Link to the Rudolph Valentino Podcast here:
Rudolph Valentino & The André Daven Hoax
In the interest of providing documentation and truth about André L. Daven and his affiliation with Rudolph Valentino, I recorded a podcast episode which I titled, "Rudolph Valentino & The André Daven Hoax". In this blog, I share further documentation, images and research material along with excerpts from the podcast script. Please view the podcast's accompanying video through this link: https://youtu.be/B-oaxXfm2sQ
There are other cobbled together points in the Daven hoax arsenal; falsehoods which are perpetuated and worked into an unsourced narrative. I feel these main points and their perpetrators need to be exposed.Who are these perpetrators so deeply obsessed with André Daven being someone he was not and doing things he did not do?
Rudolph Valentino & The André Daven Hoax
In the interest of providing documentation and truth about André L. Daven and his affiliation with Rudolph Valentino, I recorded a podcast episode which I titled, "Rudolph Valentino & The André Daven Hoax". In this blog, I share further documentation, images and research material along with excerpts from the podcast script. Please view the podcast's accompanying video through this link: https://youtu.be/B-oaxXfm2sQ
Josephine Baker, center, with the troupe of Harlem Dancers arriving in France in the fall of 1925.
There are other cobbled together points in the Daven hoax arsenal; falsehoods which are perpetuated and worked into an unsourced narrative. I feel these main points and their perpetrators need to be exposed.Who are these perpetrators so deeply obsessed with André Daven being someone he was not and doing things he did not do?
Of
course the most notorious and loudest voice in this campaign is the
person I refer to as the Valentino porn fiction writer. He is the architect of the hoax itself and one who in my
opinion bears nearly 99% of the blame for this travesty of inaccuracies and lies.
In
the porn fiction writers' Valentino biography, published in 1999, he emphasizes his theme of Daven being the great love
of Valentino and contributes to his frenzy of uncited fabrication by
claiming he has secret and publicly unavailable proof that nearly
every single man in Rudolph Valentino's life was his lover.
From
his handyman Lou Mahoney to his manager George Ullman to his
godfather Frank Mennillo, to all of his male friends... every last
one.. and to even movie censorship czar Will Hays. In his zeal to market the Valentino and Daven affair, the porn fiction writer mistakenly
labels a photograph of Valentino's brother Alberto in his book as, “André Daven, Rudolph Valentino's greatest love". The porn fiction writer built the Daven hoax by flooding the internet
with the lies and fantasy woven together with facts to give the
impression it was truth. The catch phrase soon appeared everywhere
online.
Over
the years his followers have picked up the torch to carry his work
into a more troubling reality with blogs such the "The Daven Affair" appearing. In
their campaign to have Daven known as Valentino's greatest love, they
focus on several main points. I will refer to these main points
as: the hunting trip, Josephine Baker and the pallbearer.
In
regards to... the hunting trip.
I
will say first of all that contrary to what is posted on the
Daven Affair blog, I did not dispute the hunting trip existed and on
page 234 of Affairs Valentino, I mention Valentino and Daven going on
the hunting trip. I probably have said on many occasions that I
believe events on that hunting trip did not happen as those perpetuating the hoax imply they did with their industrial grade innuendo.
As
featured prominently in the Valentino/Daven hoax, it is stated as
fact that because the two men went on a hunting trip together, this
is proof they were homosexual lovers. I refute the implication that a
choice of sporting activity and enjoying said activity with a friend
can be cited as definitive evidence of one's sexual orientation. I do not think a hunting trip is proof of anything
other than proof Rudolph Valentino and his minimally paid understudy, André Daven killed some unlucky and innocent creatures, butchered them and
took their trophies home.
The
Valentino porn fiction writer and his following have rendered this
scenario of butchering innocent animals for sport into a romantic,
x-rated romp by two closeted homosexuals. Now there would be nothing
wrong with that at all if it was claimed to be fan fiction
and the author's sexual fantasy with two real men as characters in
the story. But that is not the case because they repeat the story
everywhere as being true. As they present no proof other than their
innuendo and suppositions, I state that a hunting trip is not proof
of homosexuality.
