The original book is about 2/3 fictional dialogue and would be considered an embarrassment to anyone who reads it. It's no wonder this book is seldom quoted or sourced in ANY book about Rudolph Valentino. It is awash with errors.
Aside from a mountain of errors, let me make clear that this book is pure pablum. You will learn nothing new at all.
Examples of errors that the original author made and the "editor" Evelyn Zumaya, of the new edition didn't catch: (Keep in mind the 'editor's' sole role in this project was to make footnotes to point out errors or clarifications)
On page 25 on the 2nd paragraph the name Jean Acker is spoken. Yet in the very next paragraph she is noted as "Joan" Acker. Huh???
On Page 27 Jeanne, when talking about the movie The Married Virgin saying "they glue a monocle on his right eye and draw a thin mustache... he smokes a big cigar which contributes to his characters unpleasant appearance" In truth in the movie the Married Virgin he uses NO monocle nor does he sport a mustache. In confusion the author is remembering "Isle Of Love' Yet, Zumaya did not grasp De Requeville's error nor make any 'footnote' of it. This is quite noteworthy because it exposes Zumaya's lack of Valentino knowledge early on.
Rudy as he appeared throughout in 'The Married Virgin'. Do you see a monocle or mustache?
Rudy in 'Isle of Love' How much research would it have taken for Evelyn Zumaya to right this wrong in the original edition?
On page 36 Evelyn Zumaya continues to misspell the street name of his home in Whitley Heights. I called her out on this some time ago, so you'd think it would be on her radar, but no. Wedgewood is still misspelled as "Wedgwood" This is the simplest of fixes. This is noteworthy of how 'scholarly' this woman is. She is NOT.
On page 48 The original author has Rudy filming Beyond The Rocks after the Rambova wedding, yet truth be told, Beyond The Rocks was released on May 7 and the marriage was on May 13th. Some thing is wrong with her math! Does Evelyn Zumaya catch this error or make a foot note about it? NO.
Another error by Evelyn Zumaya is on page 53 footnote #100 which Zumaya says they were married on the first day of the tour. No! Tour's first date was March 17 in Omaha NB, NOT Crown Point where they were married in Indiana.
On page 87 Footnote #173 Evelyn Zumaya turns on the original author in a vicious way. She says her comments are a "cruel invention of the author" Ouch. The reason? The original authors negative comments about Natacha Rambova. Oh, whats this? Zumaya is selling a book about Rambova? Thus the snarky footnote #173. Got it.
On page 127 the author says he was wearing slave bracelet in death and will take it to the grave. Evelyn Zumaya makes NO effort to dispute this. Maybe she doesn't know?
Page 131 The author says George Ullman and Charlie Chaplin were pall bearers at the Saint Malachy funeral. Charlie Chaplin was a pall bearer at the West Coast funeral held at the Church of the Good Shepherd. Ullman was never a pall bearer. Did Evelyn Zumaya even notice this error? There is no 'footnote' in the book, so I have to believe this went over her head. SAD.
Page 133 Alberto did not pay for burial spot. B of A (as administrators) paid $800 on March 24, 1933. In the book it says it says this happened in 1936. This is untrue. Evelyn Zumaya once again shows her lack of facts.
Page 179 Aspiration Statue unveiling The author says that Pola was there; "Pola Negri was asked to honor the event with her presence in a intimate ceremony which included about 10 photographers. Pola came running, delighted to pose while she was removing the drape which covered the statue "
Delores unveiling the Aspiration statue
Lets wrap up this mess with Frank Mennillo. Author Jeanne De Recqueville mentions Mennillo ONCE. Yet, due to footnotes by Evelyn Zymaya he is mentioned an astounding 13 times within the book! In the index Mennillo is listed as being on pages 17, 19, 56, 109, 119-120. The index is faulty - It doesn't mention Mennillo is also on pages 15, 121, 128
This book is a joke. 35% fictional dialogue and shows Recqueille is another yawn in the early bios of Rudy. Who asked for this to be translated and reprinted? There is nothing truthful nor any insight to be had. They are charging $39 on Amazon. Do you think this is a fair price?
