1. 1. According to Giuliana Muscio, Valentino’s feminization favored “the transition from Victorian values to the Jazz Age,” and the actor’s characteristic association of “sentimental ethics” with “erotic seduction” distinguished him from “standard American heroes” but also “attenuated the erotic and eugenic danger” WASP culture “perceived” in “a seductiveness ... associated with a despised racial/national character” (Muscio 2018, 70–99).
2. 2. Muscio (2018, 95) has commented on the “complex nuances” of Valentino’s acting and the “unjust lack of recognition” of his value as a silent actor.
3. Anderson, Mark Lynn. 2011. Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920s America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
4. Bacigalupo, Massimo, and Pierangelo Castagneto, eds. 2003. America and the Mediterranean. Turin: Otto.
5. Bertellini, Giorgio. 2005. “Duce/Divo: Masculinity, Racial Identity, and Politics among Italian Americans in 1920s New York City.” Journal of Urban History 31(5): 685–726.