5 (Male): Rudolph Valentino
Peak Years: 1914-1926
Best Film: The Sheik (1921) Women wanted to make sweet, passionate love with him. Men secretly hoped that he was gay so that they could also make sweet love with him. Rudolph Valentino was the original archetype for the exotic male sex symbol now played by the likes of Antonio Banderas and Olivier Martinez. One of his movie's has a title that sums up his appeal perfectly: A Sainted Devil. A little more dangerous than his contemporary Douglas Fairbanks, the man often known just as Valentino played the forbidden fruit who dangled tantalizingly close to the audience on the screen. The Sheik was a turning point for Valentino's career, previously known primarily as a bit player he signed on to play the love interest for a white woman (which would have been scandalous if not for a third act reveal saying that the titular Sheik Valentino played was actually just a white man in an Arab country). That's what Valentino personified, a have your cake and eat it too star, someone whose love would only
seem to be socially unacceptable. His premature death in 1926 from a stomach illness only served to make his star brighter as he became a tragic object of desire. Watching a Valentino film is like intentionally jumping headfirst into the quicksand of sexual repression: he'll make eyes directly at you in an almost judgmental way, as if he were telling you that what you're watching is filthy as you sink lower and lower into his clutches. It's quaint now, no nudity or overt violence even though both are heavily implied, and the obvious faux-moralism tied to each of his films feel particularly icky in slightly more enlightened times. But Valentino is just too damn charming and debonair for you to care.