Death of the Latin Lover

a century ago to Manhattan's Upper West Side. It's a sweltering late summer day, and we're standing in front of the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, then located at Broadway and sixty Street. Over the next hundred years, Campbell's will serve as the funeral home for legends from Judy Garland to Jackie Oh to the notorious b I. G. But they won't draw the crowds seen on Tuesday August when the sidewalks are overflowing with a crowd of some thirty

thousand warners. They've all gathered here to catch a final glimpse of a fallen movie star. Arguably the first male sex symbol of the silver screen. He was in great physical shape, and you see those rippling muscles in his arms. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen the videos of him doing his workout while he's wearing pretty much just skivvy. Okay, I'll check those out. I haven't seen those. I need to see that he was labeled the Great Lover, or even more indelibly, the Latin Lover.

He would hold you in his arms if you were a beautiful woman, and kiss you passionately and brutally. Can somebody turn down the thermostat and here is I'm feeling hot? No one burned up the screen like Rudolph Valentino, driving women across the planet wild in a way that no one had before him, enough to leave a permanent mark in the world that he suddenly left behind. At the

tender age of thirty one. Along Broadway, a procession of dark cars carries Valentino's rose covered, bronze and silver coffin to the chapel. The crowd grows unruly, a scene recreated in the film Valentino. Rain is falling, but instead of cooling things off, the crowd explodes into a riot. The mourners become a mob, push punching, fighting their way to get into the funeral parlor. The surgeon. Crowd pushes a line of policemen, causing the windows of the chapel to shatter.

Mounted police officers try to quell the riot, which lasts for hours. Over a hundred are hurt. An improvised emergency room is set up inside the funeral chapel, with the doctors and nurses ministering to the many injured. The streets are covered in debris. A young woman drenched from head to toe ambles in her stockinged feet, weeping. I must see him, I must see him. But how did we get here? How did Rudolph Valentino reach such dizzy heights?

Why all of this howling, hysterical sorrow? And what exactly is a Latin lover? He's a handsome Latin with an accent. He's in the living in. Of course, there would be many rivals for valen Tino's Latin lover Crown. I was ruined by Raymond Navarrow. Raymond Navarro the movie star will tell their stories and talk to Latin lover Scion Lorenzo Lamas Dad was the original Latin dragon. He was the original lothario of fame and notoriety, and his romances are legendary.

Did you tell me something, Fernando, you have a terrible reputation. Do you still have a lot of fooling around to do? And we'll tell you how the Latin Lover vanished from Hollywood just as suddenly as he had appeared. I'm in a night. No fine man is allowed to play a leading role, like if we have an operation of someone from CBS Sunday morning and I heart I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries this moment dolf Valentino, Ramon Navarro and a Tale of Two Lamas. October eighth, the Death of

the Latin Lover. World War One ended in and its conclusion ushered in the beginning of the sexual Revolution. Wait a minute, the sexual revolution that happened in the nineteen sixties, didn't it well, There actually was an earlier sexual revolution in the nineteen twenties. Out of the devastation of World War One emerged a new American woman with a new sense of sexual freedom, a modern woman. Women had finally won the right to vote, and we're joining the workforce

in unprecedented numbers. The Great War had made American women more aware of the world at large, and these women were going to the movies. Approximately eighty three percent of movie goers were women. Enter Rudolph Valentino, our first Latin lover of the silver screen. Valentino was born Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raphaele Googliemi on May six in the province of Toronto in southern Italy. What was the appeal of Valentino? Well, he was handsome, he was elegant. He was a dynamite dancer.

I mean, he was a professional dancer before he became an actor. I'm talking to Emily wardis Lder, author of Dark Lover, The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. Try to ignore the noise in the background. And if you've seen him dance on screen, he was so graceful and dynamic as a performer. Emily, are you sorry? Are you cooking there? My husband is getting ready for his lunch. What is he What is he making? Salad? Okay? Al right? Could he just be a little quieter with the tongs.

