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Valentino
drinks O'Neill under the table in the
'American' bar: Inverness Court Hotel,
Bayswater, London
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VALENTINO
filming locations
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CREDITS
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Ken
Russellís energetic but overlong biopic of the silent
star (played by dancer Rudolph
Nureyev) has its moments, and the mix of luscious
deco sets and imaginatively chosen locations makes it
look a million dollars.
Set, of course, in the US, the movie was shot in the
UK and Spain.
The filming of The Sheik
and The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse takes place at The
Dunes, a stretch of desert twenty miles inland
from Almeria on
the south coast of Spain.
Many of the Spaghetti Westerns were made at Almeria,
and itís on one of these Western street sets that Valentino
has a showdown with studio head Jesse Lasky, while a
parallel showdown is played out in the background.
The set for Laskyís office was built inside the gorilla
house of Barcelona Zoo, Parc
de la Ciutadella (& 93.225.67.80; www.zoobarcelona.com),
in order to incorporate Copito de Nieve, Snowflake,
the zooís unique albino gorilla (who sadly died in 2003).
The beach, where Natasha Rambova (Michelle
Phillips) and the unemployed Valentino agree to
an advertising deal, is at SíAgaro,
on the Costa Brava.
The deal involves plugging ëMineralavaí beauty products
at a tango demonstration, filmed in the gilt splendour
of Frank Matchamís Blackpool
Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, the working class
seaside resort on the Lancashire
coast, seen in its blowsy heyday in A
Taste of Honey and more recently in Bhaji
on the Beach.
The tower itself opened in 1894, five years after the
Eiffel Tower in Paris (though, at 518-feet, little more
than half the height), and previously featured in the
1947 Dick Barton Strikes Back.
Itís in the Blackpool Tower
Circus (also designed by Matcham) that Valentino
fights a boxing match with Rory OíNeil, editor of the
New York Evening News (Peter
Vaughan, who played Anthony
Hopkinsí elderly dad in Remains
of the Day). Incidentally, before he found fame
in Hollywood, professional grouch WC Fields performed
here as a juggler.
The ëAmericaní bar, where the silent heart-throb drinks
macho OíNeil under the table after proving his masculinity
in the boxing ring, is the Inverness
Court Hotel, 1 Inverness Terrace at Fosbury
Mews. Look out for Cheersí John
Ratzenberger in an early role as the newshound in
the heaving crowd. The Inverness became the 'Dunchester
Club' in the big screen version of TV cop show Sweeney!,
and was later the hotel of cleaned-up American rockstar
Rock Head in Alex
Cox's Sid and Nancy.
Valentinoís mansion is the turn-of-the-century East
Cliff Hall, the Russell-Cotes
Art Gallery and Museum, East Cliff, overlooking
Poole Bay in Bournemouth,
Dorset.
(tel: 01202.451800).
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FILMING
LOCATIONS FOR VALENTINO
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CHECK
OUT
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ASSOCIATED
FILMS |
See the
Inverness Court Hotel
in Sid and Nancy |
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