Rudolph Valentino and Arthur Shirley, 'The Big Australian'

"The Big Australian"

Arthur Shirley, photographed by Albert Witzel at around the time of Shirley's association with Rudolph Valentino (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Success, as the saying goes, has many fathers. Among those credited with ‘discovering’ Rudolph Valentino are actor Norman Kerry, scenarist June Mathis, actress Clara Kimball Young and producer Lewis J. Selznick. One of the lesser known claimants is the Australian-born actor Arthur Shirley. According to Shirley, photographic portraits he had taken of the actor early in his career were provided to scenarist June Mathis and director Rex Ingram, leading directly to Valentino's casting in his breakthrough film, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). Does Shirley's claim stand up to scrutiny? Not entirely - but there is evidence that he played a small but important role in Valentino’s elevation from minor player to superstar.

Arthur Shirley - not to be confused with the British dramatist of My Old Dutch fame - was born in 1886 in Tasmania, embarking in his teens on a theatrical career that soon extended to Australian motion pictures, most notably the early hit The Silence of Dean Maitland (1914). A contract dispute with actor-manager George Willoughby saw him declare bankruptcy in 1913, and he decided to try his luck in America. Arriving at Los Angeles the following year, he found work with many of the early film powerhouses - Kalem, Selig, Balboa, Thomas Ince, and Universal Pictures, where he claimed to have given his countrywoman Louise Carbasse - shortly to be renamed Louise Lovely - her start in Hollywood. Like many of his claims, there was likely a grain of truth mixed in with the ballyhoo. The pair would star together with Lon Chaney in Universal's Stronger Than Death (1915), Louise's American debut.

Lovely and Shirley became the best known of the vanguard of Australians who carved out a niche in early Hollywood, which also included Enid Bennett (whose American husband Fred Niblo had begun his film career in Australia), Marc MacDermott, Sylvia Breamer, Sydney Deane, Jack Gavin and Snowy Baker - soon to be another of Valentino's associates, and one who shared the star's love of polo and horseback riding. Universal Pictures employed an unusual number of these Australian emigrés, and the company would always have an especially close relationship with the Australian market, helping to finance several local productions.

Tall for his era at 5 foot 11, Shirley boasted something of the rugged appeal of Thomas Meighan or Francis X. Bushman. “In personal appearance, Mr Shirley might well have been made especially for the screens,” read one American profile. “Tall, well proportioned, with features that photograph especially well, he cannot but look right on the film.” In truth, Shirley was never a top-tier star, and it is difficult to judge his performances given the paucity of available material. Only two of his silent features survive, and neither are in general circulation. His highest profile films included The Fall of a Nation (1916), author Thomas Dixon’s attempt to duplicate the success of D.W. Griffith’s adaptation of his Birth of a Nation (1914), and Universal’s Modern Love (1918), in which Shirley’s eight month old son, Arthur Jr, also appeared.

Shirley was a bundle of contradictions - a devotee of lurid melodrama but a Christian so devout he had briefly studied for the priesthood, a dandy who always spoke with a flowery courtesy but a tireless self-promoter. Shirley not only was big, he thought big, drifting from project to project, ploughing thousands of dollars into big ideas with varying levels of success, drama and litigation always following in his wake. In Hollywood he was dubbed ‘The Big Australian’. It was a sobriquet he adopted with pride.

Rudolph Valentino and Arthur Shirley at Universal City

Universal City as it appeared when both Shirley and Valentino worked there. (Source: Water and Power Associates)

During his time at Universal, Shirley befriended a young Italian actor who, like himself, had big ideas but was scrambling for better roles. “Particularly I recollect sharing a dressing room with Rudolph Valentino at Universal City, before the days of his sudden rise to fame,” he told an interviewer in 1922. “I found him a gentleman of rare merit.”