The Italian economy collapsed after World War One, and Rodolfo emigrated alone to America, arriving at Ellis Island at the age of eighteen. He first made his living as what was known as a taxi dancer. He was doing that pretty much from the time he was right off the

boat in New York. Taxi dancers worked in dance halls, charging patrons a dime for a dance, a profession immortalized by the Rogers and Hart song ten cents a dance, and was that His primary ambition was that sort of the end goal to be a dancer, not his empty at all. He wanted respect, but working as a taxi dancer was seen a sort of jigglo adjacent. That's not high prestige all that you need. Come on. At twenty three, Rodolpho headed to Hollywood and adopted the much more marquis

friendly name Rudolph Valentino. He played bit parts in various B movies, often his Criminals and Low Lifes, until he was discovered by June Mathis, one of the most successful women in early Hollywood. She was a power in her own right. I think most people would be surprised at the power that several women had in Hollywood during the silent film era. Women were a force in the era of silent films. They only lost hour later, and they

did of course. Matthis was a screenwriter and producer, ultimately being credited on more than one films, and she picked him out and she gets the credit for being the person who discovered law Valentino. Oh, if you're intrigued by unsung powerful women in Hollywood's earliest days, check out our season one episode Forgotten Forerunners, which features silent film trailblazer

Lois Webber. Okay, so there are no taped interviews of June Mathis, but there's this ABC made for TV movie from five called The Legend of Valentino, and it stars the incomparable Suzanne Plachette as June Mathis. Here she is arguing with Metro Studio executives over whether or not to cast Valentino in her next big movie. Photographs like a foreigner. Foreigners have to play heavies. American women won't trust them. They trust American man read them, don't they? Who was

talking about marriage? I'm talking about sex, Sam. This is nineteen twenty. It would just be through a world war. Women are wearing one piece bathing suits, they're drinking bathtub gin, they're dancing the black bottom. And the only thing that hasn't changed is the screen. I mean, we are still pretending it's sex was invented by Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. Now, why can't we be closer to reality? June Mathis had

seen Valentino dance. She knew he had it. I mean, women aboard their restless They're tired of being protected and American men are dull. Now, by the early nineteen twenties, Americans had been going to the movies for more than a decade, but the typical leading man of the day was square jawed all American, unassailably moral. Think that the swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks, very Protestant, hair parted, white shirt suit. We're talking menace here, We're talking a gentleman. A gentleman.

Was he demonstrative with women? There wasn't much heat, but Douglas Fairbanks was certainly very exciting. Not as a lover on screen. It was an athlete, not such a good kisser. But for decades Italian immigrants had been smeared in newspapers as gangsters, which is also the only way they showed up in movies. The Emergency Quota Act codified this bigotry by drastically limiting the number of people coming in from southern and Eastern Europe, there was a special prejudice against

Italian immigrants. They were just one step above being black in the eyes of filmmakers and society at large white audiences. But June math Is envisioned an alternative. Bear in mind this was a full century before me too. I mean, if we're going to buy a dream, we're gonna buy the one about the handsome farn who drags it into his bed against our will. You'd like that. I love

that scene, and so would your wife. Mathis got her way and cast Valentino in her film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and one scene in that film came to define Valentino for his entire career. The tango scene. Well, it starts with menace, which used to be and maybe still is, considered sexy. Early on in the Silent film, Valentino's character Julio is drinking in a crowded, divy Argentine bar, wearing a gaucho outfit, wide flat brimmed hat with tassels

and a chin strap, buttoned up blousy shirt. A man and woman are dancing a jaunty tango. Valentino's drives up and taps the man on the shoulder. Never removing his lit cigarette, he asks to cut in. Valentino exchanges a smile and wink with the saucy Senorita. The man, however, refuses. Valentino's eyes widened with fury. He then throws the man aside and beats him. Then he breaks in and grabs the woman quite brutally, and then tangles off with her. So there is Mannas about to knock you out if

you don't hand over the woman. And that was sexy. Oh yes, okay, these movies have not aged well, but Valentino's on screen persona was an exotic fantasy that women of the era bought into in a big way. The famous tango scene only lasted a total of four minutes, but it had a seismic impact. Is this the scene that really makes him a superstar in my opinion? Yes, But the Sheik took over and became better known, and

