Gossipy Kate’s
Unscripted Endings

probes into
the tragic death
of a
Latin Lover

The silent film audiences of the 1920’s loved their men with slicked back dark hair and glowering eyes that spoke of desert sands and hot exotic nights….and a trio of Hollywood stars answered that call.

Rudolph Valentino

Antonio Moreno

Ramon Novarro

One was Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaelo Pierre Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla whose name was thankfully shortened to Rudolph Valentino. Hollywood labeled him the “World’s Greatest Lover”. Women adored him and his fame around the world often obscured the other two. The second was Antonio Garride Monteagudo who debuted in the 1912 film “Voice of the Millions” as Antonio Moreno. Author Elinor Glyn named him the “It” man. Then there was Ramon Novarro (born Ramon Gil Samaniego) who became the critically acclaimed hero of “Ben Hur” in 1927. By the end of the decade Valentino was dead at age 21 of peritonitis. Moreno’s film career as a leading man survived the next decade before being reduced to supporting roles when sound made foreign accents a liability. Novarro ran afoul of a hostile studio head and was fired.

All of them had a secret they kept hidden from the world. But only one lost his life because of it.

Ramon Novarro               1899  -  1968

Ramon was born in Durango, Mexico on February 6, 1899 one of 13 children. His father was an affluent dentist and the living was easy for the first 12 years of Ramon’s life. That would soon come to an end. Durango was the center of the coming revolution and the closely knit family had to move to Mexico City. When that wasn’t far enough, they moved again in 1917 across the border to Los Angeles, California. But when his father became gravely ill, Ramon had to step up and take over as head of the household. His dream of being an entertainer or, if he was lucky, appearing in opera, was put on hold. In the meantime he took whatever job came along…grocery store clerk, theater usher, hotel busboy or even piano teacher. After a while he crept up a bit on that dream when he found work as a café singer and a few extra parts in films like “Joan the Woman” where he played a starving peasant. In  Mack Sennett’s “A Small Town Idol” (1921) he did a dance clad only in a loin cloth and turban.

as "Ben Hur" 1927

It was director Rex Ingram that gave Ramon his big break first with a bit part in the epic “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and then as a suave villain in “The Prisoner of Zenda”. Ingram and his wife Alice Terry mentored Ramon as a possible rival for Rudolph Valentino but he always remained in second place.

In 1926 when MGM decided to scrap all the completed footage of “Ben-Hur) and begin all over again it was Ramon who got the coveted title role. He became a new Hollywood sensation with a lucrative contract and millions of adoring fans. Because of his fine singing voice he was also able to move from silents to talkies with ease. Already wise to the rise and fall of finances, Ramon wisely invested his money in real estate and bought a 17-room mansion for his parents and an assortment of brothers and sisters.

But his secret life was about to bring down the curtain on his career.
                   

Lew Cody

Studio head Louis B. Mayer got the news from actor Lew Cody, husband of silent star Mabel Normand. It seems Cody, in a fit of drunken pique, told Mayer that Novarro and actor William “Billy” Haines were lovers. Mayer was furious but he couldn’t fire either of them at the time because they were much too valuable to the studio. Producer Irving Thalberg suggested arranged marriages. He suggested that Billy marry Joan Crawford who was between husbands (they were friends)  but Billy flatly refused. He would later become one of Tinseltown’s most popular interior decorator with top actresses begging for his talents. Then Myrna Loy read in the LA Times that she and Ramon were an “item” a rumor carefully planted by Howard Strickling at Mayer’s request. . Ramon took off on a 9-month tour of South America instead. Mayer fired him not long after he finished “The Cat and the Fiddle” with Jeanette MacDonald.

Ramon never actually left the screen completely but his roles kept getting smaller and smaller. It was well known that whoever Mayer disliked other studio heads were loathe to hire. His only star billing was in a low budget film “Desperate Adventure” for Republic in 1938. Then he disappeared for a few years before turning up again in 1949 in “We Were Strangers” with John Garfield and Jennifer Jones. Ramon continued to work sporadically until 1960 when his last role was De Leon in the 1960 film “Heller in Pink Tights”. He won a special Golden Globe Award that year for his work in silent films. It was the same year Charlton Heston won both the Oscar and the Golden Globe for “Ben Hur”.

Ramon continued to live alone quietly in Hollywood Hills attended to only by his longtime friend and secretary Edward Weber. But as a devout Catholic, the guilt over what the Church considered a grievous sin kept him from making any long term relationships and drove him to the bottle and the services of hustlers. It would also cost him his life.

On the morning of October 31, 1968, Edward Weber arrived at the house to find a macabre scene and called the police assuring them this was no Halloween prank. When they arrived they found the living room trashed and the bedroom a bloody mess. Novarro was on the bed nude, bloody and very dead. His ankles and wrists were tied with electric cord and the bruises on the body attested to the fact Novarro had been severely beaten before he died. Later it was determined by the coroner he had strangled on his own blood. There was a zigzag mark on his neck (possibly a N or a Z)and scrawled on the sheet was the name “Larry”. Bloody clothes were found in a neighbor’s yard (the killers had raided Novarro’s wardrobe for fresh clothes and changed before they left)

It didn’t take the police long to find the killers. Paul Ferguson, 22 and his 17 year old brother Tom were two hustlers that Novarro invited home that night. But what they were actually looking for was the money another hustler, Larry told them Ramon had hidden there. While Paul was beating Novarro savagely for over 40 minutes, Tom was talking on the house phone to his girlfriend in Chicago telling her what they were doing. She later told police she heard the screams in the background. The police found the number when they checked the phone logs the next morning. Both young killers were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment yet in almost no time at all they were both released on probation. Today Paul is serving the last 7 years on a rape conviction. Tom seems to have disappeared.      

Ramon Novarro was buried in New Calvary Catholic Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California.

Novarro's grave