“Valentino asked for the works — $5 for forty-five minutes. Winton, whom many of the big stars consulted, told him that he would soon be going on a long journey, that he would see even greater glories in his career, but that his life would be short. ‘It isn’t the first time you’ve told me that,’ Valentino said, ‘I know my life-line is short, but I’m sure that I’ll still be coming here in twenty years time.’ ‘I only wish that were so,’ Winton replied. ‘But sadly, that isn’t what I read in your palm.’ Later, I asked Valentino why he kept returning to this clairvoyant only to listen to bad news. Then he told me, ‘Because everything else that he’s told me has come true.’
~ Robert Florey, quoted in David Bret’s Valentino, a Dream of Desire.
David Wingrove loaned Fiona this book, with the warning that Bret doesn’t tend to give his sources, and does tend to say things that nobody else has ever alleged, so it’s hard to be sure how reliable he is. In particular, Bret’s Valentino appears to have had sex with every man he ever met, and possibly some he never met.
The quote is presumably from Florey’s autobiography, which at least I know does exist, but I think only in French.
Anyhow, these intimations of doom give me a chance to mention again that my chum Maja Borg’s HAPPY BIRTHDAY YOU’RE DEAD is showing tonight at 8:30 on More4 in the First Cuts season. See Maja travel to Romania to confront the clairvoyant who told her she was going to die before her 25th birthday…