that was a real craze. Valentino's first leading man role came that same year in The Chic, the movie adaptation of the steamy, hugely popular romance novel The Chic, which was basically the Fifty Shades of Gray of its day. This was the racy debut of thirty nine year old British novelist E. M. Hull a k a Edith maud Hull. The book inspired a chart topping hit called The Chic of Araby. Crowds went absolutely wild for Valentino as a love struck but brutal Arab chic who melts the heart

of a captive modern woman. Chic mania swept the world. Oh and I must see the house where Rudolph Valentino lived. Oh, I'll never forget him in the sheet. I'm that her love. It also inspired a string of chic rip off movies, and it continued to press the tension between sex and violence. That's an element in some fantasy romance attention that Valentino would exploit in roll after role. And yet now you also wrote about a vulnerable, wounded quality that Valentino had.

He has that in life, and he has it on the screen too. Yes, I think it's about its own emotional availability and vulnerability. You could see it in his face. That softer side was an essential part of his appeal. He would kiss the back of women's hands, he would bow flourishes of chivalry that American women weren't used to seeing in American men, his courtesy, his focus, his intensity.

He would make you feel like you were the only woman in the world while he was kissing you anyhow, and this gets to the heart of what made Valentino so different from the leading men who came before. He put the woman front and sent her very important. The woman is central. It's all about adoring the woman, and women adored him right back, sneaking onto trains, hiding in bathrooms just for a chance to get close to him. One Boston headline read ten girls mob World's greatest kisser.

Women of all ages created the matinee idol is What is Bill doing back there? Is he pounding? Veal was pounding? Uh? Tell me the truth? Is all this talk about Valentino making him jealous? No, he wants his lunch, but out of the public eye. Rudy was unlucky in love and bad with money. He endured two unhappy marriages and made poor business decisions. Leapfrogging from studio to studio. Valentino burned bridges and lost allies and friends in the process, including

his first champion. June Mathis newspaper soon took to mocking the star as Vassilino because of his slicked back hair. Now, we've talked plenty about how women reacted to Valentino. Indeed, Valentino was a man made by women. But how did most American men react to him with suspicion? Hey, he was a foreigner. He didn't have exactly white complexion. He had all of complexion, which made him suspect. And see the wise girl friend mother liked him too much, so

that was a threat. Valentino knew that he was beautiful. He dressed to thrill. He wore jewelry spats over his shoes, lemon yellow gloves with his impeccably tailored suits. Think David Bowie meets Harry Styles. Enter the infamous pink powder puff attack. That was such a smear. That was a smear job, but it got a lot of press, the pink powder

puff attack. They attacked his masculinity totally without basis. In July, in anonymous Chicago Tribune editorial alleged that the city's new Aragon ballroom had installed a pink powder puff vending machine in the men's washroom, encouraging men to powder their noses. And it's squarely blamed Valentino without saying it. The editorial

accused Valentino of being gay. Valentino challenged the anonymous author, first to a duel of honor and then to a boxing match, but before anonymous could come forward it was too late. Complaining of terrible abdominal pains, Valentino was given an emergency double operation for acute appendicitis and perforated gastric ulcers. The resulting sepsis took his life. After a week that will, Valentino died at twelve ten pm on Monday August. This

tribute song was written by Vernon Dolhart. Just ten days after Valentino perished. The Guardian newspaper wrote, no monarch or war hero ever aroused more sympathetic public interest anywhere than Valentino during the illness, which ended fatally. Today, the press was flooded with reports of fainting women and suicide attempts. Twenty seven year old actress Peggy Scott took her life

in London by poison. Twenty year old Angelina Celestina, mother of two, took poison and shot herself in the bowery. She was rescued and briefly institutionalized. Valentino received two separate funerals the first in New York with its riots and mayhem. Then his body was transported cross country via railroad to California. At several stops, love struck fans lay down on the tracks,

delaying the trains progress to Valentino's final resting place in Hollywood. Well, nobody in this country had seen anything like it since the death of Abraham Lincoln, though that is really something else, you know, when Lincoln does, his body was carried in a famous train ride, and people gathered along the tracks in morning and tribute. And the same thing happened when

