The Legend of Valentino

... which is what is written under the title in this complete fantasy.

I don't know Valentino's life story like the back of my hand like I know Buster Keaton's, but I know enough to realize that only some of the names are correct, but dates, the order of films, and especially the relationships between the players are all wrong.

Valentino's first role was not "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse". It was his breakout role, but he'd been in films for seven years prior. In the final scene he's onstage after "Son of the Sheik" has played and says he came to the United States three years before. That would be 1923, which was two years after Four Horsemen, which would be quite a feat. June Mathis, who wrote several of Valentino's best films, did not come from Brooklyn, and did not move there. She continued to write scripts until her death in 1927, just a year after Valentino died. And most importantly, Valentino did not meet Mathis by burglarizing her house one night when he was hungry.

All of this is the work of producer Aaron Spelling, who produced "mind candy" shows for TV like Charlie's Angels throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s. Thus this is par for the course. So he makes Valentino out to be an easily conned rube who is considered gay by all of the women in his life in spite of his reputation.

I will say that the performances were good, whoever it was that the actors were actually portraying.