Birthday Girl: Vamp until Ready

Something like 119 years ago today (there is a little discreet confusion over the actual year of her birth), the world was made a little richer with the arrival in it of the baby who grew up to become notorious silent-film vamp Nita Naldi.  We catch her here in full flight, relentlessly set on the not unpleasant task of seducing Rudolph Valentino.  That she does so in one of the truly epic fur coats in Hollywood history only adds to the glory of the occasion.  She reminds me of Quentin Crisp's (or was it Ethan Mordden's?) line about a character played by Marlene Dietrich - "a woman so evil even her daywear is backless."  This was what silent drama was all about: impossibly lovely people doing impossibly fraught things.  And, here at least, apparently ending up in the Van Cleve Hotel.

Naldi had the briefest of vogues, well under a decade, and after it ended never really found a satisfactory place in the world.  She's one of a number of stars - casualties both of sound and of changing tastes, and ranging from self-deluded Mae Murray to the alcoholic, reclusive shell of Mary Pickford - whose fates ended up amalgamated into the protean character who has come to stand, however unfairly, for all silent stars, Miss Norma Desmond.*  Naldi's legacy, like that of many others who weren't around to protest about it, was muddied by her inclusion in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon (on the other hand, he also kept her name alive in a way that can't be said for for fellow vamps like Dagmar Godowsky or Jetta Goudal); her story is far more interesting than Anger's caricature.**

I don't know if it has anything to do with April Fool's Day, but the day is remarkable for the number of fascinating ladies who celebrate a birthday.  Beyond Naldi, they include Broadway legend Laurette Taylor (the first and greatest Amanda in The Glass Menagerie), West End treasure Cicely Courtneidge (how can one not adore an actress who starred in something called Gay's the Word?), spectacular jazzstress Alberta Hunter (somewhere, I know, her castle's still rocking), fellow silent star Mary Miles Minter (victim of a stage mother who makes Momma Rose look like Mother Goose), mystifying screen favorite Jane Powell, the ever-durable Debbie Reynolds (her book's just out - anyone read it?), and almost-as-mystifying-as-Jane-Powell seventies sensation Ali McGraw.  It's quite a crowd, but however fabulous any one of them might be, I doubt that any could wield that coat quite like Nita...

* The GloriaSwansonian creation, not the affable cyber-presence, of course...

** There is a treasure trove of fascinating Naldi reading at her eponymous fansite, which really is good fun and clearly very fond of its subject.

Pearly King

Mr. Valentino proves that while it may be possible to wear more pearls at one go than the late Queen Mary, it is probably not aesthetically advisable to do so.

Accept No Substitutes

Sometimes it proves impossible to improve on an original. Many have tried, but none have filled the shoes of the original Latin Lover, the immortal Rudolph Valentino.

Generally, it's been those who've actually impersonated him who've fallen furthest short...

Being a genuine heartthrob in his own right didn't help Nureyev, whose specific brand of smolder simply didn't apply, somehow. Ken Russell's fevered direction did all it could, but this Rudolf just didn't live up to the real Rudolfo.

Trying to camp it up, as model Matt Collins had to in The World's Greatest Lover, doesn't help (neither did Gene Wilder, at least this time out). He had the cheekbones, but not the chops.

Tony Curtis brought his own very special verve (not to mention Natalie Wood) to a photo-shoot impersonation. His was an allure distinctly less ethereal than Real Rudy's, but you have to hand it to him on the eye makeup.

Third-string hunk Anthony Dexter may have the upper hand in terms of resemblance to The Sheikh (not to mention the divine Eleanor Parker to play opposite), but sometimes just the profile isn't enough. Despite being hailed as a great discovery (at least by Columbia standards), within five years he was headlining Fire Maidens from Outer Space.

Still, he did bring a certain...heft...to the screen, as evidenced by this still.

The idea of a distaff Valentino has a certain Sapphic charm; here, silent sisters Shirley Mason and Viola Dana disport themselves as Rudolph and partner in his Four Horsemen tango.

But really: when confronted with the actual Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla, all else falls away. The Gigolo Superstar, still Hollywood's greatest Sudden Death (his funeral made Michael Jackson's look like nothing at all), and at heart a nice boy from Puglia.

I doubt screenland is done with trying to figure out what made it all work. I can't immediately think, though, of anyone who could take on the mantle (or rather, I suppose, the burnoose) were another biopic in the offing - Johnny Depp's Captain Jack has a touch of the old allure; Clooney has the dashing part down; Banderas is more or less the reigning ethnic. None, however, has the full package, as it were, to take on the legend. Perhaps it's just as well.

Gender Euphoria II

It look like we can add the divine Rudolph Valentino to the short list of exceedingly handsome men who can, against all odds, sport a turban and serious jewels and still retain more than a shred of masculinity. Actually, Rudy looks butcher here than he often did in far more conventional getups. There's a lesson there, somewhere...