Daily Mirror dated Tuesday August 24th 1926
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Rudolph Valentino was born Rodolfo Alfonzo
Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla in 1895 of
French/Italian parentage and was brought up in Italy. He moved to the USA in
1913 and appeared in his first film in 1914. From then until 1921 he turned up
as an extra, or un-credited or under a variety of variations of his name in
about 20 films, but in 1921 he stared in ‘The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’
and his career as a one of the most popular Silent era stars was off and
running. Unfortunately, particularly for his many many female fans, it came to
a sudden end in 1926 when he died as a result of complications after an
appendix operation.
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Pola Negri, who claimed to be engaged to Valentino at the
time of his death, was born in Poland and died at the age of 90 in 1987. Her
film career spanned from 1914 to 1964 but she made very few films after the
coming of Sound. In her most popular silent films she was a strong rival to
Theda Bara as the leading ‘Vamp’ of the time.
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Miss Esther Rodrigues was born during the reign of William IV and was
only 2 years old when Queen Victoria came to the throne. She was 26 when the
American Civil War broke out, 30 when President Lincoln was assassinated, 37
when Stanley found Livingstone in Africa, 50 when Daimler and Benz build their
first car, 62 at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 68 when the Wright Brothers
flew the first powered aircraft and 79 when the World went to War.
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So much for “in the old days everyone knew
everyone else and no-one locked their front doors so that neighbours could just
pop in for a cuppa”. My mother moved to London from Lincolnshire as a single
young woman in the 1920’s and said that it was the loneliest place on earth.
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Health and Safety anyone? I would have thought that even the sloshing about of the petrol in the fuel tank would upset the balance, not to mention one of the boatmen having a sneezing fit.
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Breakfast at 3pm with a blonde beauty while wearing a yachting cap - what more could you wish for!
The coastal town of Deauville in north-western France was the
resort for the rich and famous throughout the 1920’s and 30’s. Its casino was
featured in the long but fascinating heist film ‘Bob le Flambeur’ directed by
Jean-Pierre Melville.
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Greece was having it's problems even then.
Major General Theodoros Pangalos was involved in
the 1922 revolt that deposed King Constantine I of Greece and in June 1925 he
headed a bloodless coup, which ended with him as Prime Minister. It was his
turn to be ousted in August 1926. He died in 1952.
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This is the Claude Rains who 16 years later was told by
Humphrey Bogart “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful
friendship.” (Casablanca)
Apart from one minor role in 1920, Rains’ film career didn’t
start until he sort of appeared in ‘The Invisible Man’ in 1933, by which time
he was an established stage actor on both sides of the Atlantic and an acting
teacher (his pupils included Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud).
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Edwin Creed was murdered in his cheese shop in Bayswater on
the night of July 28th 1926. The crime remains unsolved.
Frederick Porter Wensley joined the police in 1888 just in
time to patrol Whitechapel looking for Jack the Ripper. He became Chief
Constable (CID), Metropolitan Police in 1924 and retired in 1929.
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If you believe that film star, actress and theatre manager
Gladys Cooper had a personal laboratory in her house turning out beauty
products then maybe I can interest you in my world famous hand-woven
breeze-blocks – personally signed at only £150 each.
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