1409 RUDOLPH VALENTINO: Hollywood’s First Superstar—and the Ghost Story That Refuses to Die

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There is so much NFL on ESPN right now.

Monday Night Football, plus pre-game and post-game. NFL Live, NFL Primetime. Everything you need to stay on top of every game, every week.

Giovanni Sticco (0:49)

Unbelievable.

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And now, NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch.

Football's on, all season long, on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

Giovanni Sticco (1:04)

When he died, women were committing suicide. There was 200,000 people on the streets of New York City, at Campbell Funeral Home. And it was mass hysteria. And people throwing chairs through the funeral home. And they were going nuts.

The cops were on horses. They couldn't control it. It was just, it was insane.

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Richard Syrett's Strange Planet, following the truth wherever it leads. Exposing evil and corruption and the secret machinations of powerful elites. Revealing the highest strangeness beneath the surface of our supposed reality. Coming to you from the Great White North and his studio beneath the stairs.

Here's Richard.

Richard Syrett (1:53)

Hollywood has always manufactured legends, but every once in a while it creates one that refuses to stay buried. A century ago, Rudolph Valentino was the most intoxicating male star on the planet, the silent screens great Latin lover, adored by millions. But behind these smoldering eyes and carefully manufactured image was a very different man, fascinated by seances, spiritual mediums, astral projection and the possibility that death was not an ending at all. And then in 1926, Valentino was dead at just 31 And that's when the story got really strange. Premonitions, curses, apparitions, strange phenomena surrounding his final resting place and most famously the mysterious lady in black, a veiled woman who appeared at Valentino's crypt carrying a single red rose, beginning one of Hollywood's most enduring and haunting traditions.

My guest tonight has his own unusual connection to this story. Giovanni Sticco is a filmmaker, producer, director, writer, author and comic book creator and founder of Hollywood Tower Productions. His work has taken him into horror, science fiction, UFOs, extraterrestrial mysteries, retro pulp and the darker corners of Hollywood history, including work and appearances in television programming, such as the History Channel. And Hollywood mythology runs in the family. Giovanni is the son of Johnny Stark, a Hollywood-born rock and roll cult figure associated with the pioneering years of rock and roll. His father's story actually finds its way into Giovanni's new book, creating a strange bridge between silent-era Hollywood, the birth of rock and roll, and a mystery that has survived for a hundred years.

That book is A Single Rose, the life and times of Rudolph Valentino and the Lady in Black, a hybrid of biography, historical drama, romance and dark fantasy. The project has also received the blessings of members of the Valentino family and Sarah Greene, whom Giovanni identifies as the great niece of the original Lady in Black.

So tonight we're going behind the Valentino the cameras created, and looking for the man who believed there was another world beyond this one. Because perhaps the strangest chapter in Rudolph Valentino's story didn't begin until after he died. Giovanni, welcome to Strange Planet. How are you?

Giovanni Sticco (4:33)

I'm doing well. Thank you so much.

Richard Syrett (4:35)

So, for those not familiar, there may be a few who don't know much about Rudolph Valentino. I mean, before we get anywhere near the seances and the ghosts and the lady in black, who was Rudolph Valentino before Hollywood turned him into a legend?

Giovanni Sticco (4:55)

He was just like a simple boy from Italy, from Castaneleta, not too far from where my family members were at in Campo Basso.

He was a troubled kid. He had troubles and stuff, but his mother coddled him, but he wanted to do something bigger in his life. He had dreamt of Hollywood, he dreamt of the possibilities of being an actor or dancer, and he set sail to America in 1913 at 18 years old, and started doing things to build a reputation. Of course, he did many different types of jobs. He was a dishwasher, he was this, he was that, and he started teaching dancing. At times in New York, they call him a gigolo, but that built his career up to where he decided that he needed to go to Hollywood to make it big in the business. But he started from very humble beginnings, but his father died when he was young, and he had his mother who he loved dearly, and she passed away at a young age as well. So we never expected that this would have ever transformed him to the biggest star in the world.