The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

Bing Crosby's voice has the heart-appeal that Valentino had on the silent screen. If Valentino had talked — what then? Below: Fredric March, Herbert Marshall and William Powell. HEARTS TODAY? result in failure. "It can't be done," he always said. His prophecy has come true. It is possible now, almost ten years later, looking backward across a depression, across a vastly changed world of ever-shifting values and loyalties, across a revolutionary change in pictures that made them "talkie" instead of silent, to see that Valentino was right. THERE has never been a successor to Valentino; it is doubtful if there ever will be a successor to him who, alone, will appeal so strongly to so many women. New heroes have their following. Numerically each is strong. But where, in the roster of the great stars, Gable, Montgomery, Cagney, Chevalier, Crosby— even Novarro who most resembles Valentino facially — Lederer, who comes closest to him temperamentally; March, Baxter, Astaire — is there one who, through the sheer force of his own personality has behind him a record of $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 and more single-picture earnings such as Valentino had in "The Sheik" and "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?" Valentino's death wrought havoc with the box office. Movie magnates searched frantically for his successor; the search grew more frantic as the possibilities were narrowed down and tried, one after another, without success. The movie executives kept on trying. Year after year, through changing styles in heroes induced by fickle taste in screen drama, they pursued the search for a second Valentino. {Please turn to page 36) "Romance! It is inherent in all persons, that desire, and lacking in almost all lives." So said Rudolph Valentino, when he was alive. "I understand that desire, and that is why they will never find my successor." Was it a true prophecy? The New Movie Magazine, July, 1935 15