How Hollywood Helped Hitler | Between 2 Wars | 1926 Part 2 of 3 - YouTube (1)
In 1926 the world is shocked when one of the first and one of the greatest movie superstars
in history suddenly and unexpectedly dies. He is Rudolph Valentino and his life and death
has an astonishing amount to do with the rise to power of the Nazi regime in Germany.
Welcome to Between-2-Wars a chronological summary of the interwar years, covering all
facets of life, the uncertainty, hedonism, and euphoria, and ultimately humanity's
descent into the darkness of the Second World War. I'm Indy Neidell.
We take them for granted today, the movie stars, TV stars, YouTube stars, and Instagram
influencers, and millions of people follow their lives. And by that I mean every single
moment of their lives, but it wasn't always so, and you can trace the rise of the cult
of media personality directly to the explosion of film, radio, the phonograph, and newsreels
in the interwar years that we covered in our previous episode.
Now, cult of personality has been a part of humanity since the dawn of recorded history,
but before the twentieth century, it was either the ruling class, religious figures, or stars
that were only as famous as widely as their reputation could travel… they weren't
global super stars. But in the early twentieth century, moving images and the cinema creates
the global superstar for better or for worse. It also democratises the possibility to rise
to stardom for other people than those in the entertainment industry - this in turn
will enable a new kind of political stars that will seize on modern media and combine
it with violence to rise to dictatorial powers.
Now, all of this started in a land of new opportunities - the budding movie industry
in the US with people like Carl Laemmle, who was one of the leading entrepreneurs to set
all of this in motion.
Laemmle was a German immigrant in America and the year was 1910. He is one of many,
many movie makers that have fled oppression, anti-semitism, poverty, and war in Europe
to hit it big in America during this time. Now, motion pictures were already by then
an important part of everyday life, even after barely over a decade of existence. And, there
were already movie stars, but nobody knew their names. Instead they were associated
with the names of the fledgling film studios for whom they worked.
So the anonymous “star” Florence Lawrence was known as the “Biograph Girl” because
she worked for the Biograph Film Company. Florence, was wildly popular, though nobody
knew who she was in real life. Her real name was Florence Annie Bridgewood and she was,
as you may imagine, not too happy about being known as a company cardboard figure. Especially
as being the Biograph Girl meant she was dependent on that studio for her fame and fortune, so
she wanted people to know her as Florence Lawrence. Yes, I'm aware that it rhymes.
In any case, when she demanded her own name on the film posters, Biograph Film predictably
refused.
Laemmle, on the other hand, was starting his own studio and needed a marketing gimmick
to set him apart from the virtual monopoly of the other studios. He called it The Independent
Moving Pictures Company but would later rename it Universal Studios. Now, Lawrence left Biograph
when they wouldn't let her shine as herself and Laemmle seized the opportunity. He hires
her, and immediately begins promoting her as HERSELF. As you might guess, people love
her even more when they know her as Florence, and she loves movie life even more when they
love her as Florence. Laemmle even pioneers the spoof PR story for their first film together,
“The Broken Bath”. He spreads rumours of her death in a St. Louis streetcar accident,
and then “resurrects” her at the film's premiere a month later. People love the drama
off-screen as much as on. Carl and Florence have struck box office gold!
In a development that confirms Biograph's and the other studios' fears, Laemmle and
Lawrence soon go their separate ways, but Laemmle has already hired another Biograph
Girl - Mary Pickford and created a new star, the biggest star of all so far - but this
is only the beginning.
As the First World War ended, this whole phenomena blows up to huge proportions. Entertainment
is no longer enough; people want glamor, glitz, and gossip, and the studios in Hollywood,
Berlin, London, and Paris are all too happy to acquiesce. The world is suddenly filled
with movie stars to look up to, be shocked by, and to personally identify with. The global
superstar is born. The most famous of them all is soon Charlie Chaplin, and by the early
twenties, he has created an independent studio by the stars and for the stars, together with
amongst others Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Laemmle's Mary Pickford.
As a great actor and great filmmaker, Chaplin is a natural at the publicity game. It also
helps that he leads a tumultuous and scandalous love life, with everything from marriages
to underage girls to well-publicized romantic relationship with other stars. One of them
is Pola Negri. A German, silent movie star of Polish ethnicity that has come to America
to flee the tensions in the young Polish Republic and revolutionary Germany that are constantly
getting in the way of her career. Between 1921 and 1924 they are in every paper, you
could in fact say that they were the Brangelinas of the early 20s. And in this game of public
promotion based on scandal and sultry gossip, when Negri and Chaplin go their separate ways,
she quickly gets entangled with the next superstar; Rudolph Valentino. While Chaplin is the comedic
superstar it is Chaplin's business partner Douglas Fairbanks and Valentino that vie for
title of top male romantic superstar.
