A Note on the Ullman Memoir from author Evelyn Zumaya

In the weeks following Rudolph Valentino’s death on August 23, 1926, his best friend, manager and confidant, George Ullman, published Valentino as I Knew Him. He was still grieving over the loss of his dear friend and wrote his book not only as a biography but as an intimate account of the last hours of Valentino’s life. George Ullman stood at Valentino’s deathbed, heard his final words and in his book he shared these highly personal events with the movie star’s public.

George prepared his final manuscript for publication with the editorial assistance of Lillian Bell, a writer living in Los Angeles and Raymond Fager, a clerk and typist employed by Rudolph Valentino Productions. In spite of the fact that copies of Valentino as I Knew Him are now rare and expensive, the small volume is still considered a definitive work on Valentino. George’s friends and his wife recalled how he diligently worked on his book and many hand-written pages of the original manuscript are still in existence. The erroneous reports that Valentino as I Knew Him was ghostwritten are just that.

Fifty years after Valentino as I Knew Him was published, George’s three children encouraged their nearly eighty year old father to write more about his life with Valentino. He took their advice and in 1972 began passing pages of a hand-written memoir on to his children. They in turn delivered his manuscript to a typist for completion. George initially wrote his 1972 memoir as a rewrite of his original book but soon abandoned this direction to write his memories of Rudolph Valentino in no particular order. He included within the body of the memoir; a copy of his original managerial contract with Valentino signed in 1923 and a personal letter he received from Valentino’s attending physician at the time of his death. Shortly after completing his memoir, George Ullman passed away.

For the next thirty years the remarkable document remained unpublished and largely forgotten. It was during the course of my interviews with Bob and Bunny Ullman that they presented me with the only copy of their father’s manuscript. At that time I had been researching and writing about Rudolph Valentino for many years and believed I was nearing the completion of my work. But I found the information contained within George’s memoir to be of such significance that I was compelled to rethink, restructure and rewrite all of my work to that point.

As I read through the stack of yellowing pages, I realized that many of the dynamic elements of Valentino’s life which George addressed had never come to light in any publication on Valentino I had read to date. His candid accounts of life behind-the-scenes revealed an untold story of Rudolph Valentino.

Valentino biographer Norman MacKenzie once described George as “the absolute authority on Valentino, second to none throughout the world and Rudy’s closest friend.” With this in mind, George Ullman’s memoir will be published in its entirety along with the complete text of his book Valentino As I Knew him originally published in 1926.

Evelyn Zumaya
August 2005