{"id":60,"date":"2006-12-27T12:29:41","date_gmt":"2006-12-27T20:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/2006\/12\/storm-in-the-desert\/"},"modified":"2009-12-06T18:44:09","modified_gmt":"2009-12-07T02:44:09","slug":"storm-in-the-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/2006\/12\/storm-in-the-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"Storm in the Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally written for a Westminster College writing class, spring 2006.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rudolph \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sheik\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Valentino married his second wife\u00e2\u20ac\u201da great-granddaughter of Mormon patriarch Heber C. Kimball\u00e2\u20ac\u201din 1922 and then again, legally, in 1923. Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy took it from there.
\n<\/strong>
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He does not look like your husband. He is not in the least like your brother. He does not resemble the man your mother thinks you ought to marry.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201da 1920s fan magazine describes Rudolph Valentino<\/p>\n

Women fainted in theaters during Rudolph Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s movies, and his premature death in 1926 provoked thousands of rioting fans to break out windows in the funeral parlor to see his corpse. A modern-day equivalent would be if Leonardo DiCaprio had died soon after appearing in Titanic<\/em>. A mysterious, heavily veiled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Woman in Black\u00e2\u20ac\u009d appeared every year on the anniversary of Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death to leave roses at his crypt in Los Angeles. Who was this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sheik,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153male Helen of Troy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Phantom Rival in every domestic establishment\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? And what was Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s connection to the Beehive State?<\/p>\n

Rudolph Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u201deven with his stiff acting and uneven teeth\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbecame a silent-film icon of the Jazz Age and America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first superstar. Born Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina D\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Antonguolla, he sailed to New York City in 1918 at age 23. After shortening his name and dancing as a movie extra, Valentino rocketed to fame playing an Arab prince in The Sheik<\/em>, a 1921 film shot in the coastal dunes of California. His trance-like gaze, flowing robes and headdresses, and kitschy entrances on rearing Arabian horses projected lust and drama at a time when Americans saw overt sexual advances only in foreign settings. Valentino stormed Hollywood during Prohibition, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153flapper era,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at a time when many Italian-Americans were known only as gangsters. Called the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Great Lover,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rudolph Valentino was actually a sensitive son, poet, good cook, and a devoted animal lover. Fan mail was answered in long, artful letters which he dutifully dictated. His star rose in direct proportion to how many photos of him\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe less clothes the better\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe fan magazines published.<\/p>\n

Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s star crossed with Natacha Rambova, a Utah pioneer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great-granddaughter, on the set of Camille in 1920. Valentino recalled their first meeting, saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She never looked to right or left. She seemed frozen.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In fact, Rambova saw herself as a kind of Cleopatra: a trained ballerina and exotic beauty with wide-set eyes given to static poses. She was not interested in hearth and home. She wanted art, beauty, design, and spirituality, and she was willing to reinvent herself many times throughout her life to get them.<\/p>\n

Rambova was born Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy in Salt Lake City on January 19, 1897. Her mother was Winifred \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Muzzie\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Kimball, a granddaughter of Heber C. Kimball, one of the original Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Brigham Young\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s First Counselor. Baby Winifred\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s father was Michael Shaughnessy, a widowed Irish-Catholic Union colonel in the Civil War, whose gambling problems and drinking soon broke up their marriage. Muzzie scandalized her Mormon family by converting to Catholicism, getting divorced, and then developing an independent career as an interior designer in her new marriage to Edgar de Wolfe. As she decorated mansions for the rich and famous, Muzzie became a millionaire.<\/p>\n

One way Muzzie spent her money was to send young Winifred, called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Wink,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to boarding school in England and then to study ballet in New York under Russian \u00c3\u00a9migr\u00c3\u00a9 Theodore Kosloff. At Kosloff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s insistence, Wink changed her name at age 17 to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Natacha Rambova,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d reportedly one of Kosloff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s former students who had died before reaching her artistic potential. Rambova felt this new name expressed her true inner artistic self. Following her mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s example of rejecting a traditional Mormon woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s role as wife and mother, this name change was one of Rambova\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s many stormy reinventions in her life.<\/p>\n

Soon impressing others more with her designing talent than her dancing, Rambova soon caught the eye of the Russian actress and impresario Alla Nazimova with her avant garde yet historically accurate costume designs. Nazimova asked Rambova to leave New York and join her production company.<\/p>\n

Rambova created the sets, the costumes, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the look\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Nazimova\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s production of Camille in 1920. It was there she met Valentino, who was then relatively unknown. She immediately set about changing his appearance. Seeing Valentino as a mannequin, she shampooed and curled his hair, dressed him, and turned his body into a canvas for her art. The shy, poetic Valentino started courting the dark, elegant Rambova. She later remembered,
\nAt that time I was very serious, running about in low-heeled shoes and taking squints at my sets and costumes. Rudy was forever telling jokes and forgetting the point of them, and I thought him plain dumb. Then it came over me . . . that he was trying to please, to ingratiate himself. . . . \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcOh, the poor child,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I thought. \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHe just wants to be liked\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lonely.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t love at first sight. I think it was good comradeship more than anything else.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Soon calling each other \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Babykins,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d they were soon devoted friends and lovers. They enjoyed camping in the arid San Jacinto Mountain canyons near Palm Springs, and Valentino cooked as his mother Maria Berta had taught him in Italy, creating his signature dish of six-foot-long spaghetti noodles and meatballs for Natacha and their friends. Perhaps he saw in her the woman to bear him children and create a happy home. In Valentino, Rambova saw her dreams of culture, fame, and art.<\/p>\n

