New York has the great virtue of not love too easily. The many chaotic events of the day slip away in the underground diamond button on its one million cars in the fever of work that consumes and recreates, in the delirium of his night studded with incandescent lights like a never-ending sky.
Yes it is true, as he told quell'inglese almost terrified to return to his island phlegmatic: the streets of New York are deadly, and not just because of the danger of being Arrotati by a car, but also for the revolver shots that do not rarely are sent from good cops chasing robbers and attackers daring enough to rob banks and stores and assaulting people even in broad daylight and in crowded places. But if you notice that? At most, someone who happened to be on the trajectory of the bullets vagabonds. Moreover, the shots do not feel at ten paces, and robbers and wounded and the dead body if they are immediately swept up and taken away by the relentless stream. If the deceased is state, we pass over race and you forget a little 'further.
All events, however serious they are, more or less suffer the same fate. You're in a hurry, you have rage, and those who stay at least in danger of being trampled by the onrushing new. Unless you stop at a cinema. The hell of New York street, cinemas are sort of magical oasis. The comparison could not be more appropriate, nor am I the first to use the expression of "densely populated desert" about this metropolis of anonymity, where the crowd that presses on all sides so it feels desperately alone. Desert, then, and oases. Already, the heat is tropical humid, oppressive, unbearable. In the streets, including the reflection of the concrete and tar in the heat of the sun, the atmosphere is hot. Do not breathe: you gasping. Dazed, his eyes off the clothes that you stick on you, you walk like robots towards a goal that perhaps we do not even remember anymore. Behold, and almost feel inclined to sit on one of those blocks of ice that companies providing leave on the threshold of a half-notch restaurants in the side streets.
Fortunately, there are cinemas. They open their doors welcoming fiery on the sidewalks of Broadway, promising, as well as the visions of the mobile screen, shade and coolness that you search in vain elsewhere. Artificial cool as the posters proclaim. "Twenty, thirty degrees (Fahrenheit) less than in the street '- they say letters ending in odd-shaped ice stalagmitizzati on a background of polar landscapes. "Constant temperature, never exceeding 70 degrees," (equivalent to 21 Celsius). Because each of the major cinemas of Broadway, unlike opera, where the hot season continues to couple the heat in the busy humanity, it is huge nowadays equipped with modern refrigeration systems, which spread to everywhere delicious breath of fresh air.
The Son of the Sheik at the Strand Theatre, New York 1926
Sensation of finding an oasis in these last few weeks was all the more legitimate the Strand Theatre, where he threw "The Son of the Sheik" (The Son of the Sheik), the last 'film' of Rudolph Valentino, with the background of the Desert (California ), clumps of palm trees, rich curtains in their shade propitious, and the ruins of Moorish architecture doubtful there in fake oasis to the great cinematic story unfolds. Woe to the Strand if there had been comforting the oil! Valentino would have been virtually manager who knows how many cases of suffocation, especially on Sunday's 'first', when it was present in person in the theater and the "flappers" of which he is the idol, they actually a fight to see it in the flesh and hear his voice, that privilege is usually denied, as is well understood, the admirers of the heroes of the scene changes. But at the Strand Valentino has taken on that occasion, even his good speech.
Luck, the immense popularity of this actor, very Italian in appearance, gestures, of passionate fervor, of expression, has something fantastic. New York, is not moved too easily, but her girls are always ready to stop traffic in Times Square, to see him pass in his Isotta-Fraschini, jump and take the restaurant for breakfast when it happens here. I would bet on that, where a fanciful hypothesis recourse were made to a 'referendum' among American women to resolve the vexed issue of debt in the name of Valentino would certainly voted overwhelmingly to debt cancellation Italian!
Valentino's popularity is such that the "slang" the U.S. should even be a neologism, has become widely used. After
that of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," he gained his greatest success in the 'Sheik', the new film is now trying to renovate and extend. The girls are all American, from the Atlantic to the Pacific in love with the young, bold and passionate sheikh, now all of a sudden, despite the exotic costumes and the Italian name of the protagonist, a kind of national hero. Since then the word 'Sheik' has entered the common language to show the love, man fatal, the looting of female hearts, the irresistible suitor. So we have had in The Sheik "fox-trot" and in song - I am the Sheik of Araby ... Your Love Belongs To Me , The Sheik, a novel, The Sheik perfume, soap ... The Sheik All of a fashion, in short, that life is what the fashions are wont to take, but which is still the word used not only by the newspapers, but even by writers who do not mind the sayings of the boldest and most picturesque spoken American.
