Biography: The Great Lover. The Sheik. Mention the name Rudolph Valentino, and these monikers are likely to be the response you'll get. As a boy in Castellaneta, Italy, Rodolpho Alfonzo Rafaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla couldn't have anticipated the fame he would gain in America as Rudolph Valentino. The bi-lingual and intelligent Rodolpho enjoyed a comfortable, middle-class, and somewhat boring childhood punctuated with episodes of mischief. Rudy completed his studies at a nearby agricultural college, and with his mother's reluctant blessing set sail for America in 1913.

Valentino boarded the S.S. Cleveland not as the poor immigrant boy of myth, but as an ambitious young man. Following stints as a gardener's assistant on a Long Island estate, and as a popular dancer at Maxim's in New York City, Valentino finally landed a job touring with "The Masked Model", a show that brought him to California. Valentino's first film appearance was as a dress extra in a ballroom scene in ALIMONY (1917).

In just seven years before his untimely death at age 31, Rudolph Valentino appeared in 14 major films and emerged as a star in every one of them, whether billed so or not. Valentino held quite minor roles in 17 films, consistently cast as a villain. Although Valentino won the part of leading man in 1918's A SOCIETY SENSATION, his culminating bad-guy moment in 1919's EYES OF YOUTH, proved to be a major turning point in his career, somehow revealing the irresistible leading man lurking behind the cartoonish curling lip.

Valentino received his first real shot at stardom as Julio in Rex Ingram's epic THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921). First appearing in a barroom scene, a passionate Valentino mesmerized audiences and tangoed his way to instant celebrity (providing some great PR for the dance itself), following through with a fine and complex performance that revealed his character's war time transformation. As a professional dancer in New York, Valentino learned to move with a sort of grace and finesse arguably unfamiliar to moviegoers of the day - primarily used to actors functioning as caricatures of singular personality traits.

Certainly this grace wasn't lost on Dorothy Gish, who back in 1919 persuaded D.W. Griffith to cast the night club sensation in OUT OF LUCK. After THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, Valentino was no longer a heavy or a gigolo. He was a new kind of leading man, who brought an extraordinary sex appeal and sensitivity to the screen. What Valentino liberally exuded complemented female moviegoers' newly-found freedom - thanks to flapperism, to swoon in public.

It was 1921’s THE SHEIK that so firmly established Valentino’s popular reputation as the Great Lover, and his last film - the comical SON OF THE SHEIK (1926) sealed that title. But the actor never thought of himself as a conqueror of women - nor as a great actor. He found the Sheik films rather silly. Rarely acknowledged is Valentino’s marked lack of seriousness in many of his "passionate" scenes - from the eyes and body language, it seeems clear that his Sheik Ahmed is largely a parody, until the ultimate scenes when love truly blossoms. Before their break-up, Rudy’s ambitious wife Natacha Rambova, responded to her husband’s screen image: "My husband is a great lover of home life." Still, the publication of Valentino’s volume of poetry Day Dreams in 1923 further-fueled the public’s imagination - and drove fans into bookstores with a vengeance.

Valentino’s domineering second wife and reputed great love, Natacha Rambova, encouraged arty excursions in his career - like 1924’s ill-received MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE, in which a courtly Valentino delightfully plays a well-powdered French nobleman. Facilitating her husband’s break with Paramount, the extravagant Rambova was banned by United Artists from the set of Clarence Brown’s THE EAGLE (1925), which proved to be Valentino’s comeback film following a hiatus from the screen during which accruing debts inspired Natacha and Rudolph to tour the country in a phenomenally popular tango exposition.

Although his marriage to Rambova was falling apart, Valentino’s admirable performance in THE EAGLE, as a sort of "Russian Robin Hood", is both highly-stylized and comedic - a tribute to his underappreciated talent and professionalism. It should be noted that in 1925's COBRA, Valentino's Count Torriani doesn't get the girl in the end. Resisting his lady-killing image, Valentino had plans to make more "serious" films, beginning with an ambitious version of EL CID to be called THE HOODED FALCON.

In town for the premiere of SON OF THE SHEIK, Valentino collapsed in New York on August 15, 1926. Sadly, Valentino died eight days later from peritonitis, before he could begin to work on films that would make the public forget his sheikly shenanigans. While the grandiose romantic persona still persists, it is fortunate that we are privy to the outstanding film performances which beautifully reveal Valentino's talent in subtle, humorous ways - and point to the complex performances he was poised to deliver.

This biography was written by Lee Ann Stiff, visit her homepage: Rediscovering Rudolph Valentino