For decades Rudolph Valentino's contract with United Artists, signed in 1925, remained hidden in a collector's secreted collection. When I interviewed collector William Self in 2003, he told me he had the original copy of the contract. I asked him several times if I could see it and never did.
An official copy was included in the court records I retrieved from the California Court of Appeals library in San Francisco. This is the copy I share via the below Google Drive link.
Until I shared this contract, it was purported that United Artists specifically banned Valentino's wife Natacha Rambova from any role in his United Artists' films. This was not the case and she is not mentioned. It was the fact she was not given any role which caused the rift in the Valentino marriage.
The contract also reveals Valentino's contracts were assigned to the ownership of his corporate alter ego, Cosmic Arts. (More about Cosmic Arts in the "Page" link in this blog's header). The sole stock holder of Cosmic Arts was Natacha Rambova which made her the sole owner of her husband's contracts.
Here follows the contract with the "Assignment to Cosmic Arts" contract and the distributing agreement included:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZGAGO5xY0MRGwDzHwGadhWgW7gMVJBKi/view?usp=drive_link
