"Uncovering the Story of Affairs Valentino" by Evelyn Zumaya reads as follows:
On the morning of
July 10, 2005, I boarded a flight in Oakland, California and flew to
John Wayne International Airport in Irvine, California. A few minutes
after the plane touched down, I hailed a cab on MacArthur Boulevard
for the next leg of my journey; a ten minute ride to a gracious home
in a secluded neighborhood a few miles south of Irvine. I arrived at
my destination that picture perfect Southern California morning to
find the familiar entry patio vibrant with potted orchids. I was
aware of my host’s appreciation for this sensitive bloom and
brought along a bouquet of freshly-cut Thai orchids. With my orchids
and briefcase in hand, I rapped on the front door, took a deep breath
and braced myself in anticipation of the interview before me. For
contrary to my radiant surroundings on the patio, I knew that the
scenario on the other side of the front door was anything but sunny.
I’d stood there
many times but on that occasion it was with a lump in my throat and a
leaden heart as I knew that this would be my final visit with Rudolph
Valentino’s godson, Robert Warren Ullman. “Bob” was gravely
ill. A few days earlier I received his e-mail requesting I travel to
Irvine to visit him one more time. He concluded his brief message
with a warning, “Better make it sooner than later”.
From 1923 to 1926,
Bob’s father, George Ullman was silent film icon Rudolph
Valentino’s closest friend, mentor and trusted business manager.
And it was during the course of researching my book on Valentino
titled, Affairs
Valentino,
I interviewed Bob and his younger sister Bunny. Locating George
Ullman’s surviving relatives became an early objective in my
research as I hoped he left archival materials relating to his
affiliation with Valentino. With Ullman occupying a close vantage
point of Valentino’s personal and professional life, I became
determined to pursue this avenue of investigation.
**
In the rare book
library at the University
of Southern California, I pored through the archives of Valentino
biographer Irving Schulman.
On one of
his LATimes
article
photocopies, he scrawled the words, “A Mystery Indeed.” This
article reported the story of George Ullman’s assertion that
Valentino’s safe was raided after the star's death and a critical
portion of his will removed. This turned out to be a mystery I would
solve after finding the Ullman siblings and the Ullman archive.
In locating George
Ullman’s estate, I subscribed to an internet “people search”,
purchased a listing of every Ullman in the continental United States
and mailed a letter of inquiry to each listing. Within a few weeks I
received an e-mail from George Ullman’s grandson. He directed me to
Ullman’s only surviving children — Bunny, then seventy-six years
old and her older brother Bob, who at eighty was terminally ill with
cancer. George’s grandson also informed me his father, George’s
oldest son Dan, died some years earlier.
I forwarded a letter
of introduction to Bob and Bunny Ullman and within a few days I
received a telephone call from Bob. During this first conversation,
he informed me he would be happy to discuss his father’s story with
me as they had never been contacted regarding his association with
Rudolph Valentino. I made plans to travel to Irvine to interview him
in person and placed a telephone call to his sister Bunny. Unlike
Bob, Bunny lived nearby and I was able to meet with her within a few
days. During my first of many interviews with Bunny, she shared with
me a significant cache of unknown documents and artifacts relating to
her father and Valentino.
The most important
item in this treasure trove was her father’s unpublished memoir.
Prior to his death in 1975, George Ullman wrote this frank memoir
revealing his behind-the-scenes life with Rudolph Valentino. Until
Bunny handed me this lost piece of Hollywood history, her father’s
memoir remained unread and nearly forgotten in the Ullman home for
thirty years. Upon first glance, I noticed some of the document’s
pages were written in Ullman’s handwriting while others were
transcribed by a typist. Bunny explained how she and her brothers
encouraged their father to write the memoir during the last months of
his life and ferried his handwritten pages to a typist for
transcription.
At
that point in my research, I had read nearly every book on Valentino
and as I read Ullman’s account I was dumbfounded. Riveted by
Ullman’s many personal anecdotes, I realized he was drastically
altering the current version of Valentino’s life story. It was also
apparent to me that although Ullman and Valentino appeared to have
stridently different personalities, the lives of these two loyal
friends were inexorably intertwined from their very first meeting.
As
I read further, I learned of many critical events in Valentino’s
life that had never been mentioned in any Valentino publication, book
or article, to date. I
knew it would be critical I fact-check Ullman’s memoir to
substantiate many of his claims. Consequently, I embarked upon a
campaign to locate any more unknown, unpublished documents and
archives which might provide a deeper understanding of Valentino’s
personal life and his relationship with Ullman.
