"Welcome to the gorgeously restored Vista Theatre in Los Angeles, which has re-created the mystical Egyptian décor that was so popular in movie palaces of the 1920s." "Egypt was all the rage then, in the years following the discovery of King Tut's tomb, with all those legends about its supposedly fatal curse." "So, what better place could we have chosen to celebrate Hollywood's most famous restored Egyptian," "Boris Karloff as the mummy?" "When Universal released The Mummy, it had already established itself as Hollywood's leading house of horrors, with films like Dracula, Frankenstein and The Old Dark House." "But The Mummy was something radically different." "This time the monster was also a halfway sympathetic lover, and the timeless romantic fantasy of a love transcending time and space inspired countless other films." "So let's do a little archaeological excavating of our own, as we unearth the original story of our..." "Mummy Dearest." "What's the matter, man?" "For heaven's sakes, what is it?" "He went for a little walk" "You should have seen his face" "By the time Boris Karloff took his legendary midnight stroll in The Mummy, the public was already familiar with the mysteries of ancient Egypt through the spectacular discovery, a decade earlier, of King Tutankhamen's treasure-laden tomb." "Almost as fascinating as the treasures were the stories, fuelled by an eager press, of a deadly curse believed to strike down all those who disturbed Tutankhamen's resting place." ""Death, eternal punishment, for anyone who opens this casket."" "Good heavens, what a terrible curse" "If anybody died who was even distantly related to anybody who was around when the tomb was opened, this would be news." "This would be indirect evidence of the curse at work." "Even if the curse was bogus, the Egyptian belief in immortality wasn't." "To assure resurrection, an elaborate ritual of mummification evolved." "The jackal-headed god Anubis presided over the embalming rites, which required 70 days for completion." "Curiously, the screenplay that became The Mummy was not originally an Egyptian story at all." "Asked to develop a vehicle for the new horror superstar, Boris Karloff, screenwriter and journalist Nina Wilcox Putnam concocted Cagliostro, based on the legend of a historical figure who claimed to have lived for centuries." "The historical figure of that name was a poor Italian in the 18th century who passed himself off as an alchemist and a hypnotist, conducted seances, became a fashionable figure, apparently, in the aristocratic world of France." "Putnam's story was substantially revised by John L Balderston, a playwright who had collaborated on both Dracula and Frankenstein." "He also knew a thing or two about mummies." "He was always a student of history." "He loved reading history." "We had all kinds of books around the house." "And Egypt, of course, was one of the main parts of ancient civilisation, and he was intrigued by it." "He was in London after World War I - he worked for the New York World as a correspondent - and one of his assignments just turned out to be the opening of King Tutankhamen's tomb." "So, of course, he was in his element." "He loved it." "The Mummy marked the directorial debut of Karl Freund, the celebrated German cinematographer who had already photographed Universal's Dracula, taking his trademark mobile camera deep into Transylvanian crypts." "He also shot the highly expressionistic Murders in the Rue Morgue, in which Bela Lugosi played the Dracula-like role of a scientist who also needed women's blood - not for sustenance, but for mad evolutionary experiments." "For The Mummy, Freund would get to call all the shots, not just the visual ones." ""Imhotep." "High Priest of the Temple of the Sun at Karnak."" "Poor old fella." "Now what could you have done to make 'em treat you like that?" "Balderston's screenplay renamed the mummy "lmhotep", after the real Egyptian architect who built the first pyramid." "For a while, "lmhotep" was a working title of the film, along with "King of the Dead"." "Meanwhile, Universal was slightly renaming the film's star as well." "Well, he was billed as "Karloff the Uncanny", and at that time, and today also, there are very few stars that are billed just by their last name." "So he had achieved an awful lot between the years 1931 and 1933, between the first Frankenstein film and the filming of The Mummy." "Once more, Karloff would wear an extraordinary make-up, created by Universal's resident wizard, Jack Pierce." "I think what made the mummy make-up work was Karloff, and Karloff's face." "He had this great bone structure for it, and his performance, even though he was supposed to be this dead thing coming back to life, it was very subtle, but it was frightening." "I think the combination of Pierce and Karloff was such a great combination, and they were such a great team." "With the two of them together, they've made these classic images in horror films that I don't think will ever be matched." "In preparation for the make-up, studio publicity claimed that Pierce had carefully studied ancient Egyptian embalming techniques." "I really have no clue what research he did." "When you look at real mummies..." "The first mummy that I ever saw was Boris Karloff in the Jack Pierce make-up, and I thought that's what mummies look like." "When I finally saw pictures of Rameses, I found he was kinda different-looking." "It wasn't quite the same effect." "I