On
to the Josephine Baker falsehood....
The
hoax purports Daven discovered the iconic jazz performer
Josephine Baker and that he was responsible for her success in
bringing jazz to Paris.
According
to several articles and other documentation presented this is not the case.
The
Valentino porn fiction writer claims Daven discovered Baker in a
Harlem nightclub during his 1924 stay in New York City and that he took her
and a troupe of thirty other African American performers from New
York, at his own expense, back to Paris with him when he returned so
“abruptly” that June. This is not true. Fiction
writer goes on to claim this proves Daven was fabulously wealthy and
that the account of Valentino paying Daven 50$ a week for clerical work, such as his witnessing documents to be signed... was a false theory.
As
I stated before this is not a theory but something Daven wrote to his girlfriend Yvonne Legeay. And if Daven had incredibly returned then
in June of 1924 with, as the fiction writer claims, thirty other
people... he would have had to support them for about a year
and a half because Baker's show, "La Revue Negre" did not open until October 2nd
of 1925. According to the site of the Museum of Harlem in
Montmartre, it all came about in a very different way.
It was Caroline Dudley Reagan, an entrepreneur who
was in Paris at the time, who discovered Josephine Baker in Harlem
as well as the dance troupe. It was she who brought them all to
Paris and she who spent the summer of 1925 organizing the dance troupe and
their relocation to France. Andre
Daven's involvement in the Josephine Baker story actually goes like
this:
Jacques
Hébertot left the theater Champs Élysées in January of 1925 and the
Swedish owner Rolf de Maré appointed André Daven as artistic
director; with de Maré holding the actual title of Director of the
Champs Élysées theater. The theater was then converted to a music
hall; a rather vaudevillian venue and it was suffering financial
duress. When Caroline Dudley Reagan proposed to André Daven
that she organize an act comprised entirely of black performers, he
agreed it might be a good idea. Upon
his approval, she returned to New York City where she set to work
producing the show which would launch the career of Josephine Baker.
André Daven did not pay to bring thirty dancers from New York because he
was in Paris when this show was being organized by Caroline
Reagen. I found it fascinating how Josephine Baker became the
star of the show "La Revue Negre" because of the renown artist, Paul Colin who created the
poster for the opening night. The artist singled out Baker for the
iconic poster.
In regards to the importance the Valentino porn fiction writer and the author
of the Daven affair blog place on Daven being a director of the
theater and discovering Baker; this is curious because we contacted the official historian of the theater and there is no
mention of Daven in either the official history of Jacques Hébertot
or of the theater. Yet
we find even Daven telling the press he was the director for several
years forward.
And
in response to the hoax narrative which gives André Daven credit
for the choreography of Baker's famous routines, I cite an article
posted on http://www.plaisirsdujazz.fr/ which reveals this
is not true.
"Caroline Dudley spent the summer of 1925 in New York, organizing the dance troupe and details of the show, to be produced under the scenographic authority of Louis Douglas, African-American dancer and choreographer who performed regularly in Paris since 1903. But their collaboration faced problems when Rolf de Maré and André Daven (artistic director of the theater Champs Élysées) attended rehearsals of the dance troupe, which arrived on September 22, just four days before the preview, and ten days before the premiere.
They felt the show was not "black" enough for the Parisian public - not Parisian enough, in short. On the one hand, the star of the show, Maud de Forest, exhibited no taste and below the standard they expected for the French show. She was too fat compared to feminine standards of the Parisian music hall, less a dancer than a singer, and which was worst she was a singer of the blues: these properties, which correspond to a niche in vogue in New York since 1920, have no appeal in Paris. Daven found the collective female choreographies of the Harlem dance troupe too prudish, that is to say too "American", but also neither sufficiently "French" (remember the Parisian music hall emphasizes eroticism) or sufficiently "black" (French colonial curiosity for black female bodies having essentially been based upon their nudity, showing this as their sensuality)."
