The afterlives of Rudolph Valentino and Wallace Reid in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

Bode compares the very different afterlives of two major Hollywood film stars, Rudolph Valentino (d. 1926) and Wallace Reid (d. 1923) in the 1920s and 1930s. Seeking to understand why Valentino remained famous for decades after his death while Reid was forgotten by the mid 1930s, she traces the fortunes of their respective film revivals and the shifting contexts in which fan magazines mentioned them over the years. She shows that while the studios refused to reissue Reid’s films in the 1920s due to his scandalous death, Valentino’s were quickly revived and, in the mid 1930s, accrued an erotic and camp cult status. Bode concludes that Valentino’s and Reid’s afterlives were ultimately determined by how each star’s death and screen persona served Hollywood’s cultural memory.