Vintage original 3.5 x 5.5 in. (8.9 x 14 cm.) color photographic postcard depicting "Rodolph Valentino's California Home" (the publisher chose to use the alternate spelling of Valentino's first name which Paramount Pictures sometimes billed him as), published exclusively for S. H. Kress & Co., c.1923, unsued, very fine condition. The image features a color-tinted exterior shot of the front and side of Rudolph Valentino's hillside Spanish house originally located at 6776 Wedgewood Place in the Whitley Heights area of Hollywood, California. The home features an attached garage with thick wooden doors and a walled interior front courtyard. Other beautiful homes in the area can be seen in the distance, the majority of which were demolished along with Valentino's house to make room for the U.S. 101 Hollywood Freeway in the 1950's.

Valentino lived in this Hollywood home with his second wife, Natacha Rambova, which she felt was unfashionably located and too small, though it was much larger than the tiny bungalow on Sunset Boulevard where they had first lived with their pet lion cub, Zela. Following their European honeymoon, temperamental Natacha tired of her marriage, declaring that Valentino got on her nerves, and stormed off to stay with her mother in New York. To woo her back, he bought an elaborate eight-acre Spanish style estate towering on a hillside in Los Angeles' Benedict Canyon on Bella Drive, which he named Falcon's Lair, intending to train falcons there for the couple's first independent production, THE HOODED FALCON, which was never made.

E-mail a friend about this item.

Return to Catalog