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Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino, by Emily W. Leider
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From the author of Becoming Mae West—an in-depth look at the Silver-Screen legend who forever changed America’s idea of the leading man
Tango pirate, gigolo, powder puff, Adonis—all have been used to describe the silent-film icon known as Rudolph Valentino. From his early days as a taxi dancer in New York City to his near apotheosis as the ultimate Hollywood heartthrob, Rudolph Valentino (often to his distress) occupied a space squarely at the center of controversy. In this thoughtful retelling of Valentino’s short and tragic life—the first fully documented biography of the star—Emily W. Leider looks at the Great Lover’s life and legacy, and explores the events and issues that made him emblematic of the Jazz Age. Valentino’s androgynous sexuality was a lightning rod for fiery and contradictory impulses that ran the gamut from swooning adoration to lashing resentment. He was reviled in the press for being too feminine for a man; yet he also brought to the screen the alluring, savage lover who embodied women’s darker, forbidden sexual fantasies.
In tandem, Leider explores notions of the outsider in American culture as represented by Valentino’s experience as an immigrant who became a celebrity. As the silver screen’s first dark-skinned romantic hero, Valentino helped to redefine and broaden American masculine ideals, ultimately coming to represent a graceful masculinity that trumped the deeply ingrained status quo of how a man could look and act.
- Sales Rank: #427443 in Books
- Published on: 2003-05-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.69" h x 6.44" w x 9.32" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 592 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Leider exhaustively details the life of one Hollywood's first heartthrobs, who was born Rodolfo Guglielmi in 1895 in Apulia, Italy. After being dismissed from several schools for poor grades, Valentino left for Paris in 1913; months later, he found his way to New York: "unlike most of his emigrating countrymen, he not was escaping chronic family poverty but rather his own track record and the sense of defeat it had helped create." Valentino became a "taxi dancer," teaching society women how to dance, before beginning his career as a film actor. In 1917, fleeing New York to again redefine himself, Valentino went to Los Angeles. Leiter explains, with particulars that greatly inform but sometimes overwhelm, how Valentino-after a disastrous marriage to lesbian actress Jean Acker-landed his first feature in 1921, The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. His persona of the smoldering, exotic lover took hold with this film, and later that year with The Son of the Sheik. In 1936, after undergoing surgery for acute appendicitis, Valentino died from infection at age 31. Leider subtly discusses Valentino's sexuality without exploiting it, and wonderfully weaves in his voice (in separating himself from Sheik's portrayal of Arabs, Valentino says: "People are not savages because they have dark skins"). Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Although today's moviegoers may not have seen Rudolph Valentino on screen, "they've probably seen his silhouette on packs of Sheik condoms," Leider says, exuding what screenwriter June Mathis called the "smoldering quality" of "a brutish cabaret parasite." In Leider's sprawling biography, Valentino retains the carefully crafted and projected aura of mystery he enjoyed during his mercurial career--and then some. Born Rodolfo Guglielmi in a little southern Italian town, Valentino had a largely undocumented childhood, which Leider fills out, along with the rest of Valentino's early days, with the kind of might-have/must-have/could-have speculation that Edmund Morris applied to Ronald Reagan. No imaginary friends are introduced, but Leider does go on about such matters as how Rudy reacted to Nijinsky's L'Apres-midi d'un faune, because, well, who's to say he didn't see it? Later she deals with Valentino's gender-bending celluloid masculinity, his highly dramatic relationships with the likes of notorious Blavatskyite Natacha Rambova, and his flair for the occult. A comprehensive, if not necessarily crystal-clear, portrait of the great screen lover. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Rich and definitive . . . a timeless [story told] with grace, wit, and empathy." --Vanity Fair
"A fluid, accomplished, deliciously readable biography of the individual who . . . 'helped deflower postwar America.' " --Barry Gewen, The New York Times Book Review
"The continuing fascination with Rudolph Valentino, and the sheer mystique that the name conjures up, is difficult to comprehend. It is almost incredible that at the start of the twenty-first century, an actor who died at the dawn of the last century should sustain the imaginations of such a large number of individuals. Emily Leider helps to dispel all of the myths generated through the years, documents his life and career with elegant accuracy, and does much to record and explain Valentino's complex sexuality. The image of Valentino that was held by his contemporaries and that has endured to this day was one of fable and fantasy. Dark Lover is the first biography to shed the welcome light of reality on to that image."
-Anthony Slide, author of Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses
"Emily Leider's exhaustively researched biography of Valentino places the man, the career, and the legend in broad contexts that extend from the birth of the Hollywood studio system to social issues of ethnicity and gender."
-Charles Affron, author of Lillian Gish
"Rudolph Valentino's short, sad life unfolds beautifully in this scrupulously detailed biography. Emily W. Leider links the actor's erotically complex image to themes of celebrity, virility and race that are as gripping today as they were in the age of silent film."