Valentino, or Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi as was his real name, is an Italian
citizen, born of a French mother and an Italian father. In 1913, age 18 he flees poverty in
Italy to the US, where he at first makes his life as a busboy and waiter in New York. But
his astonishing good looks and famous charisma soon take him down another path as he starts
to work as a so called Taxi Dancer - a dancer for rent. Now he starts frequenting the inner
socialite circles of New York together with disenfranchised European Nobility victims
of the revolutions and wars of Europe, young good looking men that had fled conscription
in Europe, and other fallen stars in the Taxi Dancer circuit.
But this all comes to an abrupt end when he gets caught up in one of the most publicised
scandals of the time, when one of his friends - possibly his lover - the Portuguese heiress
Blanca de Saulles sues for divorce, she calls him as a witness of the infidelity of her
husband John de Saulles, an American Football player. Mr. de Saulles doesn't take it well
and uses his political influence to have Valentino arrested on trumped-up vice charges. Meanwhile
the de Saulles' get caught up in a bitter custody battle for their son, which ends with
Blanca shooting and killing her husband during an argument. Valentino, now disgraced and
unable to find work decides to flee New York to avoid further involvement with the matter.
He joins a series of travelling theatre companies and gradually makes his way west to Hollywood.
To make a long story short, once there he makes it big time in 1921 with the films “the
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and “The Sheik”, the latter which cements his image
as a mysterious oriental hero that endures to this day,
Now, while Fairbanks is seen as the ideal American man, Valentino is the epitome of
the ‘latin lover'. He is more modern, softer, and enigmatic in the view of women
- while many men see him as effeminate and meek, an affront to manliness. In many ways
the two now embody the gender conflicts of the time that we covered in our episode “Sex,
Drugs and the Right to Vote”. It has even been said that men walked out in disgust from
Valentino's movies and marriages were destroyed over the Fairbanks vs. Valentino fan debate.
True or not, this is very much part of the clever PR tactics by the artists themselves.
In fact, by 1925 Valentino is working for Pickford, Fairbanks and Chaplin at United
Artists and has engineered a public persona that goes far beyond the silver screen and
the borders of the US.
He is now a global superstar and glows in cinemas and on magazine covers as far away
as Paris, Helsinki and Tokyo, with women world-wide reportedly swooning and fainting at the mere
mention of his name. He makes photo plays in magazines, endorses brands, helps launch
fashion, store chains, and god knows what - he is very much at the heart of the beginning
of the Roaring Twenties. But, in a tragic twist, much like the precarious times he lives
in, it all comes to a catastrophic end when on 15 August, 1926 he suddenly collapses with
acute stomach pains in a hotel lobby in New York. He is rushed to hospital and diagnosed
with perforated intestinal ulcers that at first present with the same symptoms as acute
appendicitis - a condition that will now become known in medical circles as Valentino Syndrome.
The doctors fight for his life during the next days, but… this is many years before
penicillin and effective anti-inflammation medicine. The infection spreads through his
abdominal cavity and to his lung sack. On 23 August 1926 Rudolph Valentino succumbs
to acute peritonitis and pleuritis, he is 31 years old.
His death sends much of the world into literal shock. Dozens of women even reportedly kill
themselves out of grief. He will have two funerals, one in New York and one in LA - it
will be a spectacle orchestrated and planed to maintain Valentino's legacy. In New York
100,000 come out to line the streets along the cortège that transports his body to the
funeral home where it will be put on display. Riots break out as people throng towards the
coffin and block its way - over 100 mounted NYPD officers are deployed to restore order.
When they eventually manage to get him to the funeral home and out on display Pola Negri
storms his body and breaks down in histrionics, exclaiming loudly between her sobs that they
were newly engaged to be married, claims that will forever be unsubstantiated, but gives
her headlines across the globe.
But she is not the only one that immediately capitalises on Valentino's death. As an
Italian he has a special place in the heart of yet another master of publicity, Benito
Mussolini.
Acutely aware of the commotion that Valentino's death will create and the interest it will
spark world-wide Mussolini wants some of the spotlight to reflect on him. He sends an honour
guard of four Black Shirts to stand at attention as the dead superstars lies in wake in New
York. Well, in reality it's four local actors hired by the funeral home and dressed up as
Black Shirts, but in the world of make-believe and propaganda that hardly matters - the message
is clear - Mussolini loves Valentino and then Valentino must have loved Mussolini, right?
Now, this not the first time that the motion pictures are used for propaganda. In fact,
one of the first widely distributed full colour films was a 150-minute long propaganda piece
celebrating the coronation of King George of England as Emperor of India way back in
1911. But, it would take a new generation of politician like Mussolini to take it to
the next level and combine film with propaganda. And one of Mussolini's admirers is a certain
Joseph Goebbels - soon to be Nazi Minister of Propaganda. Goebbels will take Mussolini's
and the entertainment industry's methods to unprecedented levels in his effort to spread
Naziism and indoctrinate the German people.
Already in 1926 both Adolf Hitler and Goebbels are avid film fans and understand the extraordinary