"Caroline Dudley spent the summer of 1925 in New York, organizing the dance troupe and details of the show, to be produced under the scenographic authority of Louis Douglas, African-American dancer and choreographer who performed regularly in Paris since 1903. But their collaboration faced problems when Rolf de Maré and André Daven (artistic director of the theater Champs Élysées) attended rehearsals of the dance troupe, which arrived on September 22, just four days before the preview, and ten days before the premiere.
They felt the show was not "black" enough for the Parisian public - not Parisian enough, in short. On the one hand, the star of the show, Maud de Forest, exhibited no taste and below the standard they expected for the French show. She was too fat compared to feminine standards of the Parisian music hall, less a dancer than a singer, and which was worst she was a singer of the blues: these properties, which correspond to a niche in vogue in New York since 1920, have no appeal in Paris. Daven found the collective female choreographies of the Harlem dance troupe too prudish, that is to say too "American", but also neither sufficiently "French" (remember the Parisian music hall emphasizes eroticism) or sufficiently "black" (French colonial curiosity for black female bodies having essentially been based upon their nudity, showing this as their sensuality)."
The Harlem dancers arrived in Paris so close to the scheduled premiere that when
Daven first saw the show he panicked. It was not at all what he
expected. He recruited Jacques Charles, a director from the Moulin
Rouge, who rushed to the theater to see what could be
done. Jacques Charles recollects about rescuing Daven in the Parisian
literary weekly Candide on June 16, 1932:
Excerpted from Candide - June 6, 1932
Translated into English:
"...André
Daven came to call me for help! He hired a group of African Americans
without seeing them, on the sole recommendation of an impresario who
proposed a review to him. However, the troop had arrived from New
York to begin in two days, and the first rehearsal of the so-called
review was a complete collapse for Daven and Rolf de Maré.
-They
tap-tap for two hours, and it is
all going to the dogs. Only you, he added, can get us out of
there.
No
matter how hard I worked, my contract with the Moulin-Rouge, which
forbade me to collaborate outside, Daven was convincing so I put on
my overcoat and followed him to the theater...
-You
must save us, do whatever you need to do.
-There
is no question of that, I said, I do not know if we can do something
in forty-eight hours with what you have in this troupe. I will
first see what they do and then I will tell you if you can announce
your “black show” or terminate their contract.
On
the stage, I found ladies and gentlemen of color, with sad faces,
because they realized the managers' Andre Daven and Rolf de Mare's
rejection of their “talents”. By chance the lead dancer, was
Lewis Douglas, whom I know well. I explained the situation to him:
-Two
alternatives for you: do the show's premiere or take the boat home,
choose. I ask you all the most absolute obedience. It's your only
chance.
After
a brief “chat”, Douglas came to tell me on behalf of all that I
had only to tell them what to do.
-So
show me everything you do..."
Excerpted - Candide, June 6, 1932
Excerpted - Candide, June 6, 1932
Jacques
Charles writes further about the changes made to the show and ends his recollection with:
"Josephine
Baker indignantly rejected my “Suggestions” for a number in which
she and Joe Alex, almost naked, would dance a savage dance - half
shimmy, half poi-poi - a Hawaiian and south African cocktail, with a
pinch of New Zealanders. In vain I left it to dancer Joe Alex to
convince her. When I returned, Josephine Baker was in tears and
shouting she wanted to take the boat home to New York...
I am
still waiting for a simple letter of thanks. Theater directors
quickly become oblivious when they stop being worried."
Excerpted - Candide, June 6, 1932
Josephine Baker went on to incredible success but how tragic for the dance troupe as they arrived in Paris with their song and dance ready to go, to be told the women had to take off their shirts, expose their breasts and dance like the European white man's perception of African Americans as savages. It is not surprising to read Josephine Baker was sobbing and ready to return home to Harlem.
