Rudolph Valentino

 

Rudolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piere Filibert Gugliemi di Valentina d'Antonguella was born on May 6, 1895 in Castellaneta, Apuila, Kingdom of Italy to an Italian father and French mother. He attended military school, but was rejected from the service. In 1912, Valentino went to Paris, but he failed to find work there. He ended up begging on the streets until he made his way to New York City the following year.

 

In New York, Valentino worked several menial jobs before becoming a nightclub dancer. He later joined a national touring production, but it folded in Utah. The young performer then made his way to San Francisco where he resumed his dancing career. In 1917, Valentino set his sights on Hollywood. At first, Valentino only landed bit parts, often playing the bad guy. In 1919, Valentino married actress Jean Acker, but their union was never consummated. According to several accounts, Acker locked Valentino out of their hotel room on their wedding night. According to experts, prior to the marriage, Acker had been in a romantic relationship with a woman.

 

Valentino captured the attention of screenwriter June Mathis, who believed that he was the perfect choice for the lead in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). She had to work hard to convince the executives at Metro to sign Valentino, but they finally agreed. He stole the hearts of female movie-goers by dancing a tango in his first scene in the film. The movie was a box office hit, and the darkly handsome actor quickly became a star.

 

The mania around Valentino grew so rapidly that some women reportedly fainted when they saw him in his next picture The Sheik (1921). This desert romance told the story of a Bedouin chief who wins over a cultured, Anglo woman (Agnes Ayres). The following year, Valentino had another stellar success with Blood and Sand. This time around, he played bullfighter Juan Gallardo who falls under the spell of a charming seductress Dona Sol (Nita Naldi).

 

Valentino's reputation as a lothario was probably enhanced with his arrest for bigamy in 1922. Divorced from Acker in 1921, he failed to wait a full year before remarrying. He was taken into custody and forced to pay a fine after his 1922 wedding to actress and set designer Natasha (or Natacha, according to some sources) Rambova in Mexico. The pair remarried the following year. Valentino published a collection of poetry entitled Day Dreams around this time, a work which reflected the couple's interest in Spiritualism.

 

Rambova took a dominant role in managing her husband's career, much to Valentino's detriment. Some male critics and movie-goers were already put off by his somewhat androgynous style, and Valentino's next few films accentuated this quality. His wife picked parts for him that made him seem more effeminate, as seen in 1924's Monsieur Beaucaire. While still a box office success, Valentino suffered a backlash for this change in his screen persona. Soon separated from his wife, Valentino returned to the kind of fare that made him famous. The Eagle (1925) featured him as a Russian soldier seeking to avenge the wrongs committed against his family by the Czarina. The following year, Valentino made a sequel of sorts to his earlier hit, The Son of the Sheik. This silent classic proved to be his last work.

 

While he was still a popular draw at the box office, Valentino struggled the public and media perceptions of him. He challenged one newspaper writer to a fight after he was criticized in an editorial called "Pink Powder Puffs." In response to the piece, Valentino wrote: "You slur my Italian ancestry; you ridicule upon my Italian name; you cast doubt upon my manhood." Valentino also suffered from commonly held prejudices about immigrants, having been denied roles for being "too foreign."

 

On a promotional tour for The Son of the Sheik, Valentino became ill. He was taken to a New York hospital, where he had surgery on August 15, 1926, to treat acute appendicitis and ulcers. In the days after the surgery, Valentino developed an infection known as peritonitis. The 31-year-old actor's health quickly began to decline, and his devoted fans swamped the hospital's phone lines with calls for the ailing star. Valentino died nearly a week after entering the hospital, on August 23, 1926. His last words were, "Don't worry, chief, I will be all right."

 

For three days, thousands crowded a funeral home to view his body and say good-bye to the romantic idol. Then two funerals were held -- one in New York and one in California.

 

 

Levi Strauss

 

Loeb Strauss was born in Buttenheim, Bavaria (present-day Germany) on February 26, 1829 to Jewish parents Hirsch and Rebecca Strauss. He had three older brothers and three older sisters. In 1846, his father died of tuberculosis and two years later, he, his mother, and his sisters emigrated to New York. There, they were met with Loeb's brothers, who started a dry good business called J. Strauss Brother and Co. Young Loeb soon started to learn and trade himself, and by 1850, he was known among his family and customers as Levi.

