While I was researching my Rudolph Valentino biography, Affairs Valentino, many of my discoveries were materials which I would learn... were already in the possession of Valentino memorabilia collectors and Valentino's only brother's descendants.
As I pieced together the untold story of this great icon from my discoveries, these people all knew that untold story. For years, decades actually...they hid the facts, hid the documents revealing the facts and attacked me as having forged the very materials they had access to and in many instances... owned. Let me explain.
The reasons for their clandestine behavior in regards to the true story of Rudolph Valentino were basically generated to protect Valentino's only brother Alberto and maintain the studio-generated version of Valentino's life.
The first inkling I had that I was about to be the killed messenger....was when I announced I was interviewing Valentino's manager and close friend George Ullman's two children. They had never been interviewed about their famous father's affiliation with Valentino and gave me the story.
Ullman's son Bob suggested I pull Valentino's probate court records to have definitive proof of his father's performance as Valentino's estate executor. This search took a couple of years because the entire case file was missing, i.e. stolen from its rightful housing in the Los Angeles County Hall of Records.
At the same time I was interviewing the then most prominent Valentino memorabilia collector who told me the records were indeed in the hands of collectors. Of course by then these collectors knew I was searching for that case file and I was told by e- mail and shockingly... that the entire case file was returned to the Valentino family in exchange for one of Valentino's shirts.
I did locate legal copies of one thousand pages of that massive case file and it was then I began to grasp the extent of the cover up taking place.
Ullman's children also granted me exclusive licensing to a memoir their father wrote shortly before he died in 1975. This ground breaking discovery was full of new clues and insights, fresh anecdotes and biographical information on Valentino. I would soon learn the collectors and Alberto Valentino family had a copy, or the original of this memoir which had never been shared publicly.
Initially I was accused by the collectors of forging the court records and the memoir with a website set up explaining how I did it. Their website and blog headlines in my honor announced Affairs Valentino was “pure fiction” and based on “assumptions”.
The point of this audio note is to document the following...that while they were killing the messenger, they were in possession of the very materials they accused me of forging and knew I was one hundred percent right on all points.
It would be years before one collector would finally admit that they had seen the court records and read them and had in their possession the 1975 Ullman memoir. By then the damage to me and Affairs Valentino was already grievous.
The fact was always that the story I was uncovering was already well known to the Alberto Valentino family and the collectors. All of this material had been circulating for decades between them with the content never shared publicly until I wrote Affairs Valentino.
All of these changes in Valentino's story were supported not only by the family of George Ullman but by the family's of the godfathers and those thousand pages of recovered court records.
Yet the collectors, backed by the Alberto Valentino family's silence continued to censor, ban and defame me, my late husband Renato and all our books sharing our work.
I reiterate this took place while almost every single discovery I made has been revealed to be in the collections of these people who control the Valentino narrative. One in which the brother is the hero, George Ullman the villain and Valentino a gay icon who had no children, etc. Again this was all false.
Throughout the years Renato and I suffered the ravaging of our truth, these very people were in possession of the material they claimed I forged.
The truth as it was told in Affairs Valentino was supported by some forty pages of end notes and we published much of our critical sources as proof. Still they concocted lengthy diatribes explaining how I used an old typewriter, etc. comparing the minute details of how I created it all.
At one point many of those probate records appeared online but by then my voice in the Valentino world was all but silenced by their years of censorship and defamation.
How would people know they were the liars and that all along they held the proof of my honesty in their collections.
One of the main reasons the court records in particular have never been shared publicly is because they are stolen government property. The copies I found were legally housed in the California appeals court library. The originals are, when last I was told, in the hands of the Valentino family.
All these many years, the false narrative could be maintained because they believed they had the only hard evidence safely locked away.
Letters written to Rudolph by Natacha, studio contracts, wills, codicils to a will, itemized records of Rudolph's personal expenses and monies disbursed by executor Ullman... I could go on and on listing all of the discoveries I made which they had in their possession all along.
While I scoured archives and worked to connect all the dots... they hurled their sticks and stones at me trying to convince everyone they could that I was some devilish person out to destroy Rudolph Valentino with my forged documents and lies.
At this point in time I think the stunning absence on their sites and forums of any mention of our discoveries and books should be the red flag and absolute proof of who they are.
I dared to publish Affairs Valentino in the face of their threats, their stalking, trolling and opposition.
Because the truth matters... I say today that the ultimate truth is that they had it ALL.... and still do. While they forbid any mention of our work on their sites, while they tell people I am insane, while they call Affairs Valentino... pure fiction....
They know I got it all absolutely right.
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