As I mentioned in my previous post, there were characters I “met” while writing Affairs Valentino. As I worked through the construction of the story and all the documentation I discovered, heroes and villains made themselves known. One of the villains was a man named Chaw Mank. Why do I call him a villain of Valentino's history? Because Mank betrayed Valentino so very badly, exploited him, sensationalized the story and heaved Valentino into a pit of sickening innuendo which filled the swamp of misinformation still being cited/touted as fact.
I wrote about Mank's insulting decimation of Valentino's truth in Affairs Valentino and spoke about him in the speech I delivered in Turin in 2009. As I said, Mank did have some personal correspondence with Valentino but spliced Valentino's gracious comments into an obscene book he wrote with Brad Steiger titled, The Intimate & Shocking Expose of Rudolph Valentino. I say obscene because that is what the book truly is. In addition to being wildly false factually, the book is a hot mess of contradiction, historical errors and homophobic slurs. The back cover of the book screams, "Was he Sheik or Sham?"
So the opposite of a Sheik was “Sham”? How does that work? This implies that if Valentino was not a "Sheik" then he was a fraud. Is Mank implying that someone being a homosexual is a “Sham”? Sure seems that way to me. This is grossly demeaning of homosexuals but then again the book is full of homosexual slurs... at one point Mank and Steiger refer to a gathering of homosexuals as a gathering of “deviates”. The book is also horrendously misogynistic in that women appear to disgust Valentino and they have him so afraid of Rambova, he vomits.
My point is this...This ridiculous book became the foundation for David Bret's horrible book on Valentino and in this I have always been blown away. Because Bret presents himself as a champion of gay rights while he praises and copies a book loaded with disgusting antiquated homosexual stereotypes and slurs.
The villains of Valentino's history made themselves known and I stand by my judgment in that. Chaw Mank in portraying Valentino as a sexually confused homosexual who feared and hated women did his subject no favor because it was all false and based solely on innuendo and supposition. Edel Man David Bret adopted the same inexcusable marketing strategy and parroted the tired old anecdotes which are nothing more than the author's fantasies.
Rudolph Valentino was heterosexual and this statement is not based on a dream, a vision but documentation, serious research and many discoveries. Why does Bret continue to perpetuate as fact Chaw Mank's fantasies? In my expert opinion it is because he went so far out on that “Valentino was gay”, limb he can not find a way back. Bret has defined himself by his claim Valentino was gay and despite never presenting one single shred of actual evidence this was true, he continues because to do otherwise would make all his sorry effort a complete waste of time. Which it has been.
Rudolph Valentino was heterosexual. I am not homophobic for discovering that.
Here a photo of Mr. Mank, amid his archives.. about the time he wrote his “Shocking Sheik or Sham” book on Valentino. Not a great image but you can see how well organized he was.
