and phone number. I
thanked him again, dashed back to the rental car, and headed off to
the airport and home.
When
I placed the call to the case’s owner, he granted me a stilted
interview but was slightly confused as to how I got his number and
assumed I was an interested buyer. I finally had the story and
photographs but it would be a bit longer before I could make any
graceful exit from the thorny subject of the shipping case. I
realized my error in telling the mortician at Campbell's that I had spoken with the
shipping case's owner when he became immediately paranoid I would
compromise his deal. I assured him I would not reveal the owner's
name to anyone out of a courtesy for him for arranging my viewing of
the case.
Within
a few days I made another trip to Los Angeles for another interview
with Valentino memorabilia collector, Bill Self. Like the naive child
of the Valentino world I was at that time, I told him excitedly about
my find and how I had seen the case. I showed him the
photographs, did not tell him I knew who the owner was and left to
fly home to San Francisco.
Like
any other artifact pertaining to Rudolph Valentino, from the moment
the case was uncovered its cash value was increasing with each passing
day. The day after my visit with Bill Self, the mortician called me
to say he had spoken with Self and learned he was also interested in
buying the case. Bill Self wasted no time calling Campbell's to be directed to the mortician.
Bill
Self then sent me an e-mail informing me he had just spoken with the mortician at
Campbell's and added he had already been to see the shipping case that
day, had contacted the owner and was about to refuse the mortician's
offer to buy it for 15,000$. I called Self and asked him how he
learned the identity of the owner. He told me that he recognized the
case from a photograph of Valentino's coffin being off loaded and
knew the mortuary was one belonging to the Cunningham family.
Incredibly, they were still in business and still had possession of
the shipping case. Bill Self had his hands on that case within five minutes of my leaving his home that day.
Of
course the mortician suspected I betrayed him by telling Self the
owner's name which I had not, but his hopes for the ready chunk of cash had
fallen through. Although Bill Self told me the price of the shipping
case was too steep for him, in hindsight I believe at that point Self
already had taken ownership of it and had that case in his collection.
When
I downloaded the photographs I took of the shipping case, my fifteen
year old daughter brought one thing to my attention. To my practical
eye she pointed out what appeared to be a circular orb floating over
the casket. She declared the perfect orb drifting in the space above
Valentino’s shipping case definitive evidence of ghostly presence.
I did not wholeheartedly believe her claim, but ghost or no ghost, as
far as I was concerned leaning in to touch the inside of Valentino’s
open sarcophagus was a disturbing end to an utterly disquieting tale.
I asked Self a few times if he knew what ever happened to the
shipping case but he never gave me an answer.
According
to Campbell's records, the case originally cost nine hundred dollars.
This would be about $9000 today. Two other charges were added to the
original cost of the shipping case; a mechanic was paid fifteen
dollars to solder the base to a brace in the train car and an
engraver was paid 25$ to misspell Rudy’s name on the cover.
The
unexpected appearance of this artifact confirms there are still
treasures to be found and new stories to be told about Rudolph
Valentino which reveal a trail not quite cold. I lament I told Self
about the shipping case because as is the case with almost every
other Rudolph Valentino artifact, this museum piece has vanished into
a secret archive of some private collector, never to be seen by
Valentino's public again.
I
learned at one point from Bill Self that another Valentino collector
owned a crypt space near Valentino's. I often wonder if Self acted as
middle man and sold this to that collector so they could be buried in
the shipping case and next to their idol. Who knows?
I
never heard from the mortician at Campbell's again and I think he
waited a bit too long to close a deal on the shipping case. He and I
underestimated Bill Self's ability to find the owner and arrive with
the cash in hand.
