Jesse Monteagudo: Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance writer and Latin lover who lives in South Florida with his domestic partner. He can be reached at jessemonteagudo@aol.com online. This review was originally published in Gay Today (Vol. VI, Issue 214). It is reprinted with permission from www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com online.
Ramon Novarro (1899-1968) was Hollywood's first Latin American superstar. Born José Ramón Gil Samaniego in Durango, Mexico, Novarro and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1916 to escape the violent turmoil of the Mexican Revolution. Only a decade later the attractive young refugee had become one of the most popular of the screen's “Latin Lovers”; the successor to Rudolph Valentino.
For over a decade Novarro shone as one of MGM's brightest stars, appearing in such screen classics as the original Ben-Hur (1925), The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg (1927) and (opposite Greta Garbo) Mata Hari (1931). Fans shrieked over the handsome Mexican, who obliged by appearing (in the words of film historian Richard Griffith) “as nearly in the nude as the censors allowed”.
Novarro's fans knew that he loved his parents, was very religious, and aspired to be an opera singer. What they did not know was that the unmarried Latin Lover was sexually attracted to men. Novarro's lifelong struggle to reconcile his sexual orientation, his religiosity, and the demands of Hollywood is one of the themes of Beyond Paradise, André Soares's life of Ramon Novarro.
To Soares's credit, he does not deny or sensationalize the actor's sex life but deals with it in perspective. Though not as openly gay as his colleague William Haines, Novarro refused to marry a beard or carry on fake romances with his female co-stars.
Still, the pressures of superstardom adversely affected Novarro's life:
“Because he was a public figure, Novarro's problems as a gay man were greater than those of other homosexual men during that period. A visit to a gay bar or a casual pickup on Hollywood Boulevard was out of the question. . . Aside from one long-term relationship with publicist and entertainment journalist Herbert Howe, Novarro enjoyed no lasting affairs; in later years, his only solace lay in young men obtained through a male escort agency.”
Unlike many contemporaries, Ramon Novarro survived the arrival of talking pictures. He was a fine (though accented) speaker and an accomplished singer who shone on film, on stage, and in his home-based Teatro Intimo. Unfortunately, a series of box office bombs led to a drastic decline in Novarro's acting career by the mid-1930's.
Soares denies that prejudice on the part of MGM boss Louis B. Mayer had anything to do with Novarro's departure in 1935:
“Contrary to the claims of some film historians, Novarro's fall from eminence was neither a matter of homophobia nor the result of a general lack of interest in exotic lovers. . . The end of Novarro's stardom was above all else the result of his own lack of professional focus coupled with Mayer and [Irving] Thalberg's lack of vision.”
Making matters worse was Novarro's alcoholism, which led to a series of drunk driving incidents and the deterioration of Novarro's once-striking looks.
In Beyond Paradise, Soares debunks some of the myths about Novarro that have developed over the years, and which still appear in the works of William J. Mann and other film historians. Though Novarro appeared as an extra in Valentino's breakthrough film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), there is no evidence that the two Latin Lovers were friends, much less lovers. The same goes for “rumors” of an alleged affair, in the mid-1920's, between Novarro and Haines, which Soares calls “farfetched”.
The two gay stars were even suspected of frequenting a male bordello on Wilshire Boulevard, if we can believe the allegations of their jealous colleague, Lew Cody. “This tale,” writes Soares, “which is supposed to have been related in Anita Loos's autobiographical A Girl Like I, has been retold as fact in several publications, even though the account is filled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies.” Though I'm willing to give up the bordello story for the sake of accuracy, the thought of Novarro and Valentino - “two exquisitely beautiful Latin boys”, as Mann put it - getting it on with each other is just too precious to deny.
Ramon Novarro, of course, is best remembered as the victim of one of the most ghastly murders in Hollywood history. During the night of October 30-31, 1968, Novarro was brutally beaten by Paul and Tom Ferguson, two brothers/hustlers who left the actor to choke on his own blood. This brutal crime effectively outed the aging film star, and led to the most persistent myth of all - that he choked to death on a black art-deco dildo that was given to him by Valentino. This story first appeared in Kenneth Anger's classic Hollywood Babylon (1975), which Soares called “a book filled with lurid and sensational stories.”
Of course there is no proof that the dildo existed, or that it had anything to do with Novarro's death. Soares interviewed the Fergusons - who were sentenced to life in prison for their crime - and they “angrily deny ever seeing such an object at Novarro's house.” Both the coroner and the prosecutor in this case also denied the existence of the deadly dildo.
The persistence of this myth is a shame, if only because it distorts and denies Novarro's real accomplishments:
“For him to be chiefly remembered today as a perverted elderly homosexual killed by a sex toy that never existed is an injustice to both the complex individual and to the accomplished - and historically important - actor that was Ramon Novarro.”
Hopefully, Beyond Paradise will set the record straight.
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