Saturday, September 24, 2022

Extraordinary

I have written the story of my visit to Campbell's Funeral Home in 2003 in our books and we recorded a podcast about it which focuses on my discovery of Valentino's sarcophagus. The day I spent at Campbell's was extraordinary because they had all of their records and documents out for me and let me photograph it all. The minute I naively announced my findings publicly, the door was sealed shut and I was told only the family could see the records from then on.

But their scrapbook belonged entirely to them and they gave me permission to use the images I had of that. I often wonder what happened to the scrapbook and I made a few inquiries about having it restored and preserved in a museum. A loose end I guess but retrieving the Campbell's documents and the shipping case was one of the more spectacular discoveries in all my twenty-two years of Valentino research.  

You can see the thickness of the book which was not all Valentino clippings. But it was a valuable document and I hope it survived the collector's inevitable raids. Incidentally, the story of this photograph is told in our podcast titled, "Rudolph Valentino's Last Picture & More". (Found here:)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO1x3dpgPEM