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TheTrueRudolphValentino.jpg

Until this publication, Jeanne De Recqueville's 1978, Rudolph Valentino has only been available in French and copies of her book are scarce. Ms. De Recqueville was a Valentino activist in France for some twenty years; appearing as a Valentino authority on television and in documentaries in her role as the President and founder of “The Association of the Friends of Rudolfo Valentino.”

 

Ms. De Recqueville interviewed many of the people who knew Valentino in France including Jacques Herbertot, Rene Clair, Yvonne Legeay and Robert Florey. She also corresponded with Dr. Howard Meeker, the surgeon who operated on Rudolph Valentino and attended to him throughout his final illness. The book is in full color with additional essays on Andre Daven, Robert Florey's, The Magic Lantern, “The Letter to Bruno” and Aurelio Miccoli's definitive work on Valentino's nobility.

In the months before silent film icon Rudolph Valentino's death, he began a collaboration with Spanish journalist, Baltasar Fernández Cué. That collaboration was this book. Valentino lamented the glut of fictionalization about his life story and asked Cué to assist him in writing his true autobiography.

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During the spring of 1926, Baltasar Cué became a familiar member of Valentino's entourage as he was granted extraordinary access to the star's private life and professional activities. Valentino would die soon after in New York City, leaving Cué determined to fulfill his great friend's wish. With the assistance of Pola Negri and Valentino's friend Douglas Gerrard and with the endorsement of Alberto Guglielmi Valentino, Cué wrote The True Rudolph Valentino.

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With his main source no longer available, Cué would construct the book from his eye-witness accounts and his experience with Valentino and his inner circle. . Cué published his work in the Spanish language fan magazine Cine-Mundial as a ten installment series, from May 1927 to February of 1928.

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Renato Floris' translation presents this historically valuable book for the first time to an English-speaking audience. Floris conducted a meticulous research of Cué's quizzical phraseology and worked with the assistance and analysis of many generous individuals in England, Argentina, Spain, Chile, Italy and the US.

The True Rudolph Valentino is a full-color publication which includes reproductions of the original Cine-Mundial installment illustrations.

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