 

When the news of the California Gold Rush made its way east, Levi immigrated to San Francisco to make his fortune, though he knew he wouldn't make it panning for gold. In late January 1853, he became an American citizen, and in February he headed for West Coast via the Isthmus of Panama. He arrived in loud, noisy San Francisco in March, establishing a dry goods business under his own name and also serving as the West Coast representative of the family's New York firm. His new company imported dry goods and sold them to small stores that we're springing up all over California and the West. It was these stores that helped outfit the miners of the Gold Rush, and eventually, the new families that begin to populate the western regions.

 

The first address where Levi conducted business was at 90 Sacramento Street, and the name of his firm was simply Levi Strauss. In 1861, the business relocated to 315 and 317 Sacramento Street and two years it was renamed Levi Strauss & Co. In his thirties, Levi was already a well-known figure around the city. He was active in the business and cultural life of San Francisco, and actively supported the Jewish community, including Temple Emanu-El, the city's first synagogue. Despite his stature as an important businessman, he insisted that his employees address him a Levi, not Mr. Strauss.

 

In 1872, Levi received a letter from Jacob Davis, a tailor from Reno, Nevada. Davis was one of Levi's regular customers; he purchased bolts of cloth from the company to use for his own business. In his letter, he told Strauss about the interesting way he made pants for his customers: he placed metal rivets at the points of the strain- pocket corners, and at the base of the button fly. He did this in order to make his pants stronger for laboring men who were his customers. He wanted to patent this new idea but needed a business partner to get the idea off the ground. So he suggested that the two men take out the patent together. Levi was eager about the idea and the patent was granted to both men on May 20, 1873. It was that moment when the denim blue jean was born. Levi would soon become one of the largest conglomerates in California during the late 19th Century.

 

Levi Strauss died on September 26, 1902 at the age of 73.

 

http://www.levistrauss.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Levi-Strauss-Full-Biography.pdf

 

 

 

Levi Strauss

 

Donald Trump Ties Hardline Immigration Demands to a Deal on DACA

 

 

President Donald Trump prides himself on his skills as a negotiator. Among the tips he offers in “The Art of the Deal” is to “think big.” “To me it’s very simple,” he explains. “If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.” Of course, maximalism has always seemed more credo than negotiating strategy for Mr. Trump. But it provides a lens through which to view the set of immigration “principles” that the president sent to Congress on the evening of October 8th.

 

In September, Mr. Trump announced a six-month wind-down for an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which gives two-year work and residency permits to young undocumented immigrants, without criminal records, who were brought to America before they were 16, provided they are in or have graduated from high school or university or were honorably discharged from the army. That surprised nobody; Mr. Trump campaigned hard against illegal immigration, and his administration abounds in immigration hardliners—notably Jeff Sessions, his attorney-general, and Stephen Miller, a one-time aide to Mr. Sessions turned policy advisor.

 

But soon after ending DACA, Mr. Trump indicated that he would be open to a deal that protected the program's nearly 800,000 recipients. Most Americans, including most Republicans, believe that recipients should be allowed to stay; they were, after all, brought to America and raised there through no fault of their own. But enough Congressional Republicans disagree that any deal would depend on Democratic support. After a meeting with “Chuck and Nancy”—Schumer and Pelosi, the Senate and House Democratic leaders—the three were all smiles. There were reports that a deal had been struck. Those reports proved wrong, however. And after Sunday’s release of positions “that must be included in as part of any legislation addressing the status of DACA recipients”, the smiles have faded.

 

Some of Mr. Trump’s "principles" are unobjectionable, such as cracking down on visa overstays and requiring that employers electronically verify the immigration status of prospective hires. But the administration also says that any deal must include funding for a border wall—an immediate non-starter for Democrats (and probably repellent to budget-hawk Republicans too: the wall is a ludicrously expensive showpiece). The administration also wants funding to hire another 10,000 immigration agents and 300 prosecutors “to support Federal immigration prosecution efforts.”

 

Two White House officials told Politico that these positions were just an opening bid—Mr Trump “thinking big”, in other words. But the immigration debate has grown so acrimonious that both sides reject positions that they ought to support, or at the very least be able to live with. DACA recipients are precisely the sort of accomplished, diligent, educated immigrants that Republicans claim to want. Similarly, Democrats should have no objection to a more secure border (and indeed, privately many accept that a deal will have to include extra funding for border security; just not the wall).

The two sides now have five months left to strike a deal for DACA recipients. Republicans inclined to accept a deal will worry about primary challenges from the right (DACA ends just as campaign season heats up); those inclined to oppose will worry about footage showing Americans in all but name being rounded up and forcibly deported. Democrats face pressure to keep DACA recipients in the country they have grown up in, but also to avoid too much capitulation to Mr Trump—who is, after all, an unpopular president without a single legislative victory since taking office.