THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF RICARDO CORTEZ (paperback)

ISBN 9781629332765 Nominated for the 2018 Richard Wall Memorial Award, honoring books on film and broadcasting, from the Theatre Library Association With his dark good looks, muscular physique, heavy-lidded bedroom eyes, and easy smile, amateur boxer and Wall Street business man Jacob Krantz left Wall Street to cut a dashing figure on the silver screen for over five decades. Few knew that he was a Jewish man, when Paramount Pictures signed him in 1922, changed his name from Jacob Krantz to Ricardo Cortez, and widely publicized him as a “Latin lover” in the style of Rudolph Valentino, Antonio Moreno, and Ramon Navarro.    He worked in silent movies with top directors and stars, including The Next Corner (1924) with Lon Chaney, Cecil B. DeMille’s Feet of Clay (1924), The Pony Express (1925), Torrent (1926) with Greta Garbo, D. W. Griffith’s The Sorrows of Satan (1926), Mockery (1927) with Lon Chaney, and Excess Baggage (1928) with William Hanes.    Within six years, chaos took hold of