memorial service for rudolph valentino

Question for today: what determines how big or small a send-off we get when we die, and how long we are remembered after that?
I have been thinking about that since attending the 80th memorial service for Rudolph Valentino, the romantic-looking 1920s movie star who died in New York at the weep-inducingly early age of 31, from peritonitis after having an operation for appendicitis and a perforated ulcer - not the syphilis which his more swooning admirers fondly imagined had caught up with him after a sex life that wasn't quite as active as he let the world believe.
He had two funerals, one in New York and one in Beverly Hills, before he was interred in the Hollywood Memorial Park cemetery on Santa Monica Boulevard, now called Hollywood Forever. It contains memorials to hundreds of stars, from Douglas Fairbanks and his son to Cecil B. DeMille, Peter Lorre, Jayne Mansfield and Fay Wray, immortalized as the woman snatched up by King Kong in the 1930s version of that film.
The cemetery looks much more like a movie set than the rolling meadow of Forest Lawn, where gravestones are apparently banned. Here, tall trees compete for space with all manner of gravestones, headstones, monuments and mausoleums, amid finely clipped grass so green it might have been spray-painted (well, this is Hollywood after all). It appropriately backs onto the Paramount Studios lot, so film crews have merely to climb the dividing wall to start shooting a remake of Dracula or The Loved Ones.
The uniformed guard in the gate booth stopped his private phone call just long enough to tell us how to get to the Cathedral Mausoleum, where the service was being held: drive to the first intersection, turn left and park on the right, He may have added “at the end of the road”, but if so I didn’t hear him. Anyway, we parked at the end of the first row of cars we came to, which turned out to be a 10-minute walk from the building. But it was a pleasant day for a stroll, so we checked out the many graves, star-spotting as if we were at a ghostly posthumous showbiz party, a kind of afterlife Oscars. Look, there’s Douglas Fairbanks! And didn’t Johnny Ramone die young? Fairbanks, or his dazzling white tomb, has a bit part in the current open-air production in the cemetery grounds of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a slightly different setting from the open-air theater in London’s Regent’s Park.
First surprise when we walked into the Mausoleum: instead of the conventional wooden pews, folding white chairs, in rows of four either side of the center aisle. The chamber was nearly full, but we found three seats behind a couple of camp gays wearing identical black T-shirts proclaiming that they were part of an award-winning lighting crew. They turned out to be showbiz groupies who knew everything about Valentino and every living movie veteran in sight – of whom there were plenty.
No one was in a rush to start the show, for show it was, and so no one bothered to mark the exact time of Valentino’s death: 12.10 pm. The service, once it got started, was as hammy as you might expect in Hollywood, a string of readings and songs with a pause in the middle for a highly professional video recalling the dramatic day of Valentino’s funeral and the history of the memorial services, complete with the mysterious lady in black who turned up year after year to lay a rose on Valentino’s memorial without a word of explanation. It turned out that he had visited her in hospital when she was dying and assured her she would live; but in return if she outlived him she would have to perform the rose ritual. That did much to perpetuate the annual service, which consequently attracted huge publicity for several years after Valentino’s death. He was mourned by thousands lining his coffin’s procession, in a manner that predated the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, John Kennedy and Princess Diana. They all died young, before their feet had a chance to turn to clay. A case of ‘Quit while you’re ahead’.
Most impressive contribution to the service was undoubtedly the two tribute songs – Young Rajah and He Loved, He Danced, He Tangoed - sung by Bob Mitchell, 95 years old but still boasting a rich baritone for the simple reason that he keeps performing. Truly, use it or lose it.
Least impressive: the gabbling, mumbling rendition of the 23rd Psalm by the congregation, led by Stella Grace of the Valentino Memorial Committee. A musical version, sung a capella, would have had far more impact.
But in any case, by now it was gone 1 pm in a land of early lunchers, so attention was beginning to wander. Before leaving, though, a visit to Valentino’s shrine was obligatory, and a line formed to collect Mitchell’s autograph.
Outside in the sunshine, the publisher of a reprinted Valentino book had set up a desk under a red canopy to secure the sales prompted by his shameless promotion of the product during the service (I’m tempted to say again, only in Hollywood, but I would put New Yorkers past a similar stunt).
From there, five of us headed for a late (2pm) lunch at Du Parr’s diner in Farmer’s Market on Fairfax and Beverly. It was a welcome return to something resembling reality,
The problem of sustaining an individual’s memory for 80 consecutive years is the increasing weight of history and therefore expectation that burdens the event. It moves from an outlet for grief to a ritual in which part of the point is to maintain the ritual. To miss a year would be a terrible defeat, and would be seen as an insult to the great man’s gift to posterity. Several times during the service we were reminded that this is one of the longest traditions in Hollywood – “longer than the Oscars, can you imagine?” Well I can, as a matter of fact: not long ago my Oxford college celebrated its 650th anniversary.
There was a smattering of people at the ceremonies who, while not exactly contemporaries of Valentino – real last name Guglielmi – could at least claim their lives overlapped: Mitchell was one and the eagle-like A.C. Lyles, longstanding Paramount Studios spokesman, was another. But as the years go by the event will eventually be supported exclusively by those for whom Valentino is no more than a celluloid image, who will know nothing of his moods, his humor, his wit (if any). His highly forgettable poetry lives on, and his screen acting. We will be worshipping a minor 20th century god, no more and no less significant than dozens of others created by the film industry: Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Mae West, James Stewart, Judy Garland.
Why Valentino? Because of his mysterious, romantic aura, unsullied by recorded voice, cut off in his prime when knows what he might have achieved – assuming his reputation survived the transition to the talkies beyond the first few years. But even memories of memories fade and when Valentino’s acolytes dwindle to a handful the annual event will die a death much more quietly than the great man did. The same has happened even to major historical figures such as Lincoln, Washington, Nelson, Wellington. It is inevitable.
I admit I was there on Thursday essentially as a tourist. Valentino has always been a marginal figure for me, but I am no cinema buff. I drove over from Pasadena out of curiosity, to witness a phenomenon. I was not disappointed, The thousands who wept at Valentino’s death had been whittled down to 100 or so devotees, including a bizarre black woman in a white veil and silver tiara, carrying a green shopping bag. The lady in black was represented in no more than token form, by Karie Bible, whose main role was to read a couple of Valentino’s undistinguished poems.
So, to answer my opening question, the scale and longevity of our send-off is determined by the impact we have on others’ lives, and the extent to which our death robs the living of a dream of some form of higher existence. Something in the survivors’ lives dies, and memorial services are partly an attempt to deny that by keeping alive the adoration that we feel for famous figures when they are alive. It is one thing to say farewell to a loved one, public or private. It is another to keep the mystique going, like an eternal flame. But in both cases we are deluding ourselves. Whether or not we believe in an after-life, the dead person is gone. By all means record and analyze his or her life, to see what it was about them that attracted such devotion. But we should learn to let go and get on with our lives.