Valentino
died of a perforated ulcer at the age of only thirty-one. Some blame his early demise on a ring (ring around the rosie) he
purchased from a jeweler in 1920. The ring had a gem called the tiger’s eye embedded in it. The legend
goes that Valentino showed the ring to a close friend immediately after he bought it and his friend said
he
saw a vision of a pale and deathly Valentino. Regardless of what his friend did or did not see,
Valentino’s
next few major pictures flopped at the box office and he died within six years. But Valentino wasn’t the
ring’s only victim: his lover Pola Negri became gravely ill after wearing the ring, so much so that her
career had to be put on the back burner for years and it never fully recovered; Russ Colombo, the actor
hired to play Valentino in the biopic of his life wore the ring and was killed in a shooting accident some
days later; and the gangster Joe Casino bought the ring and refused to wear it until the curse had faded.
After several years he finally put the ring on—and was dead within a week due to a motoring accident.
The list goes on… But since the 1960s the ring’s whereabouts have remained unknown. Perhaps it’s on
your finger, dear reader?
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