Alternative Film Guide

Ramon Novarro was the first Latin-American performer to become a Hollywood superstar. Born Ramón Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family, Novarro arrived in Hollywood in 1916 as a refugee from the civil wars that rocked Mexico in the early 20th century.

A few years later, the young Mexican made a name for himself following the 1922 release of Rex Ingram’s period romance The Prisoner of Zenda. The handsome and wildly eccentric Ingram was Metro Pictures’ foremost director and the man who had helped to turn Rudolph Valentino into a star in the 1921 blockbuster The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the aftermath of an acrimonious split with Valentino, Ingram did his utmost to transform the inexperienced Ramón Samaniego into the charismatic heartthrob Ramon Novarro.

By the mid-1920s, Novarro had become one of the most important stars at the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, going on to appear in a series of highly popular films, among them The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, The Flying Fleet (that’s the Top Gun of 1929), The Pagan (which introduced the popular ditty "Pagan Love Song"), Mata Hari, and the original version of Ben-Hur.

Ben-Hur, in fact, was the most colossal — and problem-plagued — undertaking by any studio up to that time. As a result of that picture, one of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters ever, Novarro’s fame reached phenomenal heights the world over.

During that time, Novarro shared the screen with some of the era’s most important leading ladies, including Greta Garbo (Mata Hari), Myrna Loy (The Barbarian), Jeanette MacDonald (The Cat and the Fiddle), Helen Hayes (The Son-Daughter), Joan Crawford (Across to Singapore), Norma Shearer (The Student Prince), Alice Terry (Scaramouche, Where the Pavement Ends, The Arab), Barbara La Marr (The Prisoner of Zenda, Trifling Women, Thy Name Is Woman), May McAvoy (Ben-Hur), Lupe Velez (Laughing Boy), and Enid Bennett (The Red Lily).

In addition to Ingram, Novarro worked with other first-rank directors (even if the films themselves were oftentimes below — sometimes way below — par), among them Ernst Lubitsch (The Student Prince), Clarence Brown (The Son-Daughter), W. S. Van Dyke (The Pagan, Laughing Boy), Sam Wood (Huddle, The Barbarian), Sidney Franklin (Devil-May-Care), John M. Stahl (Lovers?), Charles Brabin (Call of the Flesh, above), Marcel L’Herbier (La Comédie du bonheur), Harry Beaumont (Forbidden Hours), Fred Niblo (The Red Lily, Thy Name Is Woman, Ben-Hur), George Fitzmaurice (Mata Hari), Robert Z. Leonard (In Gay Madrid), George W. Hill (The Flying Fleet, below left), and Jacques Feyder (Daybreak, Son of India).

Later in his career, Novarro had supporting roles in lesser films directed by big names: John Huston (We Were Strangers), Richard Brooks (Crisis), Don Siegel (The Big Steal), and George Cukor (Heller in Pink Tights).

Yet, despite his professional accomplishments — film critics both liked and respected him — Novarro’s most enduring claim to fame is his violent death: His bloodied corpse was found in his Hollywood Hills house on Halloween 1968, in what has become one of the most infamous Hollywood scandals.

Novarro was a lifelong bachelor who had carefully cultivated his image as a man deeply devoted to his large family and to his religious convictions. (He was an ardent Catholic who more than once considered becoming a priest.) His death shattered that image as the public learned that the dashing screen hero of yore had been gay — and had been killed by two young hustlers. Since then, increasingly outlandish stories have become accepted as truth, obscuring Novarro’s professional legacy.

Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro chronicles Novarro’s life from its beginnings in the Durango of the early 1900s to its tragic end in the Los Angeles of the late 1960s. The book includes original interviews with Novarro’s surviving friends, family, coworkers, and Paul and Tom Ferguson, the two men convicted of his murder.

Note: Much to his annoyance, Ramon Novarro’s name was often misspelled as "Ramon Navarro," "Roman Navarro," and even "Ramon Navorro" — in fact, looking at search engine data, it still is.

Photos: © Matias Bombal Collection

Ramon Novarro’s Lloyd Wright Home on the Market

Fatty Arbuckle-Virginia Rappe Trial Q&A with Film Researcher Joan Myers

THE VALENTINO MYSTIQUE by Allan Ellenberger

A Star Is Reborn: Janet Gaynor Retrospective at UCLA

June Mathis: Author Allan Ellenberger Discusses One of the Most Powerful Women in Hollywood History

Curtis Harrington

Lupita Tovar Tribute

Norma Shearer’s LADY OF THE NIGHT on Turner Classic Movies

Ben-Hur Collector’s Edition DVD

Comments RSS