On August 24th, 1926, eighty thousand people broke into a riot at the corner of Broadway and 66th Street in New York City. More than two hundred policemen were dispatched to the scene and an emergency hospital was erected on site to tend to those injured by glass from broken windows or trampled as the crowd surged through the sidewalks.

The impetus for this mass mayhem was the death of America’s then-favorite onscreen lothario, Rudolph Valentino. The silent film idol was at the peak of his fame – on both the screen and in the tabloids — during the summer of 1926 when he descended on the Big Apple to promote his latest picture, The Son of the Sheik.

But all was not well with 31-year-old superstar. After collapsing in the company of friends, Valentino was rushed to New York’s Polyclinic Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a gastric ulcer and inflamed appendix. By August 19th, rumors began to circulate that the actor was at death’s door and, four days later, they proved true. Valentino laid dead, the result of post-surgical complications with his lung and septic poisoning. The news spread quickly through the streets and soon authorities were reporting multiple suicides and suicide attempts by the actor’s female admirers.

Meanwhile, Valentino’s body was shrouded in gold cloth, placed in a wicker basket, and whisked to the Campbell Funeral Parlor at Broadway and 66th. Though the press announced the actor was to lie in state beginning at four o’clock the following afternoon, mourners soon began to congregate at the corner. By the following morning, tens of thousands of those who had come to pay their last respects — the vast majority of which happened to be women — stood four wide in a line that stretched for eleven blocks.

As police tried to rearrange the crowd into a single file, more orderly fashion, mourners spilled in street, losing clothes and shoes along the way and rushing the door as deliveries of flowers poured in. High theatrics transpired inside the funeral parlor as well with approximately one hundred and thirty-eight people a minute viewing the corpse of Rudolph Valentino and many a brokenhearted girl fainting at its sight. Only fanning the flames of this mass hysteria were an honor guard of Fascist Blackshirts, reputedly dispatched by Bennito Mussolini himself to protect the body of the Italian-born film star. The remembrance’s roster of physical clashes was complete once a faction of New York anti-fascists arrived to face down their opposition.

Campbell’s Funeral Parlor closed its doors to the public on August 26th, though, after obtaining a special waiver from the New York Department of Health, Valentino was allowed to remain unburied until the actor’s brother, Alberto, could arrive from Europe. In the meantime, however, not one, but two, starlets, Polish actress Pola Negri and Ziegield Girl Marion Kay Brenda, arrived to announce that Valentino had proposed to them shortly before his passing. While the press never confirmed the veracity of either allegation, the frenzied results of the actor’s death cemented his status as a Hollywood icon once and for all time –- arguably more than any of the movies he made while alive.

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