I then made my first
trip to Irvine to interview Bob Ullman and was thrilled when he
shared his private collection of family photographs and documents as
well as many details of his father’s tenure as the executor of
Valentino’s estate. This was a subject of great interest to Bob as
his father told him little about his thirty year involvement in the
contentious settlement of Valentino’s estate. Bob made it clear to
me that his father’s legal travails as Valentino’s executor
profoundly affected the Ullman household. I knew this was typically a
subject which received scant coverage in books on Valentino and
decided that investigating this “after-life” of Valentino might
reveal a great deal more about his business affairs and his
partnership with Ullman.
Bob informed me that
as a result of his father’s tenure as Valentino’s executor, a
$100,000.00 judgment had been levied against him; by today’s
monetary exchange nearly one million dollars. I learned this judgment
was handed down after Valentino’s only brother, Alberto Valentino,
charged Ullman with fraud and mismanagement of the Valentino estate.
And although Ullman was exonerated on all charges, the judgment was
issued by the court ordering Ullman to reimburse the Valentino estate
for cash advances he made as executor to Valentino’s three apparent
heirs without the court’s approval.
**
It was apparent to me during this first interview with Bob that he lamented the dearth of information regarding this painful aspect of his father’s life and regretted his being much maligned for his role as Valentino’s business manager and executor of his estate. According to Bob many members of Valentino’s inner circle, including his brother, resented George’s authority over Valentino during the star’s life and many years after. Because of this resentment, he felt his father was accused of many unfounded allegations which were never substantiated by any factual documentation. He said this frustration was shared by the entire Ullman family and had been further compounded when George Ullman refused all opportunities to publicly defend himself against the uncorroborated and denigrating reports.
**
It was apparent to me during this first interview with Bob that he lamented the dearth of information regarding this painful aspect of his father’s life and regretted his being much maligned for his role as Valentino’s business manager and executor of his estate. According to Bob many members of Valentino’s inner circle, including his brother, resented George’s authority over Valentino during the star’s life and many years after. Because of this resentment, he felt his father was accused of many unfounded allegations which were never substantiated by any factual documentation. He said this frustration was shared by the entire Ullman family and had been further compounded when George Ullman refused all opportunities to publicly defend himself against the uncorroborated and denigrating reports.
As I concluded my
interview, Bob told me he spent his professional career as a mortgage
banker. I had no idea at that moment just how valuable his accounting
expertise and inherent stickling for details was about to become to
my work. Before I left that day, Bob insisted I locate the probate
court records of Valentino’s estate settlement before writing a
word about this sore subject. Without such authoritative reference,
he added, I would just be perpetuating more surmise and speculation.
As he had never accessed the documents, he was eager to discover what
they might reveal and encouraged me to delve deep for all available
supporting primary source material which would reveal the facts of
his father’s performance as Valentino’s executor.
Despite this tall
order, I knew Bob was correct. Until I analyzed the court records
relating to the settlement of the Valentino estate, I could not
authoritatively report the story. I was confidant I could easily
locate these records as they would all be on file and available for
public review in The Los Angeles County Hall of Records (LACHR).
Within the next few days, I found myself sleuthing through the dusty
stacks of the LACHR in search of Rudolph Valentino’s public
records. In light of the thirty years of legal exchange relating to
the settlement of his estate, I expected the case file to be
substantial in size. Unfortunately, my initial searches were
fruitless and I returned to Irvine to share my disappointing news
with Bob. He continued to assert that, by law, these records should
be housed in this precise location and remained adamant I not write
about his father’s tenure as Valentino’s executor until I found
legal documentation of his performance.
More than a little
discouraged, I pursued my search for Valentino’s missing case file
while searching for other available sources of public information to
fact check George Ullman’s memoir and substantiate his claims. With
the assistance of a genealogical search service, I retained a
researcher in Italy who successfully located critical Valentino
family documents. At the headquarters of the National Archive of
Alien Registration, or NARA, citizenship records revealed a wealth of
vital supportive data including martial status, ports and dates of
entry,
occupations,
addresses and rare passport photographs.
I logged onto the
websites of the historical newspaper archives of both The
New York Times
and The Los
Angeles Times,
PROQUEST, and referenced many previously never-before-accessed press
coverage of the day. This was then, in 2003, a relatively new
research tool which allowed me to access the historical archives of
many major newspapers on the internet merely by merely obtaining a
library card to the libraries archiving the PROQUEST database. For a
modest fee, a researcher at the Los Angeles County Library located
and copied many documents for me including an unknown file of
hand-written index cards referencing further never-before-accessed
articles relating to Valentino and George Ullman.