Valentino died. The more sensationalized reactions to Valentino's to death became part of the national consciousness for decades afterwards, as evidenced by this brief side in Billy Wilder's comedy Some Like It Hot. How about Roseberry Short She slashed the wrist when Valentino, Well, we might as well all slash our risk unless we round up two games. Valentino is buried next to June Mathis, who, out of compassion, allowed Valentino to be entuned in her crypt at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

His estate couldn't afford to bury him there. They rest side by side Valentine, but way up, there's on you story. Within three years of his death, silent movies were officially finished. Would Valentino have made it in talkies, Well, here's a rare recording of him singing let's have a quick listen and wonder what might have been. But it was the singing voice of our next Latin lover which would allow

him to make the jump to talkies. Night. Ramon name Samaniego Jose Ramon Hill Samaniego was born on February six Inturango, Mexico. His large family was wealthy and influential and lost everything in the Mexican Revolution. Seventeen year old Jose Ramon moved to Los Angeles, where he supported his family by working as a bus boy, a nude model, and a movie extra. He dreamed of singing opera, and, just as Valentino had, Samanego simplified his name to Ramon Navarro, although it was

much more frequently pronounced Ramon Navarro. Superstardom came with the silent version of Ben Her. Now, this was thirty four years before Charlton Heston's Panavision extravaganza Ben Her, I Tell You the day room falls, there will be a shout of freedom such as the world has never heard before. But the earlier version was just as epic, the most expensive movie of its time, and it was written by

none other than June Mathis. Mathis desperately wanted Valentino for the title role, but Valentino was at the time on the ounce with the studio. Navarro got the lead. The world had a new Latin lover, the first Mexican actor to make it in Hollywood. Navarro could dance, and he could act. He was funny, and this was key to his success in talkies. He could sing, I should like to hear you sing. That's easy. I think I looked

anywhere without any good. Here he is singing the pagan love song from the nine Polynesian romance The Pagan Nice. And here he is as a romantic and reckless Napoleonic French officer in Devil May Care. And here he is crooning alongside fledgling movie soprano and future star Jeanette McDonald in n GM's The Cat and the Fiddle. Okay, so maybe that pigeon like warbling is not to our current tastes, But save your bread crumbs. Navarro's operetta style of singing

was all the rage at the time. I'm Navarro had only one accent for all of his speaking roles. Whether he was playing an Egyptian, Belgian or Austrian, he always spoke with his natural, lilting Mexican accent. Here he is as a Russian. Just go with it, wooing the world weary Swedish screen siren Greta Garbo in Mata Hari's a strange boy who loves you, William, I love you as when a door's sacred things. Let's sink of things. God, country, honor you now. Navarro was not the sex god that

Valentino evoked on screen. He was short, with a smallish mouth, and while he was definitely athletic, he was also slightly pudgy. Navarro's seduction technique, even in the films where he played a cad, was playful, naughty, innocent, Oh you would go, that would do you little? In a word, Ramon Navarro was cute, a lovable, love struck scamp, and an uninhibited romantic with loads of charm. I lost my career today, but I don't care. I'm happy today. I found the

most glorious girl in the whole world. Nothing about Navarro spoke of menace or danger. Today I found love. Ironically, Navarro reached his peak and popularity at a time when prejudice towards Mexican immigrants had become extremely common. Mexicans had been welcomed as cheap labor to the US, but at the same time they were resented, and Hollywood's depictions of handlebarred bandidos in westerns were at least partially to blame.

Whether Valentino and Navarro were sensations because or in spite of being immigrants is hard to say, but the studios consciously avoided casting either of them as their native nationalities. To audiences, they were simply acceptably exotic celebrities. Now, until four Novarro was one of the world's biggest stars, one of the few to straddle silent films and talkies. Then

two things happened. Hollywood turned toward more stoic, traditionally manly man like Clark Cable and Gary Cooper for its romantic male leads that was not Navarro. At the same time, the old fashioned operettas that had made Navarro so popular fell out of fashion. In favor of newer sounding musicals, led by the likes of fred As Stair. I'm longing to be in chains and that's with me. One final MGM musical, The Night Is Young, in cemented the end

for Navarro with us and apple Struds. I've ordered apple Strudo without students. Love you listen. I happen to love both veener Schnitzel and apple Strudel, But this movie gave me indigestion. It tanked with both critics and audiences, and m GM fired Navarro. Navarro had had a good run, make that a great run. He lived comfortably over the next few decades, even helping to take care of his many siblings and their families, having smartly invested his money

