Natacha Rambova met Rudolph Valentino on the set of
Camille in
1921 and they married on
March 14,
1922, in
Mexicali, Mexico. Their marriage resulted in Valentino's being arrested and charged with bigamy because his divorce from his first wife, actress
Jean Acker, was not final. Rambova and Valentino remarried in
1923.
Salomé was also a failure at the box office, and as result, Natacha was heavily in debt
[1]When, following a dispute with
Paramount Pictures, Valentino was legally barred from working for any other studio, he and Rambova embarked on a dance tour across the United States and
Canada. The dance tour was a success, and the film studio came back to hire Valentino for films. Later, Rambova's involvement with such of her husband's films as
Monsieur Beaucaire came to be resented by many at Paramount who accused her of driving up production costs and felt she was pushing Valentino into static, arty films with little box office potential. Actress
Myrna Loy, whom Rambova had discovered and later gave her a role in a film that she wrote What Price Beauty?, claimed that Rambova was unfairly criticized.
Their marriage broke up in
1925 shortly after
United Artists offered Valentino a contract with a clause forbidding Rambova from being present on any of his film sets. She also starred in her only feature film
When Love Grows Cold (1925), but she angrily gave up on films when distributors billed her as Mrs. Rudolph Valentino on film posters. Valentino and Rambova went through a painful divorce. When Rambova announced that she would write a book detailing her breakup with Valentino, he retaliated by bequeathing her only $1 in his will, and left one-third of his estate that was originally meant for Rambova to her aunt Teresa Werner, whom they both adored. But when Valentino was on his death bed in New York, he asked for Rambova, wanting her by his side, but she was in Europe. Nevertheless, they exchanged loving telegrams, and she believed that a reconciliation had taken place. Valentino died in 1926 at age 31 following surgery for a perforated ulcer. Rambova was devastated and stayed in her room for 3 days without eating and speaking to anyone. She didn't attend his funeral because she didn't want her last memory of him to be his dead body.
