RAMON NOVARRO, Mexican actor born (d. 1969); Ben-Hur – bulging biceps lashing fleet steeds in the famous Colisseum chariot race; the whitest teeth that ever were; the Roman tunic that one wishes were just a wee bit shorter: This is the picture of Ramon Novarro remembered by movie buffs. Many more films, however, made and kept him MGM’s great Latin lover throughout the 20s and 30s. He was one of Richard Halliburton’s (see Gay Wisdom 1/9/08) Hollywood bed-mates and the actor forced to deliver one of the most memorable lines in movie history (says Novarro to Greta Garbo, who, as Mata Hari is registering world-weariness and pain: “What’s the matter, Mata?”) Novarro’s relationship with Hollywood journalist, Herbert Howe, is discussed in two biographies: Allan R. Ellenberger’s Ramon Novarro and André Soares’s Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro.

In the end, in 1968, this still-handsome actor was murdered by two Mormon brothers, and hustlers, the lead dildo once given him by Rudolph Valentino reputedly the murder weapon.