think, actually, putting the make-up on for The Mummy and taking it off took longer than the make-up for Frankenstein." "I only know what I've read, and I read something about, I think, eight hours to do the mummy." "Which I can believe - especially since Pierce had to wrap his body as well." "Back in those days they only had spirit gum, cotton, collodion, stuff like that, but something we even do today is called an old-age stipple, where you actually stretch the person's skin." "And I'm sure what he did is paint a layer of spirit gum on Karloff, stick some cotton on - and I understand he used Egyptian cotton," "I think just because it was finer cotton - glued that on, painted over it with either more spirit gum or collodion, and dried it." "Then, once it was dry, he released it and it would form these wrinkles." "And I'm sure he did many layers." "Where it didn't form enough he'd add a bit more and build it up." "Very tedious, time-consuming, very painful, I'm sure, for Boris." "I still can't believe..." "Having this collodion and stuff around your eyes, he must have teared up through this whole process." "Had to hold his breath as well, I'm sure." "Fortunately, he didn't have to wear the bandages as Imhotep except for a very brief period of time on camera." "But it was really excruciatingly painful to take that make-up off." "I know that they spent hours and hours and hours putting it on for the first day." "My understanding was Pierce didn't even consider the fact that Boris might have to relieve himself some time during the day, and that became a bit of a problem." "And when they completed it, he said "You've done a wonderful job, but you've forgotten to give me a fly."" "For the exotic dual role of Princess Anck-es-en-Amon and her modern-day counterpart," "Universal cast the Hungarian-born New York stage actress Zita Johann." "Zita Johann had been a powerhouse Broadway dramatic actress of the 1920s." "She had played in Machinal, in which she played a murderess who goes screaming to the electric chair." "Terrific dramatic actress." "She believed in what she called "the theatre of the spirit"." "She sat in her dressing room before performing, said her prayers," ""died unto herself", as she put it, and became her character." "There's death there for me." "And life for something else inside me that isn't me." "But it's alive too, and fighting for life." "Save me from it, Frank." "Save me." "With this almost sacred approach to acting, at the same time she had a very enormous disrespect for Hollywood." "As she told me in her richly theatrical way, "I had more respect for the whores on 42nd Street than I did for the stars in Hollywood."" "When I met her in 1979, at her pre-Revolutionary War house by the Hudson River, she was still drama incarnate." "She gave the interview by sitting on a chaise lounge and adjusting her lighting before she began to talk." "And we weren't filming anything." "That was just her." "Zita Johann was a remarkable actress, and when I first got to know her it was rather guarded that she told me about her interest in the occult." "But the more we got into the making of The Mummy and the more she relaxed, she actually began to discuss her interest in the occult sciences." "I am Anck-es-en-Amon, but I..." "I'm somebody else too." "I want to live, even in a strange new world." "She was a devout believer in reincarnation." "She told me that at one point in the 1920s she had gone on a spiritual retreat in the Adirondacks and had levitated." "Then she added "Coming down was rotten."" "So she was really a perfect choice for Princess Anck-es-en-Amon." "She was absolutely in spiritual key with the character." " Look and wonder." " A figure of myself." "It is my coffin, made by my father against my death." "What mummy has usurped my eternal resting place?" "It is thy dead shell." "I tried then to raise this body." "I could raise it now, but it would be a mere thing that moved at my will, without a soul." "Now, when I got to know her and visited her in this wonderful old spooky house, she had diagrams on the table of cabbalistic symbols, and she did yoga, and she would teach acting courses as well." "But she incorporated all of this spirituality and mysticism into her acting." "She'd say "All right, if you're going to play Medea, let's call upon Medea to come into the circle."" "She was a very headstrong woman in the Katharine Hepburn mould." "And the irony of that is that Katharine Hepburn, had she not left for the East Coast when she did, would have screen-tested for The Mummy." "Zita had a very headstrong, determined kind of spirit, and in 1932 that must have been a disaster, because she was butting heads with everyone." "She told me she walked into Irving Thalberg's office and said "Irving, why do you make such rubbish?"" "Even men didn't talk to Irving Thalberg that way." "But he actually said "For the money, Zita, for the money."" "And she behaved in a way that suited her character." "She was a stage actress, and she was a very fine stage actress." "She had talent, breeding, looks, and I think that she felt that she was too good for Hollywood." "But the money was phenomenal." "And in 1931 and '32, to make $7500 a week was something you just couldn't turn down." "But the actress's handsome salary was small compensation for the legendary difficulties she endured with her director." "Zita remembered that one day on the Universal lot "a huge monster" - the huge monster being Karl Freund, who