We understand that men are a bit 'jealous of their good fortune. I mean how lucky Valentino has with the fair sex. The typical American, nice guy he, too, after all, as in turn is glorified on the screen for its physical qualities of courage, generosity of spirit, of fearlessness, a sportsman par excellence of that form all Anglo-Saxon love, the flirt, can not but feel a bit 'fell in front of this elegant and rakish Italian, Express yourself when you come to the passion of love, his romantic yearning, the vehemence of his impulses and the languor of her dreams. Which is basically the secret of luck in Italian, and generally in Latin, with the women of the Nordic peoples and seminordici.
Valentino has also recently suffered the bite of quest'invidia, which is partly the result of xenophobia in this undeniable restrinzionistiche emigration laws are an official event. A journalist from Chicago, in an anonymous editorial article, called it "pink powder puff" - literally down to powder - that is accusing him, in essence, effeminacy, and deploring the popularity of his films, because they exhibit a pattern of young men, so American sound, a kind of beauty and a way of interpretation of life which does not correspond to national ideals.
Valentino has now challenged the unknown journalist - since he was young and healthy - to a boxing match, since the duel is prohibited here, and in the meantime (well that his manager had to take advantage of a little 'case for the publicity) has had published all a series of photographs of their bare-chested, highlighting the muscles on the same paro effeminacy which Jack Dempsey has expressed some doubts.
Had this show, if only, the fact is that the columnist of the Chicago Tribune he believed should not go out of his comfortable anonymity and prudent, so that Rudy had the match won without even launch one of his formidable fists.
- sorry to God and to his enemies - I was out with a smile Valentino few days ago, since I went to visit him in the spacious apartment he occupies when the Ambassador Hotel in New York. And with the quote Dante was referring to the fact that while it is attached here as it is Italian and has remained essentially that of education, tastes, feelings, ideas, despite having taken American citizenship, has had to endure in Italy moorings, which were much more painful for him, just for taking U.S. citizenship.
to the taking of citizenship by immigrants is an issue here about which public opinion in Italy was wrongly informed, and this is without doubt that must be referred to the misunderstanding among the most celebrated Italian film actors has recently been the victim.
For those who have moved on this side of home, family and home, and here with work and with the source and the reason for most of his interests, taking American citizenship is both a necessity and a duty. This is not only aimed towards the host country, whose government, eager to hasten the process of Americanization foreign element, openly accusing the Italian of low digestibility, it is also a duty to their country 's origin, because they become citizens of this great Republic is to give the element Italian voice and influence policy through the vote, raise our masses migrated to civil dignity in a country where they would otherwise, and were until recently, either ignored or despised, and to gradually prepare the inclusion of these masses, and their descendants in the strain unit of the American nation. Without this, it's for the British, the Irish, for the Scots, the Germans, who have become Americans even one hundred percent, as they say here, the children of the children born and bred on this side of the Atlantic by hundred years, however, retain the very roots of their being, into the living substance of their thinking and feeling, the irrepressible consciousness and pride of country of origin.
(...)
Quest'orgoglio, this faith, this will of Italian in America are aware of Rudolph Valentino. He declares himself pleased that the announcement proclaimed first in Italy against his film has been removed. Nor is this reason for some interest, given that estimates of income in American film producers to calculate those in Europe 10 per cent of the total, and this figure is necessarily an Italian one small part. But the idea of \u200b\u200bbeing banished, and even if only in effigy, his homeland, he manages to Rudolph Valentino intolerable.
All of popularity, all the luck that this vast country to bestow liberally feels that it can not compensate for such a bitter and undeserved pain.
Giovanola Louis (a movie, September 5, 1926, Valentino, Fortuna and popularity of the Knight Apocalypse )
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