Is Rudolph Valentino a Real Tango Dancer?
In the world of Argentine tango, one encounters various personalities revered for their skill in the dance or their contribution to the craft, whether through movement or music.
Some of these are Carlos Gardel, Ástor Piazzolla, Aníbal Troilo, Gustavo Naviera and Giselle Anne, Rodolfo and Gloria Dinzel (also known as Los Dinzel), and many, many others. Of these personalities, perhaps none is as publicly celebrated and mourned as Rudolph Valentino.
Rudolph Valentino, better known simply as Valentino, was a Hollywood celebrity catapulted into stardom thanks to one iconic tango scene from the 1920s blockbuster The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Though his life and fame were rather short-lived, Rudolph Valentino's tango performance was what enabled him to nab more leading Hollywood roles until his untimely death in 1926.
However, despite his celebrity status, is Rudolph Valentino truly a tango dancer?
Valentino’s Early Life in America
Rudolph Valentino, born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguella, was not initially known as a tango dancer. In fact,
it is entirely possible that Valentino had simply begun to dance tango out of necessity, quite unlike some famous tango dancers who saw the craft as something of a calling or even a destiny.
A native of Castellaneta, Italy, Valentino came to the United States in 1913. According to an entry in Britannica, he “worked as a gardener and as a dishwasher” when he first emigrated to the U.S.
Fortunately for Valentino, it was also around this time that tango mania or the tango craze was sweeping all across New York. With tango’s popularity at the time, many bars and restaurants held dance parties. In search of better employment, Valentino must have seen these dance parties as an opportunity to obtain work outside of his gardening and dishwashing.
Thanks to his French mother and Italian father, Valentino was blessed with good looks that likely worked in his favor when applying to these restaurants as a dancer. How Valentino came to learn tango is perhaps a subject that’s up for debate, but a post by Tango Thread theorizes that he might have learned the dance through Casimiro Aín. It is not entirely clear how this might have happened.
Around 1914, a year after he arrived in New York, Valentino tried his hand at acting and was cast for several bit roles that were often uncredited. At the same time, according to a post from Street Swing,
Valentino was hired by Maxim’s Restaurant-Cabaret to be a taxi dancer, or a dance partner catering to female patrons.
Being a taxi dancer during those years was seen as being a gigolo, though the same post from Street Swing said that Valentino often denied claims that he worked as a gigolo when his acting career began to soar in the 1920s.
Though he might have had many connections with women in high society thanks to his work as a taxi dancer, it was in 1917 that Valentino’s turbulent relationship with women arguably began.
According to Britannica:
“He [Valentino] reportedly was hired by Blanca de Saulles, a Chilean heiress, to work as a gardener, and he testified at her divorce hearing, claiming that her husband, John de Saulles, had committed adultery. John later had [Valentino] arrested on dubious ‘vice’ charges, and in 1917 Blanca killed her husband. Worried that he would be caught in the ensuing scandal, [Valentino] left New York City with a musical troupe.”
Following up on the story, a post from Tango Thread states that
Valentino traveled for a few months before settling in Los Angeles, where he worked as a dance teacher.
By 1918, he chose the stage name Rudolph Valentino and began to focus on acting and getting movie roles.
Soaring to Stardom
Like many Hollywood aspirants, Valentino began with small roles, though his handsome features and background as a taxi dancer would soon work in his favor. In 1921, he finally got his big break as the silent film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse featured Valentino as its leading role. A post from the Smithsonian aptly summarizes how Valentino’s rise to stardom impacted not only his personal career but also the popularity of tango at the time:
“In Hollywood’s silent era, Rudolph Valentino represented a different kind of male screen personality than the swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks, known for his soaring roles as Zorro and Robin Hood. Valentino’s colossal breakthrough came in 1921 in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, one of the first films to gross more than one million dollars at the box office. Audiences thrilled as his tango dancing exploded across the screen, igniting his own screen stardom and popularizing this street dance as America’s hottest new craze.
“Valentino’s tango also illustrated how movies could spread social dance to a vastly larger audience (…).
“By the 1920s, media culture — movies, radio, recordings, magazines — gave vast audiences constant access to whatever was new.”
Tango’s passionate and energetic movements, seen in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, only served to reinforce Valentino’s appeal as one of Hollywood’s first male sex symbols.
Valentino was just as well-loved as the film among audiences, and the aura he exuded onscreen earned for him the moniker the “Latin Lover” (even though he was not Latin) or the “Great Lover.”
But what of his actual tango performance in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? An entry from Delta Dance has this to say:
“In this scene, all the dramatic qualities of (Argentine) Tango are brilliantly displayed. Its passion and arrogance. Its interplay of control and submission. Its sensuality.”
