A Society Sensation

An early pre-fame Valentino flick in which he plays a rather insipid 'hero' who repeatedly has to be rescued by Carmel Myers from death or beating. Any longer than 24 minutes and it would have been a drag.

Carmel Myers is in the title role of A Society Sensation. She is called that because she gets introduced into San Francisco society by Lydia Yeamans Titus one of the grand dames of it. Actually Myers is the daughter of fisherman Alfred Allen. As you can see this story has some Pygmalion type elements in it.

Rudolph Valentino plays a society playboy, a nice fellow considering some of his later lady killing roles that made him famous. I think you can also see some elements of Julia Roberts's Pretty Woman with Valentino in the Richard Gere part.

We see a truncated version, the rest of the film might be lost. But there's enough of it for the personalities of both the stars to come through and show they had the right stuff to be movie idols.