Fame had begun garroting Valentino after The Sheik which was filmed just after Camille. Movie ads proclaimed:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153SEE the heroine, disguised, invade the Bedouin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s secret slave rites
\nSEE her captured by bandit tribesmen and enslaved by their chief
\nSEE the Sheik\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s vengeance, the storm in the desert, a proud woman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heart surrendered\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nValentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s flamboyant, flowing costumes for The Sheik were designed by Rambova, sharing almost equal critical billing with the young Italian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s acting. Rambova soon started trying to steer him away from the steamy roles that had made him famous and was more interested in art film opportunities, upsetting studio heads and fans. Continuing disagreements about Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s career direction, his erratic driving, and whether to start a family were to prove fatal to their relationship.<\/p>\n

In 1922, they were married in Mexicali, Mexico, but Valentino was immediately jailed because his brief marriage to actress Jean Acker had not been legally dissolved. This started one of Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s many media circuses as adoring, frenzied fans struggled to get near their idol. The bigamy trial was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153like a gangster\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funeral,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d according to a court reporter, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153with armed guards . . . to keep the flappers from literally crushing Rudy to death. Femininity, in all shapes and ages, jammed the courtroom.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As legal matters were worked out, Rambova and Valentino had to keep up an elaborate show of celibacy. After a mandatory waiting period once the bigamy charges were dropped, they were finally legally married in Indiana in April 1923. Their happiness was to be short-lived.<\/p>\n

After further fights with the movie studios,Valentino and Rambova\u00e2\u20ac\u201dboth trained dancers\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwent on a tango tour to promote Mineralava Beauty Clay in 88 American cities. They arrived in Salt Lake City in a private railroad car named \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Colonial,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d outfitted with Turkish carpets, gilt mirrors, and two well-publicized separate bedrooms. In advance advertisements, Rambova was referred to as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the little pigtailed Shaughnessy girl\u00e2\u20ac\u009d who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d grown up to capture the heart of the love king of Hollywood. Rambova was furious. She considered a summation of her life much more than that. She and Valentino danced at Saltair Palace and, beyond a beach roped off to keep fans at bay, Rambova and Valentino floated in the Great Salt Lake with Natacha\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relatives.
\nSuccumbing to the frustration of arguing over his career, Valentino eventually signed a contract clause barring Rambova from his movie sets. They separated in 1925, filming a goodbye for cameras at Union Station in Los Angeles. That scene would be the last time they ever saw each other.<\/p>\n

After their eventual divorce in early 1926, Valentino was depressed and suicidal. On a promotional tour for The Sheik\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sequel The Son of the Sheik, Valentino ate poorly, indulged in late hours, and drank excessively. Collapsing at a friend\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s apartment, he died in agony in the August heat at a New York hospital from complications of a perforated ulcer. He was 31. On hearing news of his death, Rambova sequestered herself in her bedroom while Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s butler Lou Maloney quickly and quietly removed the negligees of actress Pola Negri from the Great Lover\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s California mansion. In spite of Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s smoldering on-screen persona and playboy reputation, Maloney was very sensitive to a Catholic sense of propriety.<\/p>\n

Rambova eventually left her bedroom and lived another 40 years. She married Spaniard Alvaro de Urz\u00ce\u00aciz, moved to Mallorca, and studied the spiritual messages in Egyptian art. Eventually divorcing Urz\u00ce\u00aciz, she continued to collect Nepali, Tibetan, and Egyptian artwork on her many trips. As her mother had developed a friendship with Utah Museum of Fine Arts director Owen Horsfall, Rambova decided to donate her artwork to the UMFA. The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rambova Collection\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Egyptian art is exhibited on the museum\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first floor.<\/p>\n

Rambova developed schleroderma, a degenerative condition affecting the esophagus, stomach, and kidneys, aggravated by the anorexia nervosa she had battled her entire life. At one point she could only consume water, rose hips, and crushed caviar. She died June 5, 1966, at the age of 69 in a rest home in Pasadena, California.<\/p>\n

From Rambova\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beginnings in the Utah high desert to Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s notoriety by
\nway of a desert movie to Rambova\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obsession with a North African desert civilization, their lives were indeed desert maelstroms of wildly directed passions.<\/p>\n

We remember Valentino and Rambova this year which commemorates the 80th anniversary of his death and the 40th anniversary of hers. Roses were left at Valentino\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Hollywood Forever Cemetery gravesite in Los Angeles for many years by the Woman in Black, alternatively described in biographies as his first wife or the daughter of a woman whose hospital bed he once visited. In contrast to that well-visited resting place, Rambova\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remains were cremated, and her ashes were scattered at her request in a northern Arizona forest. Utahns might leave roses by the Rambova Collection on June 5 and August 23 in remembrance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally written for a Westminster College writing class, spring 2006. Rudolph \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sheik\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Valentino married his second wife\u00e2\u20ac\u201da great-granddaughter of Mormon patriarch Heber C. Kimball\u00e2\u20ac\u201din 1922 and then again, legally, in 1923. Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy took it from there. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He does not look like your husband. He is not in the least like your brother. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-paper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathygrossman.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}