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Paul Valentine: Of “Love Happy” and Lili St. Cyr

Paul Valentine (William Daixel, 1919-2006) comes to our attention (just barely) because he plays one of the principals in the late Marx Brothers movie Love Happy (1950). Unfortunately, after the Marxes themselves, the most memorable performers in that film are the several villain characters, and the pretty girls (Marilyn Monroe, and Vera-Ellen). Valentine is sixth billed, and he was having a little moment, but this was never going to be a movie that elevated him to true stardom.

Worst advert for a Marx Brothers comedy ever.

Valentine was primarily a dancer. He’d begun performing professionally with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (one of the successors to Diaghilev’s company) as a teenager, and also danced with Fokine. Initially he performed under faux Russian monikers like Val Valentinoff and Vladimir Valentinov; Paul Valentine was the credit he initially used for acting roles, but later he used it across the board. In 1944 he made it to Broadway in the show Follow the Girls with Jackie Gleason and Gertrude Niesen, and also met and choreographed the burlesque star Lili St. Cyr.

Valentine and St. Cyr were married from 1946 through 1949. Around the same time he began to be cast in supporting roles in films. In addition to Love Happy, you can seen him in the noir classic Out of the Past (1947), House of Strangers (1949), Special Agent (1949), Something to Live For (1952), and Love Island (1952).

In 1952 he married the Princess Flevur Ali Khan; her relationship, if any, to the Ali Khan who married Rita Hayworth I have not yet ascertained. Possibly none — in 1954 he appeared in a Broadway show called Hit the Trail (1954) opposite a “Flavine Valentine”, who is surely the same woman. During these years, Valentine also returned to Broadway for the shows Wish You Were Here (1952) with Jack Cassidy and Larry Blyden, and Oh Captain (1958), with Tony Randall, Abbe Lane, and Edward Platt. He has a couple of TV credits from the late ’50s and early ’60s. Mostly, one gathers, during this period he performed primarily in nightclubs and live regional theatre.

In the late ’70s, Valentine returned to film and television as a bit player. You can see him in such films as True Confessions (1981), Pennies from Heaven (1981), the Pavarotti vehicle Yes, Giorgio (1982), and Against All Odds (1984–a remake of Out of the Past), and shows like Quincy and Scarecrow and Mrs. King.

For more on show biz history consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and please keep your eye peeled for my new book The Marx Brothers Miscellany, dropping just in time for Marxfest 2024.

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.