Anatomy Of An Action Hero - The Strong Silent Type
Times change, tastes change, and styles change. And while the action movie has long been with us, so it has always reflected the zeitgeist.
Name: Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, Don Alonzo Casto, Vladimir Dubrovsky, Count Rodrigo Torriani, Le Duc De Chartres… by and large, the more absurd the better.
Home: A fabulous European palace, or a luxurious tent besides a lush oasis, or in the shadows plotting his revenge, or overseas contemplating his banished. The only place he can always be found, however, is in the hearts of women the world over.
Work Environment: Extraordinarily opulent although it should be noted that the 1920s action hero is far too consumed with revenge or restoring his good name or contesting duels to have anything approaching an actual job. This heroic aspect wasn’t too much of a stretch for real-life WW1 veteran Lewis Stone, mind you.
Mostly kills: Desert bandits, British noblemen, French aristocrats, rampaging cosacks. Oh yes, and he also slays every woman he stares at with a rose-scented arrow of love. Seriously, you can’t understate the effect that Rudolph Valentino and his chief rival Ramon Novarro had on the opposite sex. When Valentino’s The Sheik opened in New York in 1921, women fainted in the aisles and had to be rushed to hospital. And when he died prematurely in 1926 from a perforated stomach ulcer, 80,000 admirers queued to see his body in the Big Apple, with a further 100,000 attending a memorial service in Los Angeles. Coincidentally Novarro - who was heralded as the new Valentino when he emerged on the scene in 1922’s The Prisoner Of Zenda - also died tragically, bludgeoned to death by teenage thieves in his Hollywood mansion on Halloween 1968.
Loves: All women, be they feisty English maidens, Russian Czarinas, Gallic mademoiselles or simple dancing girls. Paradoxically, he’s also rather fond of pouting, wearing rouge and black eyeliner, and flaring his nostrils. The effeminacy of this image was reinforced by Valentino’s thinly-disguised bisexuality and the fact that he was known in the press as The Pink Powder Puff.
Hates: Having his honour questioned, losing face and, of course, talking. Although the last of these got both Valentino and Novarro out of tight spots since each spoke English with strong Latin accents. Black-and-white film, meanwhile, was the saving grace of Lewis Stone who was able to pass off his prematurely grey hair as blond.
As Played By: Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (1921 pictured), A Sainted Devil (1924), and The Eagle (1925), Lewis Stone in The Prisoner Of Zenda (1921), Ramon Novarro in Scaramouche (1923).