By
referencing and cross-referencing old telephone directories on file
in public libraries and poring through police archives, census
records and local historical museums, I located further supportive
documentation. After several interviews with Valentino memorabilia
collectors and experts on the subject of silent films and Rudolph
Valentino, a story began to unfold. While following each lead, I
found myself in unlikely, often dangerous locations including a
mortuary situated in a gang-ridden neighborhood in Los Angeles, a
dreary funeral home in Manhattan and the cloistered den of a
reclusive Valentino collector.
Despite far too many
setbacks, my primary goal was always to locate Valentino’s case
file of public records. I made this my objective not only for the
benefit of my work but also for Bob Ullman. With his life slipping
away, his time remaining to learn the truth about his father was
growing shorter by the day. I returned again and again to the Los
Angeles County Hall of Records but continued to come up empty-handed
as I was only able to recover a few documents relating solely to the
collection processes on the court judgment held against George
Ullman.
Clearly stymied, I
explained my predicament to the LACHR staff and reminded them that
they had been charged by the public to safe-guard these documents in
this location. They offered several possible explanations why
Valentino’s case file could not be found on the premises. Perhaps,
they alleged, the file suffered water damage during a fire in the
building years earlier. They explained how all documents compromised
in the blaze were freeze-dried and then housed at a separate
location. After a time-consuming and thorough search through these
freeze-dried records, this proved not to be the case. The LACHR staff
then informed me that perhaps Valentino’s file might be archived at
the facility’s auxiliary location; this also proved not to be the
case.
At this juncture my
research assumed the added dimension of investigative reporting when
I realized I had uncovered a crime; Valentino’s case file of public
records had not simply been misplaced but had in fact been stolen. I
had inadvertently stumbled onto compelling evidence of the theft of
these documents while also exposing a shadowy world of the Valentino
family's fiercely-guarded secrets and their practice of controlling
Valentino collectors with a currency of their privately owned
memorabilia.
Knowing how the
illegal removal of any records from the LACHR constituted a felony in
Los Angeles County, I proceeded to pursue my work in secrecy until I
was able to document my suspicions. Whenever I did make this
information public, I would be revealing evidence of an unshakable,
decades-old Valentino family vendetta and their organized conspiracy
which had successfully kept critical information about Rudolph
Valentino and the truth about George Ullman cloaked from public
access for eighty years.
After searching
various depositories,
I was at last rewarded in my quest for documentation when I located a
case file of some one thousand pages of copies of Valentino’s
missing probate court documents
in a separate, unlikely location; an appeals court law library in
San Francisco.
This file
included Valentino’s personal and professional financial
statements, official court transcripts of testimony delivered during
the lengthy settlement of his estate and extracts from his private
household ledgers with entries detailing payments to his personal
staff and loyal bootleggers.
The file also
included copies of Valentino’s studio and business contracts,
detailed records of his personal production company’s transactions,
a precise listing of his debts at the time of his death including
such specific items as his oil, grocery and ice bills and pages of a
court-ordered audit of all of George Ullman’s executor's books. The
information contained within these documents allowed me to validate
the data in George Ullman’s memoir and learn a vast amount of new
information concerning Valentino’s personal and business affairs
and his business affiliation with Ullman. To the best of my
knowledge, none of this information had ever been published or
referenced in any publication about Valentino.
Perhaps, the most
surprising document that turned up in this recovered case file was a
previously “missing” second page of Valentino’s will. As I read
this mysterious single sheet of paper, the commonly-held version of
Valentino’s Last
Will and Testament
was overturned. Furthermore, the contents of the document presented
an explanation for why Valentino’s court records were stolen from
LACHR. The mere existence of this file of copied documents found in
San Francisco in addition to the references contained within, proved
definitively that Bob Ullman was right on target — Valentino’s
original court records were indeed once housed in their rightful
location in the LACHR.
During the entire
time I conducted my investigation, the staff at LACHR conducted their
own internal search for Valentino’s records. Upon the conclusion of
their appraisal of the situation, Bob and Bunny Ullman received a
notarized letter from the Los Angeles County Clerk acknowledging that
Valentino’s probate records were unavailable for public review at
their Los Angeles facility due to the entire case file being
“missing”.
