Valentino had a year to live when he made The Eagle. He had only recently returned to the screen after an absence of nearly two years. A quarrel with Famous Players-Lasky had driven him to leave the business and to embark on a personal appearance tour with his wife, Natacha Rambova. Eventually, he signed a contract with Joseph Schenck to appear in this Russian story for United Artists. Originally entitled “Untamed” and then “The Lone Eagle”, the picture was eventually titled “The Black Eagle”. That title had to be changed when Douglas Fairbanks began The Black Pirate (1926). The Fairbanks connection was strong. Although The Eagle was nominally based on an unfinished Pushkin story, ‘Dubrovski’, scenario writer Hans Kräly reworked The Mark of Zorro (1920), Fairbanks’ great success. Kräly was usually the writer for Ernst Lubitsch; The Eagle was intended for Lubitsch, but he was unavailable. A former engineer, Brown was delighted to find Valentino as enthusiastic as he was about technical matters. He even had his own professional motion picture camera. Brown introduced into the picture a number of technical flourishes including a spectacular travelling shot along a banqueting table. Art director William Cameron Menzies, who had designed The Thief of Bagdad (1924) for Fairbanks, gave the film a stylised look which was mirrored in Adrian’s costumes. There was no attempt to get the period right, nor to pay obeisance to history; they were anxious not to alienate Valentino fans. Brown regarded Valentino and Garbo as the two greatest personalities of the screen – and The Eagle won him a contract to MGM. His first film for the new studio was Flesh and the Devil (1926) with Greta Garbo. Jean- Louis Barrault picked The Eagle as one of his favourite films.

Kevin Brownlow