in real estate. Oh, I feel very fortunate because I know people that have certainly much more intelligence than I had, an intelligence and ability, and yet I'd be fortunate in the investing my money rightly. Ramon Navarro's legacy would likely be his very real early stardom if not for the way he died at the age of sixty nine. Navarro was murdered in his Hollywood home on October by two

male hustlers. The details are lurid, and we're not going to get into them here, but the general circumstances of his death and the trial that followed revealed to the world what Hollywood insiders had long known. Navarro was gay. As a young star, he had refused to give into

studio pressure to marry a woman. In his early days, he'd had a few relationships, but as he grew older, biographer Andre Suarez beliefs Navarro had become less self accepting and found it harder to reconcile his Catholic faith with his sexuality. He drank to excess, and he paid for sex. When he eventually lost his driver's license, navarro secretary would drive him to church. If Navarro noticed a handsome young

man walking the sidewalk, he would quickly cross himself. At the trial of his murderers, the defense attorney victim blamed, saying contemptuously to the jury, back in the days of Valentino, this man who set female hearts of flutter was nothing but a queer. Navarro, he argued, had invited this upon himself. Sadly in that was a compelling argument. Neither murderer served more than nine years for this crime. Posthumously, Navarro's name

fell further into disgrace thanks to Hollywood Babylon. Hollywood Babylon is a book by a man named Kenneth Anger, and that's pretty much where the facts end. It's attacking and tasteless compilation of scandals and hearsay about the very first movie stars, and it was a best seller. The most infamous edition in included gruesome graphic photos of celebrity deaths we its litany of lies. Hollywood Babylon ensured that Navarro's

death would overshadow his life. When the fabulous MGM retrospectives That's Entertainment and its sequel were released in the nineteen seventies, they included dozens of clips from Hollywood's earliest musicals. Navarro was conspicuously absent at that time. It may have been impossible to honor him properly without invoking his recent troubling demise.

And that's a big shame. Tears to remembering Ramon Navarro as he was in his Latin Lover Heyday with that wonderful warble up next, Lat Lover's invade television, just before their last big hurrah on the silver screen. You know, Ricky another Rudolph Valentino, Ricky Ricky ricking me. That's who the studio just had to go over and have my picture taken with Ricky Ricardo, whoever he is? Haven't you mad? You? He's a handsome Latin with an accent. He's the end

the living en. By the nineteen fifties, the whole idea of the Latin lover had become something of a punch line on TV. Ricardo Alberto Fernando Ricardo, I love Lucy's Ricky Ricardo has played by Desi Arnaz, is hardly dangerous. This Latin lover was safely domesticated. What a dream of situation. And I bet you know a million girls? Where's your address book? I burned it. I hadn't been in this country very long, and Lucy said it was part of

the American marriage ceremony. Over on the big screen. The Latin lover vehicles of the period were gloriously cheeseball. Here's Mexican Heartthrob Ricardo Montalban teaching some poor sap his own seduction technique. In Neptune's Daughter, you must say to her, why do I have to speak Spanish? Because it's a language of love? Women can resist it. Not surprisingly, Montaban didn't like being typecast, as he later recalled in a CBS interview, but I didn't know what it meant, you

see Latin love it. I it meant a man, I guess I going into Hollywood with slick hair, Natalie dressed and kissing ladies hands, you know. And it was a caricature, so I I kind of resented it. There were vapid roles. Perhaps the most successful of the Latin lovers of this period, and one of the last, was dapper Debonair Fernando Lamas. Aren't you rather forgetting yourself? Maybe I always forget myself

when I'm near a beautiful rule. Neither dangerous like Valentino nor boyish like Navarro, Lamas was instead a smooth operator. Come to my home tomorrow and I will show you the real Gord of California, the sweet smelling hay and plums, and the grapes, and the prod cattle and the bigs.

