Rudolph Valentino was an extraordinarily popular heart throb of the silent movie era of the 1920s, an Italian born sex symbol who starred in such well known films as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , The Sheik and Blood and Sand. Women swooned over him, men envied him and mothers adored him. His startling and unexpected death at the age of 31 of complications after an appendectomy was a shock to his fans; his New York funeral drew an estimated throng of 100,000 people to the streets, many in hysterics. Rudolph was surely the first major star of the film industry. Although he married twice and had several romantic liaisons, he never had children (as far as we know), so we’ll never know how those rather outré smoldering good looks might have translated to 21st century standards.
