Perhaps this year at his death fest, Tracy Terhune will have one of those boards where you stick your head through a hole in order to have your picture taken. What would it be? A large, poorly painted piece of plywood with Rudolph Valentino on one side and maybe Jean Acker on the other? For fifty cents Terhune would let people line up and stick their heads through the hole and BE Valentino.
Will he have caramel apples in honor of Carmel Myers? A kettle corn machine would be a good touch and fragrant and maybe some funnel cakes simmering in the oil.
And Terhune, there he is with his cash register with RVG embossed on the side ringing up his sales of a lifetime... Ca-ching!...a shirt Valentino was wearing when he stumbled gravely ill to the hospital...and oh how he brags about the deal he scored on that trophy. Ghoul.
Well fyi for Terhune... the Polyclinic Hospital did not give a thing to the ex-wife. She had no power of attorney and no hospital would hand over personal effects to anyone who did not have power of attorney, let alone an old girlfriend and bitter ex-wife. You know who was there and had power of attorney? S. George Ullman … and he was in receipt of the shirt and he gave it to Jean Acker. So you can sit down and stop taking your bows for your “expertise and sourcing”.
Meanwhile, an excerpt on the subject from a book I have yet to publish...
“Crypt Maintenance
I will be the first person to admit that I do not understand the Valentino gathering at the crypt tradition or the fussing over the tomb. I wrote about the origin of this Hollywood tradition in Affairs Valentino and based my report on this upon sworn testimony by George Ullman. It is my opinion that Ullman would not have risked imprisonment for perjury with his direct answer on the witness stand saying he began the tradition.
Yet, the tradition of the service has continued throughout the years and the role of emcee became Terhune's and he had made this, in my opinion, his identity. I believe it is because of Terhune's fascination with Valentino's death and iron handed control over this service, he has consequently been successful in perpetuating the association of Rudolph Valentino with his death.
Terhune not only promotes and markets the Valentino crypt service every year, but it is my opinion that he also markets himself and exploits the service to make contact with other Valentino memorabilia collectors. He has utilized the service to advertise and show pieces from his private collection. I allege that the service in Hollywood Forever before the crypt of Rudolph Valentino each year at the precise moment of his death, to be a commercial venture held by collectors who perform as emcee and gatherers so they may appear in a noble light to those fans attending the service as genuine fans of Valentino. The inherent sadness that is any tomb, a final resting place is, that in Valentino's case, the tomb is disguised as commemoration of the cash value of the star's earthly remains.
A ghoul by definition is a “person morbidly interested in death.“ I would consider someone who assumes the self-appointed role of crypt maintenance and the conducting of a service before the embalmed corpse of Rudolph Valentino to be demonstrating a “morbid interest” in the star's death and current condition.
Would it be that ghouls whisper in the night passing secrets of the Hollywood stars gone by busying themselves before Valentino's crypt? Tracy Terhune, prowling about the grave, will freshen the dead flowers and clean the lipstick kisses from the marble as evidence.
Meanwhile, as Terhune tends to his duties in the mausoleum and plans for his annual fete al Tombe, he feeds information from Los Angeles to David Bret and monitors me on a daily basis. Their death talk races from Terhune to David Bret through cyberspace.
Together, as a partnership in the veneration of Valentino and death, they create a force of ruination of me and my work on Valentino. Bret's blood dripping, maggots crawling, bones breaking, skin sagging and corpses engaging in sexual perversion melded into Terhune's vicious allegations of my being a liar with an “agenda of hate”.
The subject of my death is a presence at Valentino's crypt. Perhaps it is not being discussed openly, by ghouls or mortals but the emcee knows. He not only tends to the crypt but in my opinion and according to evidence as filed by himself and now public record, stokes the coals of David Bret's hell fires. As he removes the dead flowers from the sconces on Valentino's marble plaque, does he get his, “good laugh”, as he reads Bret's killing blog posts?
Apparently, he chuckles as I am gutted, my throat slit, I hang myself, I die of cancer, I walk into traffic. While Terhune finds this all hilarious, he gets his “chuckle” musing before the bones of Valentino scheming how best to prevent Affairs Valentino from ever happening again. In doing this I imagine Terhune felt he was acting out of some high authority of God to prevent my book from being made public. I have no doubt that he feels he is a soldier for God and that ridding the world of my book is a Crusade with every religion overtone.
Death has always stalked the legacy of Rudolph Valentino. One could conclude this is to be expected as he died young. But other movie stars have suffered similar fates and not been held captive in their afterlife by those fixated upon their death, their grave and the subject of death itself and those interjecting religious fervor in the fixation.
For the sake of a long since deceased movie star, the “team” in the very least, conspired to work their individual death angles. David Bret posting so many “witty death wishes” as he called them for me and his “Team-mate”, as he called him and “dear friend with whom he spoke on the phone with everyday”, Tracy Terhune, focusing his attentions upon a service he perpetuates on the fresh air side of the marble slab of Valentino's dead body and final resting place.
But in the fall of 2012, as Bret was covering the death-laden, gory, misogynistic, sexual perversity homophobery about me, Tracy Terhune was about to bring up the rear with a mind-blowing assault of Christian self-righteousness by calling me out as Satan's hand maiden. His posting online about my being evil and satanic cluttered my book's online presence and because of this new angle of defamation, my anti-Christ status continues to this very day.”