Do you like pigs, lady? Normally that's a few. At the height of his popularity, Fernando married movie star and businesswoman are Lean Tall, a Minnesotan of Norwegian descent, and the couple were expecting a child when they spoke to Edward R. Murrow on person to person, have you picked a name for the baby and not? Not yet. We have in mind a couple of names. But he's not quite easy, isn't No. It's not easy to see both my father and for not to want a boy. So

we've been concentrating only on boys names, right. You see, he's got to go with the name Lamas, and I don't think that, for example, Sam Lamas would really go out together. You know, they did not name their son Sam. As much as I was stereotyped as a jock, Dad was stereotyped as a Latin lover. That's actor and son of Fernando Lorenzo Lamas. And he told me it's good to be stereotyped and have steady work, then to not be stereotyped and go without having the phone ring for

months at a time. Lorenzo would go on to have his own movie and TV career. I first came to know him for his work on the nighttime soap Falcon Crest. You created Falcon Crest in your own image, Grandmother, My mother and I are the way we are because of you and if I've turned against you, it's your own fault. You get out of my sight. I really think the Latin lover was introduced to the American audience to give people a chance to look at an emotional man, a

man that is not afraid to show his feelings. Fernando Lamas was discovered in his native Argentina by an MGM talent scout. He was of a group of people like ss A Ramaron, Ricardo montal Bond that were brought to the studio system to play that kind of that spoiler, the Latin lover that comes into the storyline and kind of breaks up the couple, and they would play the continental swave, you know, sophisticated man about town. How many may have told you that you're the most beautiful girl

they have ever seen. Fernando took to the Latin lover role on screen and off movie Star and Champions Swimmer. Esther Williams would become his fourth wife. She later recalled the first time they met, tell me something, Fernando, you have a terrible reputation. Do you still have a lot of fooling around to do? And he said, such an honest question deserves an out to answer. He says, I'm afraid I do, and I said, you kill me. I said goodbye to him and I was saw him for

eight years. By the late fifties, Fernando was eager to leave the onscreen part of the role behind. I'm very happy to say that I'm walking away from one role that I seem to be stuck with in quite another of my pictures in Hollywood. That's what I called the Latin lover type of a role, which is the one dimensional you know only it calls for a starting one hand, a blonde dame on the other, and the horse waiting

outside that's all black hair and long pink. And indeed, by the end of the decade, the Latin lover had largely banished from the big screen. But, much to the dismay of Lamas, this didn't lead to better opportunities. As he later explained to Johnny Carson, I'm in a nine sixty. No foreign man is allowed to play a leading role. Like if we had an operation of something. You didn't know that you have an operations, You're gonna may love

an Marsa. Now you play the friend of the leading man, who is some dumb guy from Topeka or oh, you'll play the heavy. The Latin lover was being replaced by the Latin criminal, all too often the urban gang member by Ella Nasa collection time. Okay, girl, come on come, I'm gonna get the money ready. This man needs some great Former movie star Latin lovers had to turn elsewhere for work. By your guests, I am Mr Rourke, your host. Welcome to Fantasy Island. Ricardo Montauban became the star of

TV's Fantasy Island, where I would watch him every Saturday night. Smiles, everyone smiles. No longer cast as a romantic lead, he was also during commercial breaks romancing car seats, venue small prison. Here is the warm, thickly cushion contour seats available even in Fine Corinthiander. By the way, fine Corinthian leather is a marketing term, not any actual type of leather. As for Fernando Lamas, he turned to directing for television. He

directed Lorenzo in several episodes of Falcon Crest. Fernando's name and fame slowly faded until Pop Culture twice turned the spotlight back on him. It's time now for Fernando's bideaway. Find that yours, my friends, I'm so happy to be

at tonight. In the recurring Saturday Night Live segment Fernando's Hideaway, Billy Crystal parodied the Elder Lamas inspired says Lorenzo buy an appearance Fernando had made on The Tonight Show, and Billy was watching Dad the way he was on Johnny Carson, and Dad came in and appeared, and he had a little bit of a cult. Johnny said, So for I understand you're a little under the weather tonight, because yes, Johnny and Lutheran to the weather, not not, you know,

feeling to moral us. But it's always better to look good than to feel good, right, I would rather look good than to feel good. You know what I'm saying to your dolling mama. You look thank you, but you look pretty good yourself. I'm rushing inside my temperature. Dad loved it because Billy was introducing my father to an audience of people that didn't know who he was. By the way, there really was a Fernando's Hie to way

in that appearance on Person to Person. Back in nineteen fifty seven, Fernando led Edward R. Murrow on a tour through his Manhattan town house and to his man cave. This is the room where you got away from it all? Is that? That's why? Definitely, you know, I think a man who hasn't what has to be along with himself. But what's the sign just beside you? There is the sign here says exactly Fernando's high The way is the

picture of a bullfight? Is it? Fernando Lamas died in but another tribute of a sort came posthumously in a popular beer campaign in two thousand six. In the First Life, he was himself. If opportunity knocks and he's not home, opportunity wings. He gave his father the talk. He is the most Interesting man in the world. Character actor Jonathan Goldsmith, a good friend to Fernando's audition and for a commercial for Doseki Spear and the character that Dosekis was looking

for was some sort of Latin lover type. Goldsmith, a self described Jewish guy from the Bronx, summoned the spirit of his beloved lost friend and the most Interesting Man in the World was basically from Jonathan's memory of the times that he spent with Dad. Running in place will never get you the same results as running from Claya Fernando Lamas was never entirely able to shake the Latin

lover label. His New York Times obituary David October two starts off, Fernando Lamas, the silver haired star of numerous Latin Lover movies, died today of cancer. He was sixty seven years old. There when you realize that Valentino he invented the leading men, and he came on and he invented the thing, and he dressed himself funny, and Buddy caught on, and then there were a lot of funnis that followed. We've left the Latin lover behind us, and

as with most all stereotypes, that's for the best. But let's also acknowledge that the Latin Lover allowed foreigners to be leading men for the first time. And while it's rare to see someone marketed as a Latin lover today, some of his better aspects have been absorbed, assimilated into today's leading men of all ethnicities. Even the most macho

man mus now also have some emotional awareness and vulnerability. Yes, behind each posturing, chest thumping bro in Magic Mike, there's a surprisingly sensitive guy who just wants to be loved. I'm not my lifestyle. I'm not a in my magic in my magic mike right now talking to you. I'm not my goddamn job. And that's not who, That's not what I That's not what I do. That's I mean, this is what I do, but it's not who I am. Sure every once in a while somebody bemoans the loss

of the stoic leading man. What have that happened to? Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type that was an American. He wasn't in touch with his feelings. He just did what he had to do to what they didn't know. Once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings that they wouldn't be able to shut him up. But there's no going back day, not form, nothing. But you get a little confused here. That was the movies there's on you have. I certainly hope you enjoyed this mobituary.

May I ask you to please rate and review the podcast. You can also follow mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow me on Twitter at Morocca. Listen to mobituaries on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts, and might I suggest mobituaries great lives worth reliving the New York Times best selling book, now available in paperback and audio book. It includes plenty of stories not in the podcast, and I gotta say it's kind of a

perfect stocking stuffer. This episode of Mobituaries was produced by Francisco Robina and Aaron Shrank. Our team of producers also includes Wilco, Martina Scaceto, and me Morocca. It was edited by Moral Walls and engineered by Josh Hahn, with fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is Neon hom Media. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Our theme music is

written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervais, Alan Peg, Reggie Basil and everyone at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Andre Suarez, Mattia, Santonio Bombal Lauda, Isabel Cerna and Alberto Robina, the Unsinkable Aaron Shrink as our senior producer. Executive producers for Mobituaries include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is created by Yours Truly and as always, undying gratitude to Rand Morrison and John carp for helping

breathe life into Mobituaries. Before we go Hollywood also had its female Latin lovers. The pioneering and stunning Dolores del Rio was Ramon Navarro's second cousin. Del Rio was often called the female Rudolf Valentino. She and her contemporary Lupe Vells paved the way for other Latin actresses like Carmen Miranda and Maria Montez. The storied history of those Latin lovers is its own tail, deserving its own future mobituary. I think you like that very much. You like that too,

of course I'm willing to everyone else. Is you want to know what I think. I can't tell what I said. It's okay, stan Leando, do you make it sounds nothing? You don't know not to call the battles? Yeah, you're not. Wish I couldn't you know saying that in English