“[...] It has all the character we see in modern Argentine Tango. It’s cool, sensual, and powerful. Of course, today’s footwork is more intricate, but notice the flexed knees, the use of CBMP, the Legato movement carrying weight directly from one foot to the other, and the lady’s position — exactly as we still dance it today. The hold has changed a little, but only to support today’s greater amount of Staccato changes. The basic steps and technical characteristics are still the same. And so is the obvious storyline that women love a man who can dance!”
““The obvious storyline that women love a man who can dance!””
And indeed, a lot of female fans adored Valentino, who had become one of the most sought-after names in Hollywood. Even today, a hundred years after The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse graced the big screen, Valentino continues to be revered as an icon that some of his posters are even for sale on Amazon.
But while Valentino did not behave in the same fashion as the infamous El Cachafaz (whose tango dancing was as passionate as his brawling), one could say that their involvement with women was turbulent at best.
With Valentino's fame came a slew of failed relationships and nasty divorces sensationalized by constant press coverage. However, it hardly made a dent in his career. An entry from Britannica gives one a good picture of how Valentino’s status as a heartthrob came to be:
“Many of these films [The Sheik (1921), Blood and Sand (1922), and The Eagle (1925)] were noted for extravagant costumes and heavy makeup, and all highlighted Valentino’s exotic — if at times sexually ambiguous — good looks. However, his detractors — most of whom were men — questioned his masculinity, and one columnist claimed that Valentino was responsible for the United States’ ‘degeneration into effeminacy.’ While such comments angered the actor, they had little impact on his popularity.
In fact, his fame was such that a bigamy scandal — he married (1922) set designer and costumer Natasha (also spelled Natacha) Rambova before his divorce to [Jean] Acker was finalized — only seemed to enhance his romantic image. Valentino’s marriage to Rambova was annulled, and they wed again in 1923. However, the union was tumultuous. Rambova was accused of being controlling, and she was largely blamed for Valentino’s appearance in several poorly received films, notably Monsieur Beaucaire and A Sainted Devil (both 1924). She was eventually banned from his sets, and they divorced in 1925.
The following year, he starred in what was arguably his most popular film, The Son of the Sheik, earning particular praise for his performance. It was Valentino’s final movie and cemented his status as a legendary heartthrob.”
Untimely Passing
Unfortunately, on August 23, 1926, shortly after the premiere of The Son of the Sheik, 31-year-old Rudolph Valentino died from peritonitis after he suffered a ruptured ulcer.
It is perhaps during this time that Valentino’s status as a Hollywood celebrity is most palpable as his untimely passing caused mass hysteria and mourning, as well as several suicide attempts, most of whom were female fans devastated to hear of their idol’s death.
An entry from History vividly recounts how much of an impact Valentino’s death had on as many as 100,000 mourners:
“Valentino lay in state for several days at Frank E. Campbell’s funeral home at Broadway and 66th St., and thousands of mourners rioted, smashed windows, and fought with police to get a glimpse of the deceased star. Standing guard by the coffin were four Fascists, allegedly sent by Italian leader Benito Mussolini but in fact hired by Frank Campbell’s press agent. On August 30, a funeral was held at St. Malachy’s Church on W. 49th St., and a number of Hollywood notables turned out, among them Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Gloria Swanson.”
“Pola Negri appointed herself chief mourner and obligingly fainted for photographers several times between the train station and the chapel. She collapsed in a dead faint again beside Valentino’s bier, where she had installed a massive flower arrangement that spelled out the word POLA.”
“Valentino’s body was shipped to Hollywood, where another funeral was held for him at the Church of the Good Shepherd on September 14. He then was finally laid to rest in a crypt donated by his friend June Mathis in Hollywood Memorial Park.
Each year on the anniversary of his death, a mysterious ‘Lady in Black’ appeared at his tomb and left a single red rose. She was later joined by other, as many as a dozen, ‘Ladies in Black.’
The identity of the original Lady in Black is disputed, but the most convincing claimant is Ditra Flame, who said that Valentino visited her in the hospital when she was deathly ill at age 14, bringing her a red rose. Flame said she kept up her annual pilgrimage for three decades and then abandoned the practice when multiple imitators started showing up.”
Famous Tango Dancer or Just Famous?
Now that one has an ample background of who Rudolph Valentino is, one can return to the question initially posed at the beginning of this article: Is Rudolph Valentino a real tango dancer? Or was his fame disproportionate with his supposed talent?
To answer this question, one must first define what a “real” tango dancer is, which may be a complicated issue in itself. What is certain, however, is that
if not for Valentino, tango’s popularity might not have reached a wider audience in the United States.
Thanks to the movies in which he starred, there was a greater appreciation for tango in the 1920s. On the subject of his dancing skills, perhaps one might have a clearer answer by watching snippets of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or his other movies, which are widely available on the internet.
Without a doubt, though, Rudolph Valentino will remain as one of the most famous dancers whose performances in silent films brought tango to life on the big screen.