1916
Arriving in New York by boat from Italy in 1913, Rudolph Valentino worked as a “taxi dancer” at Maxim’s Restaurant-Cabaret, where rich women could pay for all sorts of pleasures with exotic men, also known as “tango pirates.” He eventually moved on, repairing his reputation on the ballroom circuit—but then served as a witness in a highly public divorce, provoked a (probably) retributive arrest for “vice,” and had his newly respectable name sullied. He fled to Hollywood and started over.