weighed 300lbs and was not a tall man - came up to her and said "In one scene you must play it from the waist up nude."" "And she said "Why do I have to play it from the waist up nude?"" "And he said "The scene in The Mummy, you must play from the waist up nude."" "Well, what she soon realised was that this was his first picture as a director." "He was looking for a scapegoat, and he wanted to antagonise her so he could say to the front office "I'm working with this temperamental actress and she refuses to do what I want."" "So she said to Karl Freund" ""I'll be happy to play it from the waist up nude if you can get it past the censors."" "And she said "And I had him there."" "So it was a very unhappy working relationship, Zita Johann and Karl Freund." "At one point she was debating about the way to play a certain scene, and here was Zita with her "theatre of the spirit" approach and Karl Freund, who was a genius at cinematography but had a very mechanical way of shooting a picture." "She said "I want to play it a different way."" "And he said "Well, this is where the camera is." "You will play it here."" "And Zita responded "Well, then move the goddamn camera - it's on wheels."" "So this was the relationship." "Karl Freund did not give her a chair on the set with her name on it." "He made her stand against a board for two days so she wouldn't get a crease in the skirt she was wearing." "His most remarkable atrocity was that he saved for the last day of shooting a reincarnation scene in which Zita played a Christian martyr who was to be fed to the lions." "The cameraman was in a cage of his own, Freund was in a cage of his own - as she said, "a very large cage" - everybody was protected, and here she had to walk in among these lions." "And, as she put it, she was "exhausted beyond fear"." "So she walked in among the lions and thought "Who cares?"" "She said "Those lions looked at me and thought" "'That's just a sack of exhausted bones." "Who cares?"'" "And they didn't bother her." "My love has lasted longer than the temples of our gods." "No man ever suffered as I did for you." "She adored Boris Karloff." "But she said something very interesting about Karloff - remember, this is probably after Frankenstein, his greatest performance." "She said "When I first met him, I felt this incredible wave of sadness."" "She said "His eyes were like shattered mirrors."" ""Whatever his pain was, it was very deep and very much a part of his soul."" "And she said "I never intruded."" ""He was always a perfect gentleman, he always knew his lines."" "He never complained about, possibly, one of the most arduous make-up experiences he would ever have at Universal, under the hands of Jack Pierce." "Back in those days they did not have 12-hour work days, and they would sometimes work until dawn." "And The Mummy was an exhausting picture." "But Zita relied on the occult powers of her faith to keep her going." "You will not remember what I show you now, and yet I shall awaken memories of love and crime and death." "The most famous sequence in the picture is probably the one in which Zita and Karloff look into the pool and she experiences her past lives." "And during this sequence, Zita - because of lack of food and working till late, late hours, and the problems she was having with Freund - she passes out." "And she claims she had what was one of two near-death experiences." "She said "I could see myself leaving my body."" "And, of course, the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes is Boris Karloff, completely in make-up, but out of character, saying "Zita!" "Zita, darling!" "Are you all right?"" "And she, of course, didn't want to let any of the crew know that she had been on another plane." "The Mummy took Universal to a new box-office plane, as audiences thrilled to its unique mixture of horror and romance." "Beyond the excellent performances, careful art direction paid off handsomely." "The detailed re-creation of Egyptian murals and hieroglyphics, supervised by the noted Hungarian artist Willy Pogany, lent an unusual air of authenticity to an otherwise fantastic story." "Technically and artistically, it was one of the studio's most accomplished fright films to date." "The best scene, perhaps, in this film is the coming-to-life of the mummy at the beginning." "But what is so remarkable about that to me is that they went to all the trouble to make up Boris Karloff from head to foot in the mummy wrappings, in the extreme make-up, and yet they just show his face a little bit, they show his hand a little bit," "they move down the chest as the hand moves, but they don't show him walking around." "There's even a still of the standing Karloff in the make-up reaching to take the scroll." "But they didn't have that shot in the movie." "And what self-discipline there must have been to go for the implication and the suggestion and the hint rather than the blunt statement." "And as for Boris Karloff, he was an actor who could very easily be seen to be overacting." "His looks were so striking, his voice was so distinctive, that all he'd have to do would be to do something fairly strong and it's overwhelming." "So he had the wisdom, or his directors, or the combination, had the wisdom to understate things." "Have we not met before, Miss Grosvenor?" "No." "I don't think so." "I don't think one would forget meeting you, Ardath Bey." "Then I am mistaken." "The voice has very little inflection." "He hardly moves