CASTELLANETA. Province of Turanto, Italy, August 25.—This village, where Rudolph Valentino was born 31 years ago, today is in mourning.
When a newspaper from the neighboring city of Bari arrived in the village about sunset on Monday, it was glanced at by a group of sleepy card players who were sipping beer. Some one saw the bulletin announcing Valentino’s death. The card game was forgotten.
“Nostro Rudolfo morto!” they exclaimed.
Peasants trudging in from work on distant farms passed by the cafe for a glass of heady Calabrian red wine and heard the news. On their way to their homes—pretty stone and plaster huts scattered over the rocky Calabrian hills, parched in the Summer sun—they spread the news.
Within a half hour a village executive committee, numbering dozens of self-appointed executives, had gathered in the main plaza to discuss the news. Should the village declare itself officially in mourning? Or is the spontaneous grief of his former boy playmates and schoolgirl sweethearts a more appropriate tribute?
Official mourning has not yet been decided upon-at least until the provincial prefect gives his assent.
“Our Rudolfo was a wild youth,” said the elders, shaking their heads.
“His example was bad for the younger generation. He was not content to work and save like an honest villager. He was always discontented. He went to Bari and then to France, where he spent the money his father had saved for him.”
But the younger generation, which even in this little village dances jazz tunes and wears short skirts for Sunday, replied:
“Yes. but he succeeded. He was a millionaire.”
Thus two generations are at swords points, attempting to draw a moral from Rudolph Valentino’s life.
When the correspondent reached Castellaneta today by motor from Taranto, although the sun had not yet risen, peasants—men and women—already were gathering in the public square with scythes over their shoulders ready to set forth on an hour’s trudge to the distant farm plots where, with 12 to 14 hours of grilling labor, they manage to extract a bare subsistence from the exhausted soil.
No, they never heard of Rudolph Valentino. There were no Valentinos in this town. But Rudolfo Gugliemi—yes.
“He was ‘grand signore,’ a great noble man. His father was a learned man—a veterinary. He traveled over the whole province, cured our cows, read us our letters from our husbands in America, wrote letters for us to our sweethearts.
“The Guglielmis are all dead. There are no relatives here now. Rudolfo’s mother was very learned. She could read and write, too. She was Maria Barbin before she married. French extraction. Queer name. She died two years ago in France, in the presence of her parents.”
French—that explains why Rudolfo was so wild. What they mean by “wild” was suggested by the village mayor, police commissioner and doctor, whom the correspondent interviewed. As a boy he was nervous they remembered well. Once he had got a game started he lost interest and was already inventing a new one. It was Rudolfo who first jumped from the balcony of his father’s house to the street below, establishing a precedent which all Castellaneta boys must equal if they hope to become leaders of Castellaneta society.
It was Rudolfo who organized the club of Calabrian bandits. who terrorized the village idiot.
Dreams of America.
But, said the mayor, he was not always a daring ruffian. He sometimes passed hours dreaming. Of what? He wouldn’t tell. But his parents, troubled by his restlessness, knew. He was dreaming of America.
After a half hour’s quest through the sweltering streets of Castellaneta, the correspondent found Rudolfo’s old nurse. Rosa, semi-somnolent, riding donkey-back down a deserted lane on the outskirts of the village.
Upon mention of Rudolfo’s name, her old, weather-beaten face was furrowed by a stream of silent tears. But soon collecting herself, her face beamed with reminiscent admiration as she declared:
“Until his twelfth year, Rudolfo was my baby boy. He was veritable little devil, but he was gifted with a striking personality. His daring used to terrify me, even as a child. No escapade was too wild for him. One day he turned my hair gray by his stunt of toe dancing across a rope stretched from one balcony of his home to another balcony 10 feet away. (The balconies of the old home are 15 feet above the pavement.)
“Another time he scared me by riding a perilously untamed donkey.”
The police commissioner has sent the following wire to Albert Guglielmi, Rudolfo’s brother: “Castellaneta is proud to have been the native village of your illustrious brother, Rudolph Valentino, whose ardent boyhood still lives here. The whole town unanimously condoles with you in the untimely loss which robs Italy of her great son.”
Evening Star, Washington, DC, August 25, 1926
