Rudolph Valentino's film career started with his appearance as an uncredited extra in My Official Wife (1914), although this is now a lost film. The Italian-born Valentino appeared in several films in a minor role until 1921. He got his major break when he appeared in the role of Julio in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and he went on to play leading roles in fourteen films as a romantic figure. All the films in which he appeared were silent; those in which he played a romantic role within the action genre were the more successful at the box office including The Sheik (1921) and his final two works The Eagle (1925) and The Son of the Sheik (1926). Valentino died suddenly of peritonitis in August 1926, at the age of 31. The subsequent extensive media coverage turned his funeral into a national event. Two of Valentino's films, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Son of the Sheik have been inducted into the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. (Full list...)
[[File:|120px|Publicity photo of Rudolph Valentino ]]
Publicity photo of Rudolph Valentino
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