physically." "But there's always that sense that there's this great overwhelming force ready to come out at any time." "In time-honoured Hollywood fashion," "The Mummy borrowed significantly from a proven box-office sensation." "There is the shadow of Dracula hovering over this story line." "John Balderston, who had done the adaptation of the play Dracula for the American stage, when he was working on this script it seems as though he remoulded the material - consciously or unconsciously, perhaps unconsciously - but remoulded it in the light of some of the relationships" "and situations in Dracula." "You have an undead person who has a strong romantic overtone to him..." "My blood now flows through her veins." "She will live through the centuries to come... as I have lived." "The ancient rites must be performed over thy body." "Then I will read the great spell with which Isis brought Osiris back from the grave." "And thou shalt rise again." "A character in both cases who has a powerful hypnotic control over others." "Come... here." ""Come here" says Dracula." "The mummy, by a much longer distance, has the power to cause things to happen across the city." "Even to the point of the talisman - the cross in one case, the Isis figure in the other case." "All that, if you phrase it a certain way, no one would know which movie you mean." "After what happened, you need rest badly." "But I don't." "I was tired, but..." "Why, I've never felt so alive before." "You're so..." "like a changed girl." "Oh, you look wonderful." "I feel wonderful." "I've never felt better in my life." "If I could get my hands on you, I'd break your dried flesh to pieces." "And I will have Carfax Abbey torn down stone by stone, excavated a mile around." "I will find your earth box and drive that stake through your heart." "As filmed, the Balderston script told a much more elaborate story of reincarnation than the public ever saw." "There were a whole series of different historical periods represented, in each of which she dies." "There was one in ancient Rome, one where she is confronted by Vikings, there is one in the Middle Ages with crusaders." "There are stills that show that they obviously had filmed this." "At some point it was decided that this would slow the story line down." "When Universal began a new cycle of horror thrillers just before World War II," "The Mummy was an obvious candidate for reincarnation." "In The Mummy's Hand, Western actor Tom Tyler was recruited, not to play lmhotep, but a role so similar that footage from the original film was shamelessly recycled, with close-ups of Tyler substituted for Karloff." "The mummy was now called Kharis, and instead of ancient scrolls and spells, a new technique was used to revitalise him - an elixir brewed from precious tana leaves." "Three of the leaves will make enough fluid to keep Kharis' heart beating." "The mummy's already ghastly appearance was further enhanced by a post-production optical effect in which Tyler's eyes were meticulously blackened frame by frame." "The effect was obviously not completed in time for the theatrical trailer." "The film's exciting climax was shot on an imposing temple set left over from James Whale's jungle adventure, Green Hell." "Stop him" "Spawned from the depths of doom comes the most fearful monster of the ages, to strike with paralysing terror the despoilers of ancient tombs." "Having already played the Frankenstein monster and the wolf man," "Lon Chaney quickly added the mummy to his stable of frightening characterisations." "In The Mummy's Tomb, Kharis followed the characters from the last film to a previously sleepy New England town." "Since the studio never explained how Kharis returned from the ashes following his immolation in The Mummy's Hand, there was no reason to think that another fire would keep him down either." "Kharis still lives?" "Lives only for the purpose for which he was created:" "To guard Ananka's tomb until the end of time." "In The Mummy's Ghost," "John Carradine was appointed the latest High Priest of Ananka, the mummy's lost Egyptian love." "Ananka's reincarnations at Universal had become so numerous you almost needed a Rosetta stone to decipher them all." "Do you not know who you are?" "I am Amina Mansori." "You are the princess Ananka, third daughter of Amenophis, one-time Pharaoh of all Egypt." "You're mad." "This was the only film in the series where Kharis and Ananka ended up together - but, unfortunately, in the same sorry state of preservation." "Amina" "By the time of The Mummy's Curse," "Ananka's swampy grave had mysteriously moved to Cajun country." "The new Ananka, actress Virginia Christine, shared the audience's growing sense of discombobulation." "It's so hard to explain." "It's as though I were... two different people." "Sometimes it seems as if I belong to a different world." "I find myself in strange surroundings with strange people." "I cannot ever seem to find rest." "As usual, the mummy's amorous antics had a tendency to bring down the house." "In the end, the mummy faced the ultimate fate, reserved for all Universal monsters - a meeting with Abbott and Costello." " Where will we find the mummy?" " Don't worry, the mummy'll find you." "His love lasted longer than the temples of the gods, and our undying fondness for the mummy shows no signs of letting up either." "Call him lmhotep, call him Kharis, call him anything - just don't call him late for his tana-leaf tea." "I'm Rudy Behlmer."