As part of TCM’s series Silent Stars, Rudolph Valentino sets the small screen on fire tonight with his star-making performance in The Sheik (1921). Though Valentino had created a stir when he danced the Argentine tango in The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, it was The Sheik that propelled him to superstardom. Over the next five years, Valentino would magnify his celebrity by taking on roles that exploited his sensual, exotic Latin Lover image and by exposing his colorful romantic life to the fanzines.
Valentino’s screen persona would be out of place in today’s Hollywood, where interchangeable young actors show off their buff bodies and blond highlights while tossing out snarky one-liners. Valentino’s slightly feminine face and smooth body are unusual physical traits for a leading man, while his nostril-flaring, eye-bulging acting are unfashionably melodramatic. Yet, despite his dated persona and acting style, there is much to appreciate in Valentino’s films. They are imaginative, highly romantic fantasies that evoke colorful, exotic places or eras that never really existed. And, Valentino was undeniably charismatic and energetic—a perfect combination for the silent screen. A few years ago, I was fortunate to catch Valentino on the big screen in The Eagle, the story of Russian soldier Vladimir Dubrovsky. The film opens with Dubrovsky on horseback dressed in full Russian regalia while inspecting his troops. His queen, Catherine the Great, tries to seduce him, but he refuses her advances, resulting in his banishment from the castle. Details such as Catherine the Great, a castle, soldiers on horseback, and Valentino in a cape and uniform suggested to me—and the rest of the audience—that the story takes place in the distant past. Imagine our surprise when Valentino drives away from the castle in a fancy 1920s automobile. The audience burst out laughing at the incongruity, but this type of mismatching of exotic styles and historic eras is typical of Valentino’s films, where Romance with a capital R trumps accuracy.
To set the stage for Valentino’s signature, career-making role, I offer ten facts about The Sheik, which airs at 8:00pm tonight.
LADY DIANA MAYO, PLAYED BY AGNES AYRES, IS A MODERN-THINKING WOMAN WHO IS KIDNAPPED BY THE SHEIK. HE THEN SAVES HER FROM THE CLUTCHES OF LESS HANDSOME KIDNAPPERS.
1 The Sheik is based on a 1919 novel by British writer Edith M. Hull. The novel was so popular in America that it went through 50 printings in 1921, the year the film was released. It was a coup for Paramount Pictures and Famous Players Lasky to land the rights to the novel, and moguls Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zukor both mentioned the project in their memoirs. Lasky claimed that $10,000 was budgeted to buy the rights, but he exceeded that amount and paid $12,500, suggesting that he understood the potential of the material. Zukor stretched veracity by claiming he asked the studio to pony up $50,000. In reading the recollections of these Hollywood pioneers, the historian in me recognized their need to exaggerate their skills and contributions to the industry—a problem endemic to film history. By the way, Variety reported at the time that Paramount paid $7,500 for the rights.
VALENTINO AND COSTAR AGNES AYRES IN A PUBLICITY PHOTO THAT ENDED UP IN ‘SCREENLAND’
THE ALMOST SHEIK, JAMES KIRKWOOD
2 Paramount and other studios wanted to turn the highly popular novel into a movie because they knew that 60% of the movie-going audience was female. They knew women would flock to the box office to watch a movie catering to their tastes and desires. Today’s audience is 51% female, but studio heads ignore their tastes and desires, believing that a movie directed at women does not have the same box office potential as those directed at the desired demographic of young, adolescent males.
3 Actor-director James Kirkwood was originally slated for the role of Ahmed Ben Hassan, or the Sheik. Kirkwood averaged $1750 per week, but Lasky wanted to hold down the budget and asked the actor to take a fee cut. Kirkwood agreed to $1250 but refused to drop his price to $1000. Lasky then signed Valentino at $500 per week. However, fate was kinder to Kirkwood than Valentino. The Latin Lover lived large in the spotlight for five more years, but Kirkwood enjoyed a steady career as a leading man in silent films before making the transition to talkies as a character actor. His final film appearance was an uncredited part in Two Rode Together in 1961.
