“Latin Lover” Ricardo Cortez, who went on to play a series of all-American scoundrels and criminals, in addition to similar unsavory types of other nationalities. Although never as big a star as fellow silent era screen heartthrobs Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro, and John Gilbert – or fellow Pre-Code era antiheroes […]

Ricardo Cortez biography The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez. Dan Van Neste's book covers the life and career of Paramount's “Latin Lover” threat to a recalcitrant Rudolph Valentino; one who would later portray a sly, seductive Sam Spade in the original – and highly enjoyable – […]

Gabriel Garko (photo) will play Rudolph Valentino (a.k.a. Rodolfo Valentino in places like Italy and Brazil) in a two-part Italian TV movie. To be directed by Alessio Inturri for Mediaset, the Valentino project is reportedly to be filmed this year in both Italy and the United States. Gabriel Garko, who'll […]

You want action? Movie-movie action? Then forget The Avengers, which opens in the US on May 4. The following day, head instead to the Niles Essanay Film Museum in the northern Californian town of Fremont, where they'll be screening two action-packed flicks: Laughing at Danger and “The Tragic Plunge,” episode […]

Rudolph Valentino, Agnes Ayres in George Melford's The Sheik Long before they became Hollywood's favorite terrorists, Arabs were generally portrayed as lusty, uncouth, infantile beings in myriad Hollywood movies. Turner Classic Movies returns this month with their annual “Race & Hollywood” film series. The “race” this time around: Arabs. Frank […]

Blood and Sand with Rudolph Valentino and Nita Naldi Bullfighting has never appealed to me, so I approached Fred Niblo's Blood and Sand with caution. Now that I've seen it, I am relieved that there was no actual footage of this hideous blood sport. Niblo's film version of Vicente Blasco […]

Rudolph Valentino in 'Blood and Sand' Rudolph Valentino Movies: 'Blood and Sand,' starring Hollywood's foremost Latin Lover, at the Hollywood Heritage Museum The Hollywood Heritage Museum will celebrate the birthday of silent movie icon and Latin Lover emeritus Rudolph Valentino on Wednesday, May 11, 2011. The event will include screenings […]

Rex Ingram directing Scaramouche (top); Henri Matisse, Rex Ingram (middle); Rex Ingram, the actor-director, with off-screen girlfriend Rosita Garcia in Baroud (bottom) Rex Ingram Part I In Beyond Paradise, I wrote that “Ingram's unquestionable talent was matched only by his arrogance, fiery temperament, and lack of respect for authority.” Indeed, […]

Rex Ingram; Barbara La Marr and Ramon Novarro in Trifling Women (bottom) St. Patrick's Day always reminds me of silent era filmmaker Rex Ingram, among whose silent era efforts are The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Prisoner of Zenda, Scaramouche, Mare Nostrum, The Magician, and The Garden of Allah, […]

Star Rudolph Valentino (foreground, left), extra and future star Ramon Novarro (third from the right), and Rose Dione holding the French tricolor in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (click on the photo to enlarge it) Directed by Rex Ingram, and starring Rudolph Valentino and Alice Terry, the silent era […]

Lollipop Guild member Jerry Maren, Judy Garland's son Joey Luft Judy Garland's son Joey Luft, Garland's grandchildren Jesse and Vanessa Richards, Lollipop Guild member Jerry Maren, and Emerald City manicurist Dorothy Barrett were present at the “Hollywood's Greatest Year” screening of The Wizard of Oz presented by the Academy of […]

The 13th annual Kansas Silent Film Festival (KSFF) will be held on Feb. 27 and 28, 2009, at the White Concert Hall on the Washburn University campus in Topeka, Kansas. Sponsored by Washburn, admission is free. This year's KSFF highlight is the American premiere of the restored 1926 swashbuckler Bardelys […]

Cobra (1925) Dir.: Joseph Henabery. Scr.: Anthony Coldeway; from Martin Brown's play. Cast: Rudolph Valentino, Nita Naldi, Casson Ferguson, Gertrude Olmstead, Eileen Percy, Lillian Langdon, Hector Sarno   Cobra is my favorite Rudolph Valentino film. Directed by Joseph Henabery, with a screenplay by Anthony Coldewey from a play by Martin […]

Rudolph Valentino romances Alice Terry in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, one of the biggest box office hits of the silent era. Eighty-six years after its original release, Rex Ingram's epic melodrama still impresses for its scope and the director's visual flair. At the website Falcon Lair, Donna Hill's […]

June Mathis / © Allan Ellenberger Collection June Mathis. The name means nothing to most of today's filmgoers and to the vast majority of self-proclaimed film historians. Yet, nearly nine decades ago June Mathis was, next to Mary Pickford, one of the two most powerful women in Hollywood. “She fairly […]

Rudolph Valentino death, funeral, and legacy discussed in new book: The Valentino Mystique Allan R. Ellenberger's meticulously researched The Valentino Mystique: The Death and Afterlife of the Silent Film Idol (McFarland & Company) describes in great detail the circumstances surrounding Rudolph Valentino's death and funeral in 1926. The star of […]

Rudolph Valentino profile by James Steffen on TCM: “The breakthrough film for Valentino was Rex Ingram's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). The World War I melodrama, based on the bestselling novel by Vicente Blasco-Ibanez, was a pet project of June Mathis, a screenwriter at Metro Pictures. Mathis lobbied […]

Falcon Lair. Erected in 1923 in the hills of the recently founded Bel Air, at the time a little-developed Los Angeles suburb, Falcon Lair was to have been the home of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Sheik star Rudolph Valentino and his wife Natacha Rambova (born Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy in Salt […]

Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino: 'Lost' 1920s movie 'Beyond the Rock's Los Angeles screening Starring Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, the long thought lost 1922 movie Beyond the Rocks will be the second presentation in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' “Lost and Found” film series. This romantic […]