Today is the 124th birthday of silent movie idol Ramon Novarro. I first discovered him back in the early 90s through an article in Architectural Digest about his Lloyd Wright house on Los Feliz. Gorgeous house, I could go on and on about it (and have). Since that first article, I have read several biographies and done my best to watch the films of his that are available. His story is fascinating. The world is a better place because he was in it and still feels the loss that he has left.
NAME: José Ramón Gil Samaniego
OCCUPATION: Silent Film Star
BIRTH DATE: February 6, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH: Durango, Mexico
DATE OF DEATH: October 30, 1968
PLACE OF DEATH: North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
REMAINS: Buried, Calvary Cemetery, Los Angeles, CA
GOLDEN GLOBE 1960 Special Award
HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME 6350 Hollywood Blvd.
HEIGHT: 5′ 6″
BEST KNOWN FOR: Jose Ramón Gil Samaniego, best known as Ramón Novarro, was a Mexican-American film, stage and television actor who began his career in silent films in 1917 and eventually became a leading man and one of the top box office attractions of the 1920s and early 1930s.
Navarro was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego on February 6, 1899 in Durango, Mexico to Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego. He moved with his family to Los Angeles, California, to escape the Mexican Revolution in 1913.
Allan Ellenberger, Novarro’s biographer, writes:
…the Samaniegos were an influential and well-respected family in Mexico. Many Samaniegos had prominent positions the affairs of state and were held in high esteem by the president. Ramon’s grandfather, Mariano Samaniego, was a well-known physician in Juarez. Known as a charitable and outgoing man, he was once an interim governor for the State of Chihuahua and was the first city councilman of El Paso, Texas…
Ramon’s father, Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego, was born in Juarez and attended high school in Las Cruces, New Mexico. After receiving his degree in dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania, he moved to Durango, Mexico, and began a flourishing dental practice. In 1891 he married Leonor Gavilan, the beautiful daughter of a prosperous landowner. The Gavilans were a mixture of Spanish and Aztec blood, and according to local legend, they were descended from Guerrero, a prince of Montezuma.
The family estate was called the “Garden of Eden”. Thirteen children were born there: Emilio; Guadalupe; Rosa; Ramon; Leonor; Mariano; Luz; Antonio; a stillborn child; Carmen; Angel and Eduardo.
At the time of the revolution in Mexico the family moved from Durango to Mexico City and then back to Durango. Ramon’s three sisters, Guadalupe, Rosa, and Leonor became nuns.
A second cousin of the Mexican actresses Dolores del Río and Andrea Palma, he entered films in 1917 in bit parts; and he supplemented his income by working as a singing waiter. His friends, the actor and director Rex Ingram and his wife, the actress Alice Terry, began to promote him as a rival to Rudolph Valentino, and Ingram suggested he change his name to “Novarro.” From 1923, he began to play more prominent roles. His role in Scaramouche (1923) brought him his first major success.
In 1925, he achieved his greatest success in Ben-Hur, his revealing costumes causing a sensation, and was elevated into the Hollywood elite. As with many stars, Novarro engaged Sylvia of Hollywood as a therapist (although in her tell-all book, Sylvia erroneously claimed Novarro slept in a coffin). With Valentino’s death in 1926, Novarro became the screen’s leading Latin actor, though ranked behind his MGM stablemate, John Gilbert, as a model lover. He was popular as a swashbuckler in action roles and was considered one of the great romantic lead actors of his day. Novarro appeared with Norma Shearer in The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) and with Joan Crawford in Across to Singapore (1928). He made his first talking film, starring as a singing French soldier, in Devil-May-Care (1929). He also starred with the French actress Renée Adorée in The Pagan (1929). Novarro starred with Greta Garbo in Mata Hari (1932) and was a qualified success opposite Myrna Loy in The Barbarian (1933).
When Novarro’s contract with MGM Studios expired in 1935, the studio did not renew it. He continued to act sporadically, appearing in films for Republic Pictures, a Mexican religious drama, and a French comedy. In the 1940s, he had several small roles in American films, including John Huston’s We Were Strangers (1949) starring Jennifer Jones and John Garfield. In 1958, he was considered for a role in a television series, The Green Peacock with Howard Duff and Ida Lupino after the demise of their CBS sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve. The project, however, never materialized. A Broadway tryout was aborted in the 1960s; but Novarro kept busy on television, appearing in NBC’s The High Chaparral as late as 1968.
At the peak of his success in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he was earning more than US$100,000 per film. He invested some of his income in real estate, and his Hollywood Hills residence is one of the more renowned designs (1927) by architect Lloyd Wright. After his career ended, he was still able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.
Novarro had been troubled all his life as a result of his conflicting views over his Roman Catholic religion and his homosexuality, and his life-long struggle with alcoholism is often traced to these issues. MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer reportedly tried to coerce Novarro into a “lavender marriage”, which he refused. He was a friend of adventurer and author Richard Halliburton, also a celebrity in the closet, and was romantically involved with journalist Herbert Howe, who was also his publicist during the late 1920s.
Novarro was murdered on October 30, 1968, by two brothers, Paul and Tom Ferguson (aged 22 and 17, respectively), whom he had hired from an agency to come to his Laurel Canyon home for sex. According to the prosecution in the murder case, the two young men believed that a large sum of money was hidden in Novarro’s house. The prosecution accused them of torturing Novarro for several hours to force him to reveal where the nonexistent money was hidden. They left with a mere 20 dollars that they took from his bathrobe pocket before fleeing the scene. Novarro allegedly died as a result of asphyxiation, choking to death on his own blood after being brutally beaten. The two brothers were later caught and sentenced to long prison terms, but were quickly released on probation. Both were later rearrested for unrelated crimes, for which they served longer terms than for their murder conviction.
Ramón Novarro is buried in Calvary Cemetery, in Los Angeles. Ramón Novarro’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 6350 Hollywood Boulevard
Novarro’s murder served as the influence for the short story by Charles Bukowski, The Murder of Ramon Vasquez, and the song by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, “Tango,” recorded by Peggy Lee on her Mirrors album.
In late 2005, the Wings Theatre in New York City staged the world premiere of Through a Naked Lens by George Barthel. The play combined fact and fiction to depict Novarro’s rise to fame and a relationship with Hollywood journalist Herbert Howe.
Novarro’s relationship with Herbert Howe is discussed in two biographies: Allan R. Ellenberger’s Ramón Novarro and André Soares’s Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramón Novarro. A recounting of Novarro’s murder can be found in Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon.
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
Heller in Pink Tights (29-Feb-1960)
Crisis (7-Jul-1950) · Col. Adragon
The Outriders (1-Mar-1950) · Don Antonio Chaves
The Big Steal (9-Jul-1949) · Inspector General Ortega
We Were Strangers (27-Apr-1949) · Chief
Laughing Boy (13-Apr-1934) · Laughing Boy
The Cat and the Fiddle (16-Feb-1934) · Victor Florescu
The Barbarian (12-May-1933) · Jamil
The Son-Daughter (23-Dec-1932)
Huddle (14-May-1932) · Tony
Mata Hari (26-Dec-1931) · Lt. Alexis Rosanoff
Son of India (1-Aug-1931) · Karim
Daybreak (2-May-1931) · Willi
Call of the Flesh (16-Aug-1930)
In Gay Madrid (17-May-1930) · Ricardo
The Pagan (27-Apr-1929) · Henry Shoesmith, Jr.
The Flying Fleet (19-Jan-1929) · Tommy Winslow
Across to Singapore (7-Apr-1928) · Joel Shore
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (21-Sep-1927) · Prince Karl Heinrich
Ben-Hur (30-Dec-1925)
The Red Lily (8-Sep-1924)
The Arab (13-Jul-1924)
Scaramouche (15-Sep-1923)
The Prisoner of Zenda (11-Sep-1922) · Rupert of Hentzau
Waldina 