A Prejudiced, Phenomenally Overpriced, 70% Fictitious, Badly-Translated Hatchet Job
ReplyDeletePart One
Jeanne-Marie de Recqueville, born 1910 and date of death seemingly unknown, was a first-class children’s author who won many literary prizes. As a reliable biographer, however, like The Madwoman of Turin, she scores “nul points”. I watched her in “Autopsie d’une légende: Pourquoi des millions des femmes pleuraient”, (Autopsy of a Legend: Why Millions of Women Wept), part of the French “Les dossiers de l’écran” broadcast at Christmas1970. Paul Ivano, who knew Valentino well, was a member of the panel dissecting his life—as was Yvonne Legeay, the former member of Mistinguett’s troupe, who had not known him at all. Like The Madwoman, de Recqueville was profoundly obsessed with Valentino’s sexuality. Unlike The Madwoman, she was not evil and spiteful towards all and sundry in her quest to “prove” that he did not bat for the other team. Unlike The Madwoman, she will go down in history and loved and respected for her achievements, though not where her Valentino “biography” is concerned.
De Recqueville writes in the style of Guy de Bellet (a good writer) and the later Aurelio Miccoli (of whom the least said the better) in that there are huge chunks of contemporary dialogue, as if the authors were present at the time. Thus, in common with The Madwoman of Turin, her book is around 70% fiction, 30% wishful thinking. Ken Russell, who championed me and who directed the excellent though flawed “Valentino” biopic, called her a “stuffy old bat”. A few years after “Autopsie d’une légende”, de Requeville would hammer him, in the way that she hammers the 1951 film in this 3-hour documentary. Yes, it really does drag on for this long! In common with The Madwoman, her subsequent book was a flop and an embarrassment, though de Recqueville didn’t go for the jugular quite in the same way as her nonentity successor and end up at the bottom of the literary heap.
Thus we arrive at the English “translation” of her book by someone who would be hard-put to translate the one-word name of a Parisian métro station. Earlier, he translated a series of magazine articles by Balthazar Cué, which were serialised in several European magazines after Valentino’s death. These were typical of the hokum doing the rounds at the time—wildly fanciful and to be taken with a huge dose of salt. Only an idiot would read them now and proclaim their gushings as historical fact. Enter 74-year-old Child Bill Hiccup—he of the oversized hats and ego: multi-lingual child star, lighting technician, Cordon Bleu chef, puppeteer and Firemen’s Muse. He and The Madwoman tried to convince us that Valentino collaborated with Cué and that between them they were penning his autobiography. BUNKUM! Valentino did not know that he was about to die. And like Jeanne de Recqueville, no one in the Valentino world knows who he was, or even cares. Neither are referred to in ANY subsequent biography of the star, inasmuch as no one mentions The Madwoman and Mumbles in ANY aspect of the Valentino world today. They are blocked and blacklisted in every aspect of the media. You will NEVER see them on TV, hear them on the radio, read about them ANYWHERE other than in their own social media sites.
A Prejudiced, Phenomenally Overpriced, 70% Fictitious, Badly-Translated Hatchet Job
ReplyDeletePart Two
One questions if Mr Mumbles actually acquired permission from the Cué and de Recqueville estates to translate and publish this fourth-rate piffle, though this does not really matter—the inordinately high prices of the books ($39 and £31), and the woeful reputations of the authors will ensure their abject failure. As for Mumbles, I would ask the reader to Google his many self-proclaimed achievements. You won’t find any, but that’s by the by. He thinks he’s wonderful with his Tartuffian posturing, so that’s all that matters.
In this latest “tome” in her ever-increasing Valentino series, The Madwoman rants in her footnotes about Frank Mennillo (not mentioned by de Recqueville), and of course gets in a dig about “the fiction writer” (myself). Mennillo was NOT Valentino’s godfather. We know that. She knows that. In the end, like her barking mad “love child theory (aka, Rudy couldn’t have been gay because he had sex with his sister-in-law, that’s when he wasn’t pestering other woman for sex, or drunk) it doesn’t really matter. This author is the car-crash that even the most curious onlooker ignores. I’m expecting Mumbles to have a go at translating Robert Florey next—I was offered the commission, but turned it down because nobody would buy it. He won’t of course tackle the one that I was asked to do because he wouldn’t have the guts to tell the world about the real Rudy, as opposed to the one who appears nightly in his dreams.
