Today I read where a journalist of the day remarked how Rudolph Valentino had a knack for getting into trouble. Knack or no knack, he got himself into some scrapes.
The fiction about him, created to hide the severity of some of those “scrapes”, simplified him in an unflattering way I think. The fiction portrays Valentino as a frivolous, spoiled, gay lounge lizard who tricked women into marrying him and was so clueless and weak he hired crooks and thieves to manage his millions. The reality as we discover it, reveals he was far more complex, more involved professionally and extremely involved in deep familial situations.
Do I think Rudolph Valentino was some kind of “bad boy”? No I don't myself. I think he sincerely and passionately with all due respect got himself into a great deal of trouble periodically. He did have a knack for that.
And in response to comments left about All That Glitters and George Ullman. What a way to reveal you either never read the play or you did not understand what you read, than to say Ullman's character was “damning”. Not. At. All. There were rumors when the play was first made public that he was in love with Natacha. In All That Glitters, Ullman's character protects Natacha, worries about her, even wants her to go away with him. He is the long suffering and doting manager of the situation.
It did not go unnoticed for me when I read Ullman commenting on Natacha's bad language/swearing by referring to her “very pretty mouth”. They were all very young, attractive but I doubt Ullman strayed with Natacha. He was a loyal husband and Dad but in All That Glitters, he one of the characters receiving lavish treatment.
