By all accounts, the movie star Rudolph Valentino was the premier womanizer of the 1920s. H. L. Mencken once described him as ‘catnip to women.’ Many of the women simply called him ‘jerk.’

Intelligent, stunningly handsome, and acutely aware of both characteristics, the Italian born movie star became one of the most enduring icons from the age of silent movies. He was also one of the silver screen's first male sex symbols. In the space of only five years, he had gone through three wives, countless lovers and a million broken hearts. Even so, the most startling characteristic about his career wasn't its physical intensity, but its amazingly short duration. Valentino starred in his first film at the age of 26. Five years later he was dead. As a result, this sexual supernova left to posterity only images of youth and vigor, producing an eerie timelessness that haunts the minds of many film buffs steeped in the lore of American cinema. This flexibility in our perception of aging, indeed the wobbliness of the very definition, is the focus of this chapter.

How Valentino died

The events that would take Rudolph Valentino's life started in his New York hotel suite. Witnesses relate that Valentino, lounging around his room on a lazy day in August 1926, felt a sudden, incredibly painful stabbing in his side. The pain persisted, but he refused to be hospitalized.