Natacha Rambova (1897-1966)

Natacha Rambova (1897-1966)

Born under name of Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy but under stage name of her mother, Natacha Rambova. Silent Movie Actress and 2nd wife of Film Star Rudolf Valentino

Vital Stats

 * Daughter of Michael Shaughnessy (1844-1910), a civil war veteran, and Winifred Natacha Rambova Kimball (1871-1957), granddaughter of Mormon Pioneer, Heber C Kimball.
 * 1897-Jan-19 : Birth in Salt Lake City Utah
 * 1922-May-13 : Marriage (1) to Rudolph Valentino (1895-1936) in Mexicali, Mexico
 * 1933-Jun-17 : Marriage (2) to Alvaro De Urzaiz (1893-) in Palma, Demallorca, Spain
 * 1966-Jun-05 : Died in Pasadena, Los Angeles Co, California, USA

Biography
Natacha Rambova (January 19, 1897 – June 5, 1966) was an American silent film costume and set designer, artistic director, screenwriter, producer and occasional actress. Later in life she worked as a mildly successful fashion designer and Egyptologist. She is best known as the second wife of film star Rudolph Valentino.

Her father was an Irish Catholic civil-war veretan and had her christened as an infant at the St. Madeline Cathedral in Salt Lake City (27-June-1897).

Marriage to Rudolph Valentino
Rambova met Valentino on the set of Uncharted Seas in 1921. They began working together on the set of Camille shortly after. They began to take picnics together and attended a costume ball together. They formed a relationship based on a love of reading, art, antiques, and the finer things in life.

The pair moved in together less than a year later but had to separate (or at least pretend to) as the divorce proceedings for Valentino's marriage to Jean Acker began. Once the divorce was final, the pair married on May 13, 1922 in Mexicali, Mexico. However, the law at the time required a year to pass before remarriage and Valentino was jailed as a bigamist. Valentino's studio at the time, Famous Players-Lasky, refused to post bail. June Mathis, George Melford, and Thomas Meighan eventually were able to raise enough to post bail. Rambova had been sent to New York by the studio before Valentino's jailing, and was informed at a stop in Chicago. Throughout the bigamy scandal she refused to speak to the press. The pair had to wait a year to remarry. They legally remarried on March 14, 1923.

Marriage to Alvaro De Urzaiz
Rambova met Alvaro de Urzaiz on a trip to Europe in 1934. Urzaiz was a British educated, Spanish aristocrat. After closing her shop, Rambova moved with her husband to the island of Mallorca. When the Spanish Civil War erupted, Urzaiz was on the pro-fascists nationalist side, becoming a naval commander. Rambova fled to Nice, where she suffered a heart attack at age 40. Soon after, she and Urzaiz divorced.

Final Years
In the mid 1960s she was struck with scleroderma, and became malnourished and delusional as a result. A cousin brought her to Pasadena, California where she died of a heart attack on June 5, 1966 at the age of 69. Her collection of Egyptian antiquities were donated to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. She willed a huge collection of Nepali and Lamaistic art to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Rambova's ashes were scattered in Arizona.