User:Luckygoose22/Ramon Novarro

Ramón Navarro (born José Ramón Gil Sanamiego in Durango, Mexico on February 6, 1899) was a Mexican silent film actor, active in the 1920s and 30s. His family immigrated to the United States in the wake of the Mexican revolution, and he moved to Los Angeles by 16 years old to attempt his dream of becoming an actor. Throughout his life he was regarded by the public as a sensual, sensitive man. He skyrocketed into the Hollywood scene after his breakout role of Ben-Hur, and stayed relevant within the public sphere well after his death. In fact, the circumstances of his passing shocked Americans, as it revealed something Novarro had carefully kept secret his whole life: he was a homosexual man. His death was violent and his murderers served time in jail for their crimes. Today, Novarro’s brave, unapologetic image inspires young queer Latines who wish to pursue a career in entertainment and the arts.

Early life
Novarro was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego on February 6, 1899, in Durango City, Durango, north-west Mexico, to Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego, and his wife, Leonor (Pérez Gavilán). The family moved to Los Angeles to escape the Mexican Revolution in 1913. Novarro's direct ancestors came from the Castilian town of Burgos, whence two brothers emigrated to the New World in the seventeenth century.

Allan Ellenberger, Novarro's biographer, writes:"The Samaniegos were an influential and well-respected family in Mexico. Many Samaniegos had prominent positions in the affairs of state and were held in high esteem by the president. Ramon's grandfather, Mariano Samaniego, was a well-known physician in Juarez. Known as a charitable and outgoing man, he was once an interim governor for the State of Chihuahua and was the first city councilman of El Paso, Texas.... Ramon's father, Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego, was born in Juarez and attended high school in Las Cruces, New Mexico. After receiving his degree in dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania, he moved to Durango, Mexico, and began a flourishing dental practice. In 1891 he married Leonor Pérez-Gavilán, the beautiful daughter of a prosperous landowner. The Pérez-Gaviláns were a mixture of Spanish and Aztec blood, and according to local legend, they were descended from Guerrero, a prince of Montezuma."

The family estate was called the "Garden of Eden". Thirteen children were born there: Emilio; Guadalupe; Rosa; Ramón; Leonor; Mariano; Luz; Antonio; José; a stillborn child; Carmen; Ángel and Eduardo. At the time of the Mexican Revolution, the family moved from Durango to Mexico City and then returned to Durango. Three of Ramón's sisters, Guadalupe, Rosa, and Leonor, became nuns. He was a second cousin of the Mexican actresses Dolores del Río and Andrea Palma.

Personal Life
Novarro was troubled all his life by his conflicted feelings toward his Roman Catholic religion and his homosexuality. His life-long struggle with alcoholism is often traced to these problems. In the early 1920s Novarro had a romantic relationship with composer Harry Partch, who was working as an usher at the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the time, but Novarro broke off the affair as he achieved greater success as an actor. He was romantically involved with Hollywood journalist Herbert Howe, who was also his publicist in the late 1920s, and with a wealthy man from San Francisco, Noël Sullivan.

Along with Dolores del Río, Lupe Vélez and James Cagney, Novarro was accused of promoting communism in California after they attended a special screening of the film ¡Que viva México! by Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein.[citation needed]

Public Image
According to Chavez, Novarro’s publicists knew they had to create a palatable and desirable image that pandered to their largest consumer demographic: the white, heterosexual middle-class housewife. It is for this reason that Novarro’s star image focused largely on his sensuality, suave looks, and middle-class status, rather than his personality or interests.

For Novarro, keeping quiet about his personal life was done out of self-preservation, but to queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, his silence was indicative of much more. She claims that “closetedness itself is a performance initiated as such by the speech act of a silence. . . in relation to the discourse that surrounds and differentially constitutes it”, and while Novarro was never able to come out, he stayed true to himself by marketing aspects of his visible persona while keeping his inner world safe, hidden away from the bigotry of the society he inhabited.

Homosexuality
Novarro’s death was tragic and violent, but this was not the only reason he was in every newspaper at the time. The circumstances of the late Hollywood star's passing revealed a secret he had kept for his whole life: Ramon Navarro was a homosexual man.

He was born at the turn of the 20th century to a Catholic family of 12, and immigrated to the U.S. with his family in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. This was a dangerous time for not only Mexican immigrants in the United States, but also for the queer community. Being a gay Mexican man, he was forced to stay closeted or risk facing racialized, homophobic violence in the streets.

Murder
Novarro was murdered on October 30, 1968, by brothers Paul and Tom Ferguson, aged 22 and 17, who called him and offered their sexual services. In the past, he had hired prostitutes from an agency to come to his Laurel Canyon home for sex, and the Fergusons obtained Novarro's telephone number from a previous guest.

According to the prosecution in the murder case, the two young men believed that a large sum of money was hidden in Novarro's house. The prosecution accused the brothers of torturing Novarro for several hours to force him to reveal where the (non-existent) money was hidden. They left the house with $20 they took from his bathrobe pocket. Novarro died as a result of asphyxiation, having choked to death on his own blood after being beaten. The two perpetrators were caught and sentenced to long prison terms, but released on parole in the mid-1970s. Both were later re-arrested for unrelated crimes for which they served longer prison terms than for the murder of Novarro. In a 1998 interview, Paul Ferguson finally assumed the blame for Novarro's death. Tom Ferguson died of suicide on March 6, 2005. Paul Ferguson died in 2018, while serving out a 60-year sentence for rape in Missouri.

Novarro is buried in Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles, California.

Novarro's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 6350 Hollywood Boulevard.

Differing accounts of death
The first account of Ramon Novarro’s murder took place in court after the two brothers were arrested. Two separate court cases were held for each of the Ferguson brothers. Since Thomas was a minor at the time of the crime, he was kept anonymous during the trial, but tried as an adult.

Paul Ferguson testified that he had been solicited for sexual acts by Novarro, and, believing that he held a large sum of cash in his house, the brothers murdered him to take it. Upon beating him and leaving him to choke to death in his own bed, the brothers realized there was no cash in the house. They fled to protect themselves.

However, this is not the only recorded account of his death. In a 1988 phone interview, the killer confessed that there had never been any cash. On the night of Novarro’s murder, the Ferguson Brothers arrived at the actor’s house, eventually ending with Paul and Ramon in bed together. Paul’s brother had walked in on him and Novarro engaging in sexual acts. Filled with shame, or what Ferguson himself described as “homosexual panic”, he began beating Novarro, not long after which Thomas joined in. They bound Novarro’s arms and legs together with an electrical cord, and left him bleeding out, laying on his back. He passed of asphyxiation shortly after the brothers fled the scene.