Thousands Tied Knot at Marriage Mill
Silent film star Rudolph Valentino was married at the old Lake County Courthouse in 1923 in Crown Point, Ind. Today, Valentino’s Café & Ice Cream Parlor at the Courthouse Shops takes its name from the famed heartthrob.
In Crown Point, Ind., a romantic marriage mill once operated at a dizzying pace, its big wheel turning 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Liberal laws that allowed couples to marry without a waiting period drew an estimated 175,000 couples to say their vows at the Lake County Courthouse from 1915 to 1940, when more stringent regulations were enacted. The list reads like a Who’s Who of celebrities – boxer Muhammad Ali, the parents of singer Michael Jackson, football legend Red Grange, silver screen cowboy Tom Mix and two members of the Mills Brothers singing trio.
But no marriage from that blissful era has captured the public’s imagination as much as the one in 1923 of silent screen Romeo Rudolph Valentino.
"Valentino and his bride, Winifred DeWolfe, drew a huge crowd on the courthouse grounds that day," says Bruce Woods, president of the Lake County Historical Society and director of the Lake County Historical Museum. "After the wedding, Valentino took Winifred across the street to a bakery, and he bought her a doughnut."
Valentino and DeWolfe tied the knot on the second floor of the courthouse, and their actual marriage license hangs on the wall of Valentino’s Café and Ice Cream Parlor, located in what used to be the courthouse boiler room.
"Some people are puzzled because the license says Rudolph Gugliema, but that was Valentino’s real name," says café owner Stacy Jaroscak.
While the marriage mill now turns much more slowly, the town honors its romantic past each year at the Crown Point Hometown Square Festival, where dozens of couples come together to join hands in matrimony or renew their vows. |
