Matthew Coniam - Egyptomania Goes to the Movies: From Archaeology to Popular Craze to Hollywood Fantasy

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

The unbroken seal on Tutankhamens shrine (photograph by Harry Burton).

Also by MATTHEW CONIAM
AND FROM MCFARLAND

Thats Me, Groucho! The Solo Career of Groucho Marx (2016)

The Annotated Marx Brothers: A Filmgoers Guide to In-Jokes, Obscure References and Sly Details (2015)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-2986-5

2017 Matthew Coniam. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Front cover: Theda Bara in the title role of the 1917 film Cleopatra; background designs by J. C. Rosemann (iStock)

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

For Angela
(My first book having been dedicated
to our son Edward, it seems only fitting that this one
should be dedicated to his mummy.)

Researching this book has for the most part been a happy affair of reacquainting myself with numerous old favorites from my own library and others; together with scores of articles and dozens of documentaries and movies. Many forgotten memories have risen, Kharis-like, from the dust thus disturbed. But I have also made use of some fresher perspectives, and have additionally benefited from the interest, assistance or input of Mykal Banta, the late Robert Birchard, Anthony Blampied, John V. Brennan, Robin Cook, Bob Gassel, David Kernick, Valerie Leon, David McGillivray, David L. Rattigan, Scott Saternye, Fiona Thompson, Rodney Stewart Hillel Tryster, Ed Watz and Derek Welsby (British Museum). Special thanks are due to ace rare film researcher George White.

As ever I thank my family: my wife Angela, my son Edward (thats him as King Tut, above) and my sister Helen. And in particular, after having written two successive books about the Marx Brothers, I would like to record my pleasure at being able finally to thank my mother and father for a lifetimes selfless practical, material and emotional support, with a book they might actually find reasonably interesting.

John L. Balderston: Screenwriter, playwright and journalist, who nearly became the curses silliest victim.

Theda Bara: Silent film star, born Theodosia Goodman, played Cleopatra and may have been a reincarnation.

Antoine Bovis: Father of Pyramid Power: the first man who dared to wonder what happens when you put a dead fish inside a cardboard model of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Howard Carter: Egyptologist and discoverer of the tomb of Tutankhamen: disproved the myth of the curse by living long enough to become completely forgotten.

Lon Chaney, Jr.: The true face of Kharis the Mummy: film actor who started out as rugged hero but became typed in horror for reasons of genetics. Allergic to rubber.

Max Cohen: Enterprising independent film producer responsible for the most tantalizingly lost manifestation of Egyptomania cinematica: The Mystery of Tut-Ankh-Amens Eighth Wife (1923). Also the inventor of midget comedies.

Cecil B. DeMille: Autocratic American film director whose penchant for Jazz Age social drama and historical spectacle coalesced perfectly in the first and greatest version of The Ten Commandments (1923).

Waynham Dixon: British engineer who organized the safe passage of the Cleopatra Needle to England after decades of failure and indecision. Also made a major discovery about the Great Pyramid while damaging it with a hammer.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: British novelist and creator of Sherlock Holmes, whose three literary contributions to the subject of Egyptian malevolence more or less provide the complete blueprint for its extension into twentieth century cinema. Also a noted spiritualist and crank, who swallowed whole the curse of the Pharaohs.

Karel Drbal: Czechoslovakian visionary, who built upon the researches of Antoine Bovis and kick-started a Californian cult.

EA6704 (a.k.a. Prem): The mummy that time forgot, but Hammer Films immortalized.

Dorothy Eady (a.k.a. Omm Seti): London-born Egyptologist and self-declared reincarnation of a handmaiden from the court of Seti I (who was, she insisted, a nice man).

William P. S. Earle: Producer and director of Dancer of the Nile (1923) the first dramatic film to capitalize on Tutmania.

George Gliddon: American Egyptological showman, who received a nasty surprise when he unwrapped a mummy in front of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Bertram Grassby: British film actor, and the screens original Tutankhamen, who lived in a house with a tree growing inside it.

George Herbert, Fifth Earl of Carnarvon: Howard Carters patron and the man whose obsession with Ancient Egypt led to the greatest archaeological discovery of all time, even as his death led to its greatest and most enduring myth.

Boris Karloff (a.k.a. Karloff the Uncanny): British film actor who invented the ambulatory movie mummy as we know it, in thirty seconds of screen time and one close-up.

Valerie Leon: British film actress and probable reincarnation of the Egyptian lioness goddess Pakhet.

Herschell Gordon Lewis: American film director/producer/writer/composer, creator of the infamous Blood Feast (1963), and the worlds leading authority on the terrifying Egyptian cult of Ishtar. Last known victim of the curse to date.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser: A wily Oriental.

Sir Matthew William Flinders Petrie: English Egyptologist and eccentric, and proof that it is possible to be in two places at once.

Jack Pierce: American movie makeup wizard; turned the living into the dead and the dead into the immortal.

Ernest Shipman (a.k.a. Ten Percent Ernie): Canadian film exhibitor and director and the first to secure film rights to the Tutankhamen excavationor did he?

Bram Stoker: Irish novelist and creator of Dracula. Met a mummy at the home of Oscar Wildes father and was never the same again.

Tom Terriss: British actor, film director and prospective producer of the unmade Curse of Tutankhamen in 1934. He claimed to have been personally invited to the excavation of the tomb in 1922, and never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Tutankhamen: Boy king of the Eighteenth Dynasty and global celebrity of the twentieth century: the hero of our story.

William John Warner (a.k.a. Cheiro, a.k.a. Count Louis Harmon, a.k.a. Count Leigh de Hamong):