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'Dark Lover': Rudolph Valentino and the Deflowering of America
By BARRY GEWEN
Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three / (Which was rather late for me).'' Philip Larkin was off by 42 years. Sexual intercourse actually began in 1921, on Oct. 30 to be precise. That was the date on which ''The Sheik,'' featuring Rudolph Valentino, opened at two movie houses in New York City. Valentino had already become a star some months earlier with his dazzlingly erotic tango in ''The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,'' but it was ''The Sheik'' that launched him into the stratosphere. Crowds mobbed the theaters, breaking attendance records. Across the country, female fans shivered and went limp. Smart young men with an eye for the ladies were soon being called ''sheiks'' -- and looking for adventure with girls called ''shebas.'' Some years later, Sheik condoms went on sale, with a silhouette of Valentino on their packages. What does a woman want? Apparently, in 1921, what millions of women wanted was the fantasy of a swarthy, intense, exotic stranger with flowing robes and piercing eyes sweeping them up and forcing himself upon them.
The ground for Valentino had been prepared in the preceding decade -- with bobbed hair and rising hemlines, dance crazes and petting parties, campaigns for birth control and woman suffrage. But you would have to look back to 19th-century celebrities like Byron, Liszt and Paganini to find comparisons, and even those pale: it took the modern media to turn female hysteria into a mass phenomenon. And if a Rudolph Valentino had never been seen before, it is necessary to add that nothing truly like him has been seen since.
By BARRY GEWEN
Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three / (Which was rather late for me).'' Philip Larkin was off by 42 years. Sexual intercourse actually began in 1921, on Oct. 30 to be precise. That was the date on which ''The Sheik,'' featuring Rudolph Valentino, opened at two movie houses in New York City. Valentino had already become a star some months earlier with his dazzlingly erotic tango in ''The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,'' but it was ''The Sheik'' that launched him into the stratosphere. Crowds mobbed the theaters, breaking attendance records. Across the country, female fans shivered and went limp. Smart young men with an eye for the ladies were soon being called ''sheiks'' -- and looking for adventure with girls called ''shebas.'' Some years later, Sheik condoms went on sale, with a silhouette of Valentino on their packages. What does a woman want? Apparently, in 1921, what millions of women wanted was the fantasy of a swarthy, intense, exotic stranger with flowing robes and piercing eyes sweeping them up and forcing himself upon them.
The ground for Valentino had been prepared in the preceding decade -- with bobbed hair and rising hemlines, dance crazes and petting parties, campaigns for birth control and woman suffrage. But you would have to look back to 19th-century celebrities like Byron, Liszt and Paganini to find comparisons, and even those pale: it took the modern media to turn female hysteria into a mass phenomenon. And if a Rudolph Valentino had never been seen before, it is necessary to add that nothing truly like him has been seen since.
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