It is likely that this meeting took place in mid 1918 during the making of Modern Love, whose production period overlapped with that of Valentino’s A Society Sensation (1918). Both men had been subordinated to their high-flying female co-stars - in Valentino’s case, Carmel Myers; in Shirley’s, Valentino’s close friend Mae Murray. Surely, it would take only one plum role to lift both of them out of the category of the also-ran?

As history tells us, Valentino’s big break was just around the corner. For Shirley, the future was less promising. He completed a major role in the William S. Hart production Branding Broadway (1918) just as the Spanish flu epidemic brought Hollywood to a skidding halt, closing theatres and studios and afflicting numerous actors, including Valentino himself. With no notion of when production might resume, Shirley signed on for a theatrical tour with Julian Eltinge, the same gender-bending star with whom Valentino had recently made the ill-fated Over The Rhine (1918).

Shirley was to appear in a segment entitled 'His Night at the Club', written by none other than June Mathis, the actress-turned-scenarist who had herself received her start with Julian Eltinge, and would shortly be selected to adapt Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for the screen. This opens the intriguing possibility that Shirley was acquainted with Mathis prior to her meeting Valentino - and maybe in a good position to slip her some photos of his friend. But how did these photos come to be?

Shirley-Blanc Studios

Source: Camera! - 15 November 1919.

While on the road with Eltinge, Shirley did some thinking and some planning. As early as February 1919, he openly contemplated returning to Australia to produce films for the American market. Meanwhile, his marriage to former opera singer Elena Newcombe-Hall was faring no better than his screen career. Upon completing the Julian Eltinge tour, he returned to Hollywood to embark on yet another sideline. In partnership with photographer Harry Blanc, whom he had met while on tour, he opened a photography studio at 6040 Hollywood Boulevard. Shirley-Blanc promised ‘photography that is different’ - a luxurious studio with cream-coloured fittings, elegant furniture, tapestries and oil paintings. There were even plans for live music to accompany photography sessions, much as it was used on movie sets to stir the correct emotions in actors.

One Sunday afternoon, not long after their opening in late September 1919, Shirley-Blanc received one of their first clients: Rudolph Valentino. As Shirley recalled, Valentino’s finances were as shaky as ever, so he agreed to provide his services for free. Aside from their friendship, it is likely that Shirley recognised Valentino’s extraordinary potential as a photographic subject and felt his photos would represent a good promotion for the new studio. Though Valentino became Shirley-Blanc’s best known subject, the studio also photographed Beatrice La Plante, Claire Windsor, and many other stage and screen actors.

Harry Blanc, Arthur Shirley's partner in Shirley-Blanc Studios (Source: Findagrave)

Harry Blanc was born Henry Herman Sinner in Sheboygan, Wisconsin to parents of German extraction. His 1918 draft registration and other evidence suggest that Shirley-Blanc provided one of his first professional jobs of a long career in photography. Blanc's style was elegant and otherworldly, and it seems likely that he and not Shirley did the bulk of the photography work. "It is in rendering the human form divine that Blanc excels," stated one photography magazine, and this is certainly true of Shirley-Blanc's photos of Valentino.

Whoever was responsible, the Shirley-Blanc portraits showed a side of Rudy that was hitherto largely unexploited. Shirley-Blanc were perhaps the first to capture not only Valentino’s charisma, but what might be termed his mesmerism - the strange, hypnotic quality that marked him out as something different to his peers.

Portraying him both as a robust modern youth and an exotic, turban-clad snake charmer may have opened minds to the idea that Valentino's range extended beyond that of villains and boyfriends. Valentino himself had attempted to prove as much earlier that year, commissioning a series of Chinese-themed portraits in an unsuccessful bid to interest director D.W. Griffith in casting him in Broken Blossoms (1919).

