Trio Takes Home Valentino Awards

To understand how the Rudolph Valentino Awards gala came to the Century Plaza Hotel Sunday night, you have to begin in Italy--southern Italy, the Puglia region, down near the heel of the boot, where Carlo Apollonio was driving his machina. “By chance, I went to the small town where Valentino was born,” he said through a translator. “They have a very ugly statue of him. Very ugly. So I asked, ‘Why does this son of Puglia deserve such treatment?’ ”

Good question. No one in Puglia had a good answer. So Apollonio went to Rome, where he commissioned a 760-gram, solid-gold statuette depicting the silent-film star as the title character in “The Sheik.” He then hosted a lavish ceremony in Italy and presented the first Rudolph Valentino Award in 1972 to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. “After that it gets easy,” said Apollonio, whose family has made wine in Puglia for 300 years. “After you get Taylor and Burton, everybody else wants it.”

In 1982, Apollonio decided there was “a link between Los Angeles, Valentino and Puglia.” He has since held the ceremonies in the town where the actor became a star. The black-tie event is taped for broadcast on Italian television and is presented in conjunction with the Thalians Presidents Club, a support group of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

In the past, Apollonio, in conjunction with the Italian government, has given the award to Princess Grace of Monaco, Bette Davis, Gloria Swanson and Sophia Loren. This year, the honors went to Jane Wyman, Robert Mitchum and, in a special music category, Julio Iglesias.

“The Italians are the greatest hosts in the world,” Wyman said. Of Valentino in “The Sheik,” she said, “(The audience) just loved him. He had mystique. I thought I was the girl he took off to the dunes.”

Mitchum said of Valentino, “He had great costumes, plus horses and camels. . . . “

Among the 600 on hand for Sunday’s award presentazione , performed by Virginia Madsen, Cesar Romero and Polly Bergen, were Italian Consul General Alberto Boniver, Abe Vigoda, Andy Granatelli, Jack Carter, Vince Edwards and Tina Louise. Chairwoman Ruta Lee co-emceed with Thalians president Debbie Reynolds. Connie Stevens and her daughter Joely entertained.