4 Eight-year-old Loretta Young appeared in Arab costume as an extra in The Sheik.
5 As a young man, director George Melford wanted to join a Wild West show, and his admiration for western motifs and imagery never left him. He got along well with Valentino during the production of The Sheik because he admired the actor’s horsemanship. It has been written that while directing the action scenes in his films, Melford wore boots, chaps, and a cowboy hat. If this is true, he must have created quite a sight as he sat astride a horse while directing his actors through a bullhorn. An assistant stood nearby, ready to blow the cavalry charge on a bugle to start or end the action for a shot.
IN TH IS LOBBY CARD, THE MANUFACTURED OASIS WITH THE WOODEN PALM TREES CAN BE SEEN.
6 In terms of the production design, Melford and the producers of the film were not seeking accuracy or authenticity. They sought to evoke a mythic Arabia found in storybooks and in the imaginations of would-be adventurers. A Hollywood-manufactured oasis was trucked to the California desert where the exteriors were shot. The oasis included fake palms made of wood, canvas, and paint, which had been constructed at Famous Players Lasky. The fake palms were coconut palms, which were actually the wrong kind for the Sahara desert, where date palms grow. But coconut palms look more lush and exotic. Eventually, the wooden palms ended up at the legendary Cocoanut Grove night club in Hollywood.
THE MUCH-PARODIED WIDE-EYED EXPRESSION MAY HAVE BEEN THE IDEA OF DIRECTOR GEORGE MELFORD. LATER, VALENTINO DENOUNCED HIS ACTING IN ‘THE SHEIK.’
7 Cecil B. DeMille disliked The Sheik. In a letter to Jesse Lasky, he called the film “a very stupid, uninteresting picture with not a moment of reality. . . .There are some beautiful shots of Arabs riding for so long that I would take little naps and wake up to find them still riding.” He bet Lasky $50 that the film would flop. The Sheik cost around $200,000 to produce, and, within a year, it made $1,000,000. Lasky was delighted to take DeMille’s $50.
8 The box office success of The Sheik spawned a craze for similar stories of exotic Arabs and lovesick women, including Burning Sands, Tents of Allah, The Arab (which was shot in Algiers), and Son of the Sheik. The enormous popularity for this trendy topic inevitably led to spoofs and satires, such as Felix the Cat Shatters the Sheik and Mack Sennett’s The Shriek of Araby. The word “sheik” became the new slang word for a ladies man, while female vixens and femme fatales were dubbed “shebas.” In Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr., the villain who tries to lure Buster’s girl away from him is called “the local sheik.” The idea of the exotic lover who can score so easily with women was behind the name for a new brand of condoms introduced in 1931 called Sheik.
9 The popularity of the film also inspired a pop tune titled “The Sheik of Araby,” in which a hot-blooded denizen of the desert sings, “Your heart belongs to me. At night when you’re asleep, into your tent I’ll creep.” Valentino not only hated the song but soon began distancing himself from his signature role, which had generated a kind of hype and hysteria that embarrassed him.
CROSS-EYED BEN TURPIN STARRED AS ‘THE SHRIEK OF ARABY’ IN MACK SENNETT’S SPOOF.
10 The enormous devotion of female fans created a backlash among male viewers who apparently resented Valentino’s way with women. Audiences for his films consisted mostly of women without their husbands, boyfriends, or beaus. Some male critics were unable to be objective and were brutal in their reviews. In Photoplay, columnist Dick Dorgan (likely a pseudonym) regularly ranted against the Latin Lover. In his column titled “Song of Hate,” he declared, “I hate Valentino! All men hate Valentino. I hate his oriental optics; I hate his classic nose; I hate his Roman face; I hate his smile; I hate his patent leather hair: I hate his Svengali glare; I hate him because he dances too well; I hate him because he is a slicker; I hate him because he is the great lover of the screen; I hate him because he’s an embezzler of hearts; I hate him because he’s too apt in the art of osculation . . . because he’s too good looking.”
Bothan, Noel. Valentino: The First Superstar. Metro Books, 2002.
Leider, Emily W. Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004.
Peterson, Roger C. Valentino: The Unforgotten. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2007.