The Shirley-Blanc Portraits: A Sampling

Source: Shadowlands, April 1922

There is evidence that Valentino was especially proud of these portraits. "Even when I was not called in [to the film studio], I arrived early in the morning," he recalled of his early career. "I adopted a conspicuous outfit: riding pants, boots, open collared shirt and riding crop." This was exactly the costume he chose for one of his Shirley-Blanc sessions. After his impulsive marriage to actress Jean Acker in November 1919, it was his Shirley-Blanc photographs on which he inscribed tender messages to his new wife. At least one subsequent photo shoot showed his Snake Charmer portrait hanging on Valentino's own wall.

When Motion Picture Classic published the article ‘Enter Julio!’ - his first major profile following his casting in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - it was not only illustrated solely by his Shirley-Blanc portraits, but functioned as an advertisement for both the studio and the model. “His appearance, too, is untraditional … he can go one day to Shirley Blanc’s to be photographed as a rigid, immobile, determined, stern mask. And the following afternoon he can drop in to have the camera catch him as illusive, lambent, unsubstantially poetique." So well did they capture the image Valentino hoped to project that they continued to appear in movie magazines years after they were taken.

A poetic tableau by Harry Blanc, featured in International Photographer a decade after his partnership with Arthur Shirley. (Source: International Photographer, June 1930).

But did the photographs really play a key role in bringing Valentino to the attention of June Mathis and Rex Ingram - scenarist and director respectively of Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Most sources assert that Mathis first spotted Valentino in The Eyes of Youth (1919). Biographer Emily Leider adds that Mathis had previously seen him "in Hollywood on the lot and on the dance floor of a night spot.” It would be natural for Mathis to have sought his most recent portrait stills, and natural if these largely comprised his Shirley-Blanc portraits - a wonderful demonstration of his range and his ethereal quality, and easily obtained from Arthur Shirley, whom Mathis possibly knew. As Leider noted, "June Mathis saw a soulfulness in Valentino that resided in his eyes." By July 1920, Mathis had made up her mind. She travelled to New York, where Valentino was working on the fatefully named A Wonderful Chance (1920). His participation in Four Horsemen was announced the following month.

We might wonder why Shirley-Blanc were not asked to photograph Valentino in his breakthrough role. The answer is simple: Arthur Shirley had at last elected to return home, arriving at Sydney aboard the Sonoma from San Francisco on 10 April 1920. His wife Elena and son Arthur Jr had preceded him in February, returning to Elena’s native New Zealand. Aside from a brief reconciliation in 1924, mother and son appear to have had little to do with Shirley for the rest of their lives.

Less than a year after its founding, the Shirley-Blanc studio was no more. After mid 1920, photos previously credited to Shirley-Blanc were often printed or published under the imprimatur of ‘Arthur Shirley Studios,’ itself now being operated by a mysterious pair named Hopkins and Payne, before closing altogether in 1921. Harry Blanc later spent many years as head of the Stills Department at minor film studio Larry Darmour, also indulging a love of landscape photography that saw his work frequently featured in industry magazine International Photographer. He died of tuberculosis in 1937, aged 52.

The Big Australian Comes Home

Arthur Shirley (in pith helmet) and the cast of 'The Throwback' outside the Newport Hotel in 1920. Standing directly to the right of Shirley is Dorothy Mort, who would shortly be implicated in a sordid murder trial. (Source: Mona Vale Library Images)

After a trip to Hobart to visit his parents, Shirley announced the formation of Arthur Shirley Productions in July 1920. The company purchased ‘Ellerslie’, a waterfront property at Sydney's Rose Bay, as its studio and headquarters, and acquired the screen rights to several historical novels by the popular Danish-Australian novelist Marie Bjelke-Petersen. American actress Yvonne Pavis would be brought over on a six month contract as leading lady. After that, Shirley hoped to employ a local. "We will have a beauty competition for the most beautiful woman in Australia,” he said. “And if she shows talent for moving pictures she will play leading parts.”

The company's prospectus boasted endorsements from the likes of director D.W. Griffith. Elsewhere, First National head J.D. Williams committed to distributing the finished product. Williams, who had begun his career in Australia, undoubtedly knew Shirley prior to his screen fame and within a few years would try - and fail - to get Valentino back onto the screen after his exile from Paramount, via the never-completed The Hooded Falcon.