It was
then Bob, Bunny and I sat down with the recovered case file of copied
documents to read the facts of their father’s story.
As I worked my way
through the hundreds of pages of old court records, I recognized the
name of another key player in this story, Frank Mennillo. Although it
was often stated in Valentino publications that Frank Mennillo was
his life-long friend, Mennillo received only meager, and as I was
about to learn, inaccurate mention. According to the information in
the recovered court records, Mennillo played a major role in the
settlement of Valentino’s estate and with this in mind I pursued
yet another angle of the story.
After reviewing the
minimal information I could find on Mennillo, I set out to locate the
Mennillo estate. I did so by the same means I utilized to locate the
Ullman estate; a national mailing. I soon received a response from
Frank Mennillo’s grandson who informed me that no one had ever
interviewed their family regarding his grandfather’s affiliation
with Rudolph Valentino. He put me in touch with Frank Mennillo’s
daughter-in-law and I then began a series of informative interviews
with the Mennillo family. They eagerly shared family photographs and
archives with me and I learned how Frank Mennillo was Valentino's
godfather, or benefactor, when he arrived in the U.S., and assisted
him throughout his life with his personal and financial problems.
During my interviews
with the Mennillo family, I gleaned more information supporting the
claims George Ullman made in his memoir and learned more about
Valentino’s affiliation with not only Frank Mennillo but George
Ullman as well. Most significantly, my interviews with both the
Ullman and Mennillo families presented me with the first account of
Valentino’s death from the only two people who stood at his
deathbed in 1926; George Ullman and Frank Mennillo. Remarkably, even
decades after these events, the information I received from the
Ullman and Mennillo families was collaborated by the information
contained within the court records.
With these
significant revelations, the Ullman 1975 memoir and Valentino's
probate court records in hand, I began writing an epic
tale of unforgivable betrayals, high-stakes courtroom dramas,
ruthless power plays and a rash of individuals conspiring to prevent
a dark family secret from being revealed.
**
**
I credit Bob Ullman’s
determination for encouraging me to stay the course long enough to
achieve my goal of recovering Valentino’s court records and thereby
document this story. With
unfaltering objectivity and devotion, Bob checked and rechecked the
details of his father’s performance as Valentino’s executor,
scrutinized the various insurance policies and dividends paid to the
Valentino estate and conducted his own line-by-line audit of his
father’s recovered books and ledgers.
During this arduous
process Bob’s failing health inspired me to complete my work as
quickly as possible. Despite the pressure of my grim deadline, I kept
Bob’s desire to complete his contribution to Affairs
Valentino
before he died, foremost in my mind.
My subsequent
interviews with him were briefer and the external manifestations of
his advancing illness grew more apparent. When I presented his wife
with my bouquet of Thai orchids on July 10, 2005, she whispered to me
that my stay should not exceed ten minutes. In spite of Bob’s
fragile condition and failed eyesight, he stood for one brief moment
to greet me.
When I took my seat,
I spotted a hospice brochure titled, "Final Journey” on a
nearby coffee table and felt compelled to flip the pamphlet over.
Perhaps in doing so I could dismiss the image of the sunset on the
cover and the subject of death. Perhaps Bob and I would then be free
to spend the next few hours in animated conversation. We could recall
a time during the golden age of Hollywood when he lived with his
family in a fabulous home in Beverly Hills and when as a robust
toddler he sat upon his god-father, Rudolph Valentino’s lap.
Perhaps I would hear more stories like the tale of how a drunken
Erich Von Stroheim tumbled into the Ullman’s fish pond. I might
have been regaled with Bob’s childhood tales of how he rode on
Douglas Fairbanks' horse on a movie set or how Theda Bara’s husband
Charles Brabin tried to scare the Ullman children into never smoking
by blowing cigarette smoke through a white handkerchief.
Instead of sweet
reminiscence, this would be only a fleeting ten minute visit before
his wife gave me the nod. Bob stood once again with effort and gave
me a quick hug as sincere as it was feeble. Realizing the weight of
that awful moment, we tried to make light of our good-bye forever and
I headed for the door. Bunny kept me abreast of Bob’s condition and
three weeks after my visit I received her telephone call informing me
that her brother had passed away.
My
interviews with both the Ullman and Mennillo families became the
foundation for Affairs
Valentino.
All documents, archives, twists in the plot line and quizzical
additions to this life story of Rudolph Valentino, were subsequently
found as the direct result of the stories of George Ullman and Frank
Mennillo’s affiliations with Rudolph Valentino.
**
