“Of course it was obvious that he was the exact type for the young tango-dancer hero of the story. Even after I started work with him, though, I had no idea how far he’d go--not at the very first. But when we came to rehearsing the tango, “Rudy” did so well that I made up my mind to expand this phase of the story. I did this by means of a sequence in a Universal picture I had made several years before. The sequence showed an adventurous youth going into a Bowery dive and taking the dancer after he had first floored her partner. Bones and marrow, I transposed this action to South America--yet only a few of my wise Universal friends recognised it. “This bit of acting not in the book gave Valentino a chance for one of his showiest pieces of work. I rehearsed it very carefully for three days right on the set, and I think the result showed it.” At this point in the director’s story I asked him if he thought, as so many people do, that Valentino was a mere flash in the pan. “By no means,” rejoined he promptly; “he’s very ambitious and earnest, and if he doesn’t take what the fans say too seriously he will live a long time as a picture idol--provided, of course, that he is kept in good stories and has a capable director.” Here at this point I can not refrain from quoting the most famous of directors on the subject of the present-day idol. In talking to Griffith one day I asked him what he thought of Valentino. “I declare I don’t know,” replied he; “all the time I was looking at him in ‘The Four Horsemen’ I kept asking myself, ‘Is this fellow really acting or is he so perfectly the type that he doesn’t need to act?’” The existing impression that this famous novel afforded Valentino his first part in pictures is erroneous. Not only had the young Latin worked with Holubar, as Ingram mentioned, but he had been cast with Mae Murray by Bobby Leonard. And, of course, he had rounded out his experience as an extra. Had it not been, however, for Rex Ingram and for the materialisation of a story so exactly adapted to his type, Valentino might still be standing around in the lobby of some Hollywood hotel--one of the thousands of young men and women whose hearts are suffocating with that one cry, “The chance! If only they’d give me the chance!” “Hail, Czar of Hollywood!”--thus some woman addressed Charlie Chaplin not long ago. “Oh, no,” smiled Charlie, “that no longer. Valentino is the present ruler.” And then he went on to say, “I like the fellow, you know. He’s got a lot of colour and charm. I went around to see him the other day and it just delighted me to see him stepping about on his thick beautiful rugs among his gorgeous bric-à-brac and his incense-burners. They seemed to suit him, you know, and he was so pleased with all his new splendour--just like a child.” There is Chaplin for you--always delighted with the colourful, the pictorial, the thing which sets his imagination going.