Source: Everyones - 15 November 1924

Several newspapers, and certain sectors of the Australian film production industry, expressed scepticism about Shirley's venture, which included the raising of £100,000 in capital - half of which was to go directly to Shirley himself as general manager. Within months, Shirley had nevertheless procured a number of performers and technicians from America and embarked on an ambitious film to be called The Throwback (later known as The Comeback), a South Seas adventure.

Almost from the beginning, the production was a debacle. Though she did travel to Australia, Yvonne Pavis soon departed to form her own film company with another American import, the hot-headed production manager Lawson Harris, who would ultimately not only sue Shirley but challenge him to a duel. Cinematographer William Jansen also ended up in court with Shirley, as did a caterer, his Australian leading lady Vera Remée, and Ernest Higgins, the well regarded Australian cinematographer who attempted to salvage the project.

There was even a sensational murder case attached to the film, with Shirley testifying at the trial of cast member Dorothy Mort, who stood accused of shooting Dr Claude Tozer, a well known cricketer and physician with whom she had developed an unhealthy obsession. She was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity. After several attempts to revive his production, The Throwback/The Comeback foundered by 1923, leading to Shirley’s second bankruptcy.

Rather unexpectedly, Shirley bounced back with another Australian production company, Pyramid Pictures, and the film The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1925), a critical and financial hit. A second feature, The Sealed Room (1926), was less profitable, and Shirley spent the following years attempting and failing to raise capital for similar ventures in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), England and Australia.

Later Years

Source: Illustrated Daily News, 26 July 1933

In 1930, Shirley landed back in Hollywood, intending to produce a series of feelgood shorts about the early days of the movie colony. For many people, the silent era already seemed a vanished age, and Shirley soon found that the aspect that interested them most was his association with the legendary - and now late - Rudolph Valentino. In 1932, he gave a talk to the Hexeris Club of Hollywood, recounting for perhaps the first time the part his photographs had played - or so he claimed - in Valentino’s casting in Four Horsemen. Free copies of his Valentino portraits were distributed to participants as a memento.

He remained sufficiently protective of his Valentino photographs - and, given his increasingly dire financial situation, sufficiently conscious of their moneymaking potential - to sue the publishers of film magazine Movie Classic for $100,000 in 1933, over the unauthorised and uncredited publication of one of his Shirley-Blanc portraits, a previously unseen photo from the Snake Charmer session. He had granted permission for its use, he said - on the proviso that the context of its historical significance and the story of his friendship with Valentino were included, which the magazine had failed to do. Judge Charles L. Bogue was unmoved, awarding Shirley a mere $50 - the estimated value of the physical photographs.

Arthur Shirley as he appeared during his 1943 tilt at Parliament (Source: The Sun, 28 July 1943).

When Shirley returned to his homeland for good in 1934 - he had overstayed his American visa several times and was eventually deported amidst much publicity - he found himself in court yet again. This time, with shades of Valentino’s own woes, it involved a case of accidental bigamy. The intimations of the recent past now became solid and sensational declarations. “Why, it was I who discovered Rudolph Valentino and obtained his part for him in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" he told a judge. "He recognised it before he died!” As the judge noted, it was a somewhat incongruous declaration. It also served to portray Shirley as the eccentric relic of a past age.

After finally abandoning his filmmaking ambitions, Shirley’s adventures included running for the Parliamentary seat of East Sydney and the adoption of a son, Paul, who was jailed for conscientious objection during World War II - with the full support of his father, whose portrait from The Fall of A Nation (1916) had once famously been used in a World War I recruitment poster. As late as 1957, Shirley continued to discuss his part in Rudolph Valentino's rise to fame. Much like Valentino’s second wife Natacha Rambova, he spent his later years indulging the same interest in ancient Egypt for which he had named Pyramid Pictures. He died at Rose Bay in 1967.