Latin lover

It was the result of several factors: a crisis of faith in the supremacy of a male as a consequence of the horrors of World War I, growing female emancipation, but also Hollywood's effort to conquer the film markets of Europe, whose audience was deemed more refined at the time.

The non-American attributes of the type and the fact that a noticeable number of European actors moved their careers to Hollywood has made some film historians, like Enno Patalas, prefer the term 'stranger' instead of a 'lover'.

The Valentino myth was sealed with his premature death at the age of 31,[1] as it was followed by massive hysteria and collapses of the fans and his fellow actresses, a huge funeral with almost 100,000 people, and alleged suicides of several women.

[2] Other typecast actors such as Ramon Novarro, Ricardo Cortez, Antonio Moreno, Gilbert Roland, Rod La Rocque and Adolphe Menjou, the first who brought a certain measure of cynicism to the type, would follow.

In the sound period, most popular American actors of the type were William Powell, Fredric March, Melvyn Douglas and commercially extremely successful Robert Taylor and Tyrone Power.

The 'French lover cliché' type was created by Charles Boyer, while popular British actors, prior to World War II, include Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard, Robert Donat, David Niven and James Mason.

Marcello Mastroianni did some type acting but also very effectively evoked and parodied it in several films, while only partially it was represented by Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, Gérard Depardieu and Michael York in the 1970s.