Thus far, while feigning to be the “victim”, and without even the slightest initial provocation from them, over the past SEVENTEEN years The Madwoman (and more latterly Child Bill) has viciously attacked Brad Steiger, Donna Hill, Emily Leider, Tracy Terhune, Cinecon, Nitrateville, Alexander Walker, Bill Self, her first publisher, Jeannine Villalobos and the entire Valentino family, and of course her favourite, myself. And always, always pleading with a disinterested world that THEY started it.
In a recent rant, she has a series of email exchanges between herself and Brad Steiger. Her beef? You guessed it: Valentino’s sexuality. She boasts that TWO publishers are interested in her work, wherein Brad offers a glimpse into the future by offering his surprise at this. In the real literary world, the likes of Valentino, Crawford, Hudson, Gable, Harlow et all—and I know what I’m talking about because I have published them all—are NOT big business. The books sell well because these people still have fans and followers, but with them we’re not talking J K Rowling. Thus The Madwoman’s hoped for little nest-egg was cracked long before it dropped into the basket. And in these emails, while Brad is polite, she is downright nasty and confrontational. Nasty, nasty, NASTY! Little wonder then that, like Bill Self (Pelf in her earlier banned book) Mr Steiger soon found out what a vituperative creature she was, and slammed the door in her face. Sadly, this great writer passed away two years ago—on what would have been Valentino’s birthday.
The Madwman cites Brad’s book as the second-worst Valentino biography. We all lnow which is the first—hers, all ten of them. Thus in closing, I pose the question. Can THIRTY-ONE victims of her virulently homophobic attacks (one for each year of Rudy’s short life) be wrong and she be right? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
PS: Before she comes flying at me! Seems I took a leaf out of her book and got a date wrong. The documentary was broadcast in December 1972!
ReplyDeleteAnd one final PS.
ReplyDeleteJust a few points regarding The Madwoman’s rant, posted 37 minutes after I commented about her latest tome.
Thus far, 27,301 words of hate in less than a week.
Robert Florey’s “Magic Lantern” is NOT mentioned anywhere by me. My source is “Inoubliable, Inoublié”, published in 1956. If she removes her homophobic blinkers she will find it easily enough. It was serialised with a blaze of publicity.
Hébertot and Claire were NOT asked if Valentino was gay. They were themselves gay—the former once the partner of my godfather. Why would anyone ask people like that if he was gay, unless they suspected that he might have been? And in any case, no one EVER asked such personal questions back then.
I have never claimed Jeanne de Recqueville as a source. She is unimportant.
I never said that I knew Daven and Garbo well, but I did meet them.
Dietrich on the other hand was a close friend. If The Madwoman did a little research and a little less hating, she would find the televised news reports of Marlene’s death, where we are chatting together.
But all in all, it doesn’t really matter what she says or writes. She’s just a psychotic, obsessed old woman with an axe to grind. She feels that she can criticise everyone else, but as soon as the boot’s on the other foot she throws her toys out of the playpen.
The lengths this woman will go to in order to prove that she is more stupid and twisted than we thought! Last night she posted a "message" from a "Miss Gabriel Oak" hammering Tracy. It had the date Sunday 24 May. Gabriel is a famous character from Thomas Hardy's "Far From The Madding Crowd". Thus I tweeted a photo of the latest actor to play him. Lo and behold! She changes the post. She adds the word "today" and the date is changed to Saturday 23 May, several hours BEFORE Tracy and I posted! She has removed the "Miss", having realised that she has erred while fabricating message...and in her anger and frustration has spelled Michael Morris's name wrong! Oh, and it's all on the servers she keeps telling us about!
ReplyDeleteThere is no price one can put on shame in this translation text form.
ReplyDeleteShe's a lowlife. Evelyn sits and says Natacha Rambova is the one to credit for Rudy's success.
ReplyDeleteI never heard of such disgusting lies. She has no evidence to back up these claims. All she has is just empty statements and pointless opinions.
Evelyn turns off comments on her YouTube channel. She is a lying coward.