-Eileen Whitfield, author of Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood
"Dark Lover is a compulsive read. Emily Leider's research into the life of Rudolph Valentino is astonishing and the authority with which she tells the story is admirable."
-Kevin Brownlow
"A beautifully researched biography that will doubtless stand as the definitive account of Valentino's legendary career."
-James Curtis, author of James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters
"Sensitively reasoned and meticulously researched, Dark Lover is the definitive Valentino biography."
-David Stenn, author of Clara Bow
Most helpful customer reviews
59 of 62 people found the following review helpful.
Leider Has A Few Tricks Up Her Sleeve
By G.I Gurdjieff
I have read so many books on Rudy Valentino that my first instinct was to pass on this. I was sure no one could do much with the life of an actor who has been dead nearly 77 years. Fool that I am, I figured I'd give it a cursory look/see and probably put it down in quick order and move on to better things.
The shocker here is that this is really one of the best biographies I've picked up in a very long time and it has as much to do with the writer/researcher as it does with the subject itself.
This is no rehash of the same tired Rudy V. stories that have been perpetuated since his death. It contains a lot of fresh material and new insights into the personality and public persona of Valentino.
Leider is the rare combination of gifted biographer and tireless researcher. In the process of writing this book, she managed to really get down to the bare bones of her subject. She managed to do this while creating a mood and setting for all the action. In other words, she seemed to really understand the environment under which Valentino and all the other early screen stars worked and flourished in.
Where as other Valentino biographers seem to spit out questionable or unsubstantiated "facts", Ms. Leider to the best of her ability deals honestly with the material given her and attempts to authenticate information to the best of her ability and she deals honestly with rumors and innuendos and labels them as such.
One aspect of Leider's research that I found particularly interesting is that she not only researched her subject, but also the secondary players who interacted with Valentino during his life. She developed full profiles of people such as Pola Negri, Natacha Rambova, George Ullman......people who interacted with Valentino and were important components in the story of his life.
I am a huge fan of Jean Harlow and Clara Bow's biographer David Steen. Now Emily Leider also has my admiration. She and Steen have set a standard for celebrity biographers to follow.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
What a celebrity biography should be
By Anyechka
This is everything a good celebrity biography should be--scholarly, thoroughly researched, entertaining, insightful, giving detailed profiles of people who were very important in the star's life instead of just focusing on the subject himself, and giving off the genuine feel that the writer really has respect for her subject. Too many celebrity biographies, sadly, are little more than tabloids, reporting every bit of gossip as undisputed fact, even if there's zero evidence, repeating the same old unverified or exaggerated anecdotes, and giving credence to misinformation provided by questionable sources, many of whom have some sort of agenda. Ms. Leider's book is nothing like the type of sleaze churned out by people such as Geoffrey Giuliano and the late Albert Goldman. It's easy to fall into a trap of writing a sensationalised account when you're dealing with a star about whom there's been so much misinformation, gossip, and outright slander for so many decades, but she rises above that and reports only the truth (though of course people who have long cherished and believed in said gossip aren't going to be too happy their longtime fantasies are discredited).
There were a couple of tidbits in this book I found to be a little too much information, but even those things were presented in a tasteful and respectful way, not just put in there to be to shocking or sensational. There were also a lot of great pictures, and a LOT of sources listed in the back to go to for additional information (books, magazine articles, websites, etc.). Having heard that this book was very positively and heartily endorsed at the annual memorial service on Valentino's Jarhzeit (death anniversary), I was sold on reading it. And since this book has been written, happily, 'Beyond the Rocks' is no longer a lost film as it's reported in these pages. It's the perfect combination of scholarly research, lively storytelling, and genuine respect and love for the biographer's subject.
21 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Emily W. Leider strikes again!
By Gwen Chabot Muir
Anyone can write a biography of a film star. However not everyone's efforts are worth the time to read or the money spent. Luckily, Emily W. Leider is one of a rare breed, a writer who truly respects her subjects. DARK LOVER: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RUDOLPH VALENTINO doesn't give into the all too easy route of sexy gossip combined with careless writing.
Rudolph Valentino, like Leider's previous subject Mae West, radiated sex, sin and sensuality from the silver screen even to this day. DARK LOVER explores Valentino's youth in Italy, his early years in America, his peak as a Hollywood love god and his tragic death at the age of 31.
Under the costumes and behind the smoldering eyes was a man seeking love and family even as he make some disasterous life choices. Case in point, Valentino's two marriages to women who for their own reasons were light years away from the Madonna of the Hearth Valentino longed for.
The end result is a beautifully researched and fully fleshed portrait. Even buying DARK LOVER for the pictures alone is well worth the cover price for the evolution from gawky Italian boy to Hollywood legend.
If you have an unlimited book budget or save your pennies for books, DARK LOVER is a must have for the Hollywood fanatic.
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