In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

STARS 211
remain clouded by unhappiness. Babe Ruth, who enjoys the admiration
of millions of American boys (Ritter and Rucker, 162-163), will never
be a father. Rudolph Valentino, "who desperately wants a child," is
blamed by his wife "for a miscarriage caused by reckless driving" (Morris,
178). Valentino falls into a depression after his divorce from Natasha
Rambova in January, and the Babe's wife suffers from nervous breakdowns
which the press eagerly interprets as reactions to her spouse's
notorious womanizing (Ritter and Rucker, 128-129). Charlie Chaplin's
wife, Lita Grey, leaves him on November 30 and takes their little boys,
Charles and Sidney (Robinson, 662-663). A brief reconciliation between
Jack Dempsey and his wife after his loss of the world championship is
merely a prelude to their final separation. Such emotional emptiness and
family woe in the life of the star only intensify the fans' desire to occupy
a role by the side of the admired body. In Chaplin's case, the socially
marginal life which he evokes repeatedly in his films makes these fantasies
particularly concrete:
One night, ... coming out of Grauman's Egyptian [movie theater], I
was striding the short distance between the theater and our favorite
restaurant when I recognized, a few steps ahead of me, the familiar
outline of Charlie. Instinctively, I slowed down, and I cannot express
what melancholy overwhelmed me when I realized the total solitude of
the most popular man in the world ... At the corner of Cherokee Street
an important event occurred-important for Charlie at least ... He
met a dog. A fat, common mongrel who was sitting waiting for who
knew what. And Charlie stopped, abruptly. He had found someone to
talk to. And he started to question the dog, who probably recognized
in him a comrade, because it offered him its paw." (Robinson, 372)
Stars never appear completely blameless in their publicized private
unhappiness. But although, at least in the case of male actors and athletes,
such responsibility does not detract from their popular appeal,
reckless behavior and family crises may well affect the quality of their
professional performance-to the point of jeopardizing their entire careers.
Following his divorce, Valentino is involved in a number of serious
car accidents (Orbanz, 136). Since Babe Ruth scored only twenty-five
home runs in the previous season, the press begins to ask "whether he
eats, drinks, or screws himself out of baseball," and he is "almost uni-