Valentino and the Lady in Black

Rudolph Valentino, the biggest male star of the silent screen, died in New York on 23 August 1926 at the age of 31 from complications after surgery for appendicitis and ulcers. His death caused mass grief: an estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of Manhattan for the funeral, and a riot broke out outside the funeral home. He was interred in Hollywood, in a crypt that the screenwriter June Mathis had bought for herself. She died the next year and was placed beside him; they remain there at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

From the 1930s, newspapers noted a mysterious veiled woman who visited the crypt on the anniversary of his death. The Los Angeles Times described her in 1934 as a woman who came every year, and the oldest photograph of a Lady in Black that the Los Angeles historian Larry Harnisch found dates from 23 August 1937. Wikipedia reports that the first such figure appears to have been a publicity stunt by press agent Russell Birdwell in 1928. A woman named Ditra Flame later said she was the original, a fan to whom Valentino had been kind as a child, and she was photographed in 1953 as president of a Valentino memorial guild; some older photos are captioned as not showing her. She died in Ontario, California; Harnisch gives the year as 1978, but Wikipedia gives 23 February 1984.

Copycats followed. A Lady in Black and a companion arrived by limousine for the 50th anniversary in 1976, and today the tradition is kept up by the film historian and tour guide Karie Bible, who dresses in a 1920s gown each year. Bible says she is not a ghost hunter and prefers the documented history.

The ghost element is slight and mostly one story. Harnisch notes that a medium said Valentino’s spirit appeared to her at a castle in Conklin, New York, in 1926, and a student journalist who visited the crypt in 2008 reported seeing nothing, wondering whether the roses she found were urban lore or her imagination. What the story really records is how fame and grief can outlive a person: the Lady in Black is a performance, not a haunting, and the cemetery is a working burial ground where families visit.

A veiled woman in black leaving red roses at the crypt each 23 August, and a spiritualist’s 1926 claim that Valentino’s spirit appeared to her. No modern firsthand apparition report is documented.

Valentino’s crypt in the cemetery’s mausoleum, on the anniversary of his death.

The tradition inspired the song “Long Black Veil,” according